Americana , What do we want, What do we need?
Stonemason
Posts: 1,253
After completing a few Americana inspired environments I'm interested to hear what other similar project ideas you guys may have?
https://www.daz3d.com/sunset-motel
https://www.daz3d.com/main-street-usa
https://www.daz3d.com/the-suburbs
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I, as an Australian, find those Shotgun houses I see in American small towns on YouTube driving tour videos fascinating
every second one overgrown with kudzu
its just so unique to the USA
lots of stuff in the yard is typical too
everyone always models the big rich houses but from what I have seen on videos such as
https://www.youtube.com/@JoeandNicsRoadTrip
these are more common in rural USA
I am too lazy to write this again but!
Oh, if I could have my druthers, I would love your take on:
Thank you for letting me vent.
Actually, if Americana is the theme, hopefully working with a Disney style amusement park, maybe something more rural like a modular state fair: ring tosses, clown water balloon, and similar games of chance. An outdoor low stage for best in show competitions, eating contests, etc, and of course fairground rides.
Complementary to that would be traveling show rides: rotating swings, tilt-a-whirl, ferris wheel, boat swing, etc. They wouldn't need to include the ability break down to fit in a truck but if there were a truck that looked like it held an amusement part ride, one would also be able to use the set for the traveling show as it travels.
Tunnel of love, fun house, side show freak tents, etc.
Food stands, funnel cake, cotton candy, etc.
(I'm working on something that has a few amusement park scenes so I've been thinking about this stuff.)
Drive-in movie theatre, community square with a courthouse/city hall and church, water tower, connection between downtown and suburbs/other side of the tracks (maybe with some tracks...). Bowling alley, movie theatre. Train crossing bridge with a river and swimming hole below. Double vote for the country fair.
Making me want to drag out my George Tice and Walker Evans books and come up with more suggestions.
I love going for holidays in secluded spots in the wild staying in a cabin with log fireplace :) Might be a good theme to check out.
For Americana...
An amusement park-style environment would be lovely but I'd prefer maybe something more modest, like a carnival or a fair, with maybe one or two rides, food tents, and especially games. Jack Tomlin made several carnival props back between 2010-2013 that are still in the store but no single environment
On a larger scale, I'd love to see an enviornment representing the 1939 or 1964 World's Fair.
I would also love to see an extension to Main Street USA with either a Matinee Cinema, Public Library, Middle School, High School, Sheriff's Office, Greyhound Station, or a small-town baseball diamond for local games. Or perhaps something on the outskirts of town like a modest single-lane bridge over a small river.
I personally love to see scenes featuring stores around 1980-2000s, like the Staten Island Mall in You Get What You Give's MV by New Radicals,
When most malls at that time still had fountains, food courts and those fancy glass elevators.
Or maybe something like a local shopping district with a department store or supermarket!
A ghetto tower block, like the old Cabrini Green projects in Chicago, with the wire mesh sceeens on the balconies.
A house construction site, one that can be built in stages so you can show progression along a story line. You start with groundworks, then framework, then cladding and roof, etc.
A prison island like Alcatraz, or an asylum island like North Brother Island.
with a basement fruit cellar trap door these have a lot of uses in different themed renders of course I am thinking evil dead
besides shacks cabins maybe abandoned houses and buildings like waverly hills
How about a plantation? I know there's an old asset for a plantation house but I mean a full plantation with slave quarters, etc.
I’d personally love to see some kind of carnival, or community fair setup like maybe a Day of the Book style event, street food / little stalls with stuff for sale and attractions that make the environment feel lively and lived in.
And while it’s probably outside the Americana theme, I’ve always enjoyed cozy fantasy settings too. Something with a fantasy village vibe in the spirit of the discontinued Fantasy Home line could be really fun to see someday, even if it took things in a different direction.
How about some add-ons for the Suburbs assets? Garage sale props, street parties, that sort of thing?
An outdoor theater, Greyhound Bus Depot, Finished Sears kit houses, middle class vacation spots like beaches on a lake with piers and small family boats (15 ft or so).., small town supporting wheat fields with grain elevators by RR tracks. etc etc... But I'll take anything you do from the period.
A 1930's-1940's baseball park that can feature closer action style action renders with interior backgrounds where people can try renders maybe in the style of Norman Rockwell. (Rockwell loved baseball). There are stuff with large empty stadiums, but not really anything for renders of people like players or sports fans.
A Main Street add on that would have some other building facades to substitute for those in the first product. Like instead of an existing building type, like hardware, or bank, maybe it could be a fabric store, or small grocery, or boutique, or hair salon, or deli, or thrift store, or law office, or optician, or consignment store, or military recruitment center, or farm supply, or any of a million things. There could be new presets to swap building facades or even add new ones to make the street longer. Your imagination could make a whole new Main Street using the same geometry, I think. It would be fabulous! It would be kind of along the line of the Suburbs series, but could be the Main Street series. You could make Main Street at Christmas with decorations on the street lights, and hanging across the street, etc. You could have Main Street run down wth store windows boarded up, closed signs, going out of business signs, etc. I have my money ready for all this.
I'm just gonna reiterate some things that others have touched on, especially about some add-ons for Main Street:
A Halloween county fair environment. ( preferably as an add-on for Main Steet USA with the streets closed off, vendor tables, lights and decorations, maybe a haunted hayride, bandstand, foodtrucks, etc)
Farmer's Market / Swap Meet (also could be an add-on for Main Street USA in a similar fashion)
Something else I've been wishing for a long time is an east coast boardwalk environment. Maybe like Ocean City, Wildwood or Seaside Heights, NJ or for the west coast: Hermosa Beach Pier, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier. We have plenty of beaches, but no one does the beach towns that are inland from the beach, with the exception of a Miami Beach set which is no longer in the store.
Also some of those beach towns in NJ have beautiful victorian homes. A victorian beach neighborhood like Cape May, NJ for example would also be nice.
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/cape-may-victorian-houses
If you're looking for even more eclectic Americana, the weird little rest stops you will see while traveling out west, they might be be a combination of a gift shop, "dinosaur land", diner and a gas station all in one. Athought unfortunately a lot of those are dissapearing, but they are still out there and very Americana due to the road trip culture and vast open spaces we have, where you might travel 100 miles without seeing another rest stop. There are still some cool places near Roswell, NM. I bought "Alien" beef jerky at one many years ago. It was disgusting though, do not recommend. An Alien themed rest stop would be very cool though with a gift shop, museum, candy store, gas station.. And maybe even have a preset that takes advantage of the recent diner that you made, then you don't have to redo the diner. And don't forget the fireworks, they all seem to sell fireworks for some reason.
Oo, with billboards: The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesoda is 30 miles away.
Nice Motel. Can the room be duplicated and used behind any of the doors?
There's a lot of non-millionaire homes all across america in interesting styles and I'd love some stand-alone complete houses with rooms etc in some of the styles I've seen in the mid-west, and in California and Florida and other places: 1; in the midwest in the 60s and 70s there were a lot of "split-level" homes built that were sometimes with a sub-basement level with a rec room, a bthroom and maybe a bedroom or two (partly - like half- below the grade) and entry (about a foot or two above ground level) level that was usually the kitchen, dining room, living room main bathroom etc and often had glass sliders that gave out onto a back patio, a 2 car garage on front or side that was ground level, and then an upstairs level with bedrooms & bathroom. These were usually part brick with the upper story part clad in siding to break up the shape and add interest. I know there were whole neighborhoods in the part of Ohio I grew up in that consisted of these types of home. My parents bought one newly constructed in a small town where a new street had been put in to the community and was filled with these. Ours was pretty much just as I have described as the type, and was 3 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms and built in 1971- the other houses on the street were all split-levels with varying sizes & bedroom counts and minor variations on plan etc but more or less the same basic split-level idea. 2; the other type I've seen in a variety of states in the modern sort of california craftsman house that often in wood, and modern in design with wide sloping wings of roof (on 1 or two story houses equally) and often covering sprawling porches or patios and entry ways, with lots of big glass shapes making up much of the facades. Like Frank Lloyd Wright meets the Brady Bunch house with a more natural wood and design aesthetic. These types of house also often have half-height loft portions or distinct "levels" rather than regular stacked up stories. There's a neighborhood in Gainesville Florida where a friend lived that was entirely composed of these sorts of homes and they practically were hidden in the trees and greenery since they were -regardless of actuall stories/levels and height, very low-slung, sprawling sorts of homes and all were well-designed to intergrate into the contours of the site. PS: Stonemason, I'm happy to see (& have bought- which is the best validation, right!?- your recent things like the Main Street and the Suburban sets etc which are a great new direction for your ouevre, and nice variety for us. Wonderful work as usual from you!
ETA: If you've watch that Spielberg movie "Super 8" about the kids making a movie when aliens are attacking the town, there's a numbers of typical split-levels and other "American" type regular-folks sorts of homes in that movie that look exactly like so many towns in Ohio and other states. It's a great period small-town Americana reference.
(I had this sitting here waiting to see if I wanted to add anything. Thanks, G.)
I'd like to see a three or four bedroom home that isn't 5000 sq ft. And the bathrooms are less than 10x10 unlike some of the 30x40 bathrooms that sometimes come out.
San Francisco has the Painted Ladies or Queen Anne Victorian houses that are wonderful and back in the 1960s/70s were still within the reach of normal folks but not today, but still bring joy. This page shows the outside and inside plans.
The first house I remember was in Los Angeles in a two bedroom Spanish Colonial bungalow built in the 1920s that I tried to find on Google maps yesterday and found it has been wiped out. It was a mirror of my grandparents home across the street. Moved to a 'modern' three bedroom stucco-covered house near LAX with no soul. It is still there.
Los Angeles and Orange counties is covered with houses built during the 1950s to 1980s for normal families as the population grew. Highways divided up the areas and destroyed many low-income neighborhoods and communities. So I grew-up without the concept of a 'main street', but rather we had to drive here and there to get what we needed.
My father had a term for those houses that were built, 'ticky-tacky boxes in a row'. He hated them.
Little Boxes by Pete Seeger