Gallus Glasgow
3D Animation, Art direction, Technical Direction, Software Development, Score and Sound Design | Heritage Outreach Project

An innovative and interactive digital outreach project, managed and delivered by Glasgow City Heritage Trust. It explores the development of Glasgow during the ‘Gilded Age’ of the Victorian period, through the eyes of Thomas Sulman, illustrator of the Bird’s Eye View of Glasgow. First published in The Illustrated London News in 1864 the map is a glimpse of Glasgow as it becomes the ‘second city of the empire’.

We restored, digitised and developed the map into a 3D animation, telling the story of a working Irish-immigrant family through a day in their lives in Glasgow 1864. In collaboration with Glasgow City Heritage Trust we created individual stories for each character, taking viewers down to street level and into the various parts of the city that their lives occupied, opening up Glasgow’s civic spaces to new audiences and creating opportunity to engage in the Trust’s outreach activity program.

The animation is hosted on a bespoke microsite that also features a ‘street-view’ style map that visitors can zoom in and out of, explore different data layers and add pins of their own to contribute their stories and images.

We created a distinct and bespoke art style that gives viewers a sense of being situated within the map, as the featured family characters might have experienced Glasgow in the mid-Victorian era.

We used a combination of dynamic camera styles, that included Point Of View perspective, sweeping track shots and adapted our editing style to suit each characters personality, to adjust and manage the pace, tempo and rhythm of the animation. The bespoke and original score and sound design created authentic atmospheres that we hope evoke the city and its inhabitants.

From site sketch research and by drawing upon the historic photographic records we aimed to make the built and natural environments in the animation as accurate as possible, from paddle steamers and loading docks on the river Clyde to the cobbled streets of the emerging affluent west end.

2D characters were placed throughout the 3D world, showing the various styles of dress and costume that would have been worn at that time and in those contexts, from high necked governesses blouses and layered domestics dresses to heavy aprons and work wear worn by shop keepers, dock workers and builders alike.

In addition to the 5 minute animation we produced a teaser to help promote the project prior to its launch, a trailer and individual character chapters, to help promote the project throughout its initial six month run, these were used primarily on social media, aimed at attracting and engaging a new demographic in the work of the Trust.

This project was a labour of love, supported by an amazing team that included writer Chris McMillan and composer David Donaldson, both frequent collaborators with SUUM.studio. Actor Karen Bartke provided narration, bringing Elizabeth and her family to life, with the Trust’s Gemma Wild and Rachel Kacir providing extensive, informative and always engaging research. The microsite was created with our software developer Adam Turtle and is a perfect home for the work to live on, where visitors can truly interact with the map and explore its intricate detail, contribute to the data by sharing their own stories and images of Glasgow and explore the map’s own history.

The project was funded by Hugh Fraser Foundation, Glasgow City Heritage Trust, Norbulk Shipping UK Ltd., Culture & Business Scotland Fund.

The full project can be viewed here on the Gallus Glasgow website.