Dream City Catch Up

 Grey skies as I write this. Finally. The kind of darkness visible that turns all light golden. Here are a couple of frames from Ian Hubert's Dynamo Dream. 

 I've saved this post for a rainy day. Two years ago I shared Hubert's glorious, minute-long tutorials in how to conjure a city out of nothing, but this is the proper fruit of his time and talents. In the year since Episode One : Salad Mug went out, television shows with bottomless pockets like The Sandman, Foundation and Rings of Power have produced similarly breath-taking scenery for characters to stand around and talk slowly in – and maybe in another year it will seem quaint I was so blown away by this – but I don't think any of the big shows has yet managed to match for imagination, care, or life, the twenty-one and a half minutes of this solo passion project. Isn't it amazing what they can do these days? Hasn't it always has been? That's also part of the thrill of it. Put this on the biggest screen you've got.

 

Dream City Cheats

Not like this.

 

 Ian Hubert's youtube channel hosts beautiful minute-long performances – "tutorials" in the same way that watching someone make balloon animals is a tutorial. Comparing him to a guest on The Paul Daniels Show is meant as a compliment by the way, but I'm sure bafflement isn't Hubert's chief aim and that for anyone with Blender who understands what he's saying, this patter's packed with practical advice. Still I just enjoy watching him. 

 I wonder if there's something in these shortcuts which might help to answer a question about the human brain that's been bothering me for decades: how every single place we go to in our dreams, from the old bedroom that's not quite our old bedroom, to the cities we're driven through and the crowds we're passing, are fabricated night after night, without gaps or repeats, for just a second. Let alone why. Here's Ian building a city:

 

 And its people:

 And its moths:

 

(art by anon)