Thread by @adolfux

Today marks ten years since this infographic back page about the Kowloon Walled City was published by South China Morning Post. I explained in a few lectures the ins and outs of this project, and now I will do it here. Long 🧵

I love to go and sketch outdoors. It is an essential practice for me to learn more and more from observation drawing. I went to a particular park with some @USk_HongKong friends

So here I was, so happy drawing this bucolic pond—watercolour and sepia ink marker on Moleskine notebook

Here you go; I finished the watercolour sketch

This day I learned about the history that contained this park. My urban sketcher friends explained to me the park's origin, once the walled enclave of Kowloon

The story impressed me, and I had never heard of it. I was fascinated by everything they told me. The park also has educational sections to understand more about Kowloon Walled City. There is a lot of material to get ideas

When I got to the office a few days later, I told my bosses I wanted to do something about this topic. At first, the project went on hold. We decided to go ahead after realising that the anniversary of its demolition was coming up

I started with research. It wasn’t too much information ten years ago. Kowloon Walled City was an enclave belonging to China; it left without a garrison after World War II. The place grew exponentially with refugees from China

I found the magnificent book by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot, “City of Darkness”; it was the primary basis for collecting visual information

I lived in this area, and finding inspiration in Hong Kong was easy

The series of 13 Rue del Percebe by Francisco Ibáñez from my childhood influenced me too

Some sketches and compilation of preliminary ideas on a Moleskine sketchbook after research

Final rough sketch and layout

For the main illustration, I prepared an isometric grid where I would draw the cutaway. An isometric view would be the best way to detail the life inside Kowloon Walled City

With @CorelPainter, I started to draw the line with the pencil tool using the grid that served as a guide to project the isometric view

I am adding details to the illustration. The days go by fast when drawing with that

An advanced process in Adobe Illustrator

I start to add the colour; I always work with a layer of neutral colour, so adding colours is easier for me to combine

I don't usually use many layers; in this case, only two, one for the line and another for the colour

The result combined both layers

The bottom part shows the evolution of this enclave. When it was a walled city in the 19th century, it was part of the Qing Dynasty's China

During the Japanese occupation, the wall's stones were used to build the Kai Tak airfield. After World War II, the Hong Kong government abandoned the enclave without jurisdiction; it began to fill with refugees arriving from China. That's how the city was in 1950

The ungoverned city grew exponentially. This is how the city was in 1973

In 1990, shortly before its demolition, the city looked like this

After the demolition, it became a park, the Walled City Park I mentioned at the beginning of this story. That I how it looks now.

Combined with this, other evolution with a visualisation based on points; each point is a person living in the City of anarchy. The years highlighted are 1898, with 700 inhabitants; 1940, 1950, 1973, 1980 and 1993, with 50,000. @officeofjane helped to produce these points

@officeofjane Some tests print

Some latest reviews by Steve Case, art director at @SCMPNews at that time. These reviews were done at the Navarra University cafetería when we assisted the @malofiej summit. Luckily this graphic won the gold medal at the Malofiej the following year

The sketch and the final result

If you are interested in this infographic, South China Morning Post selling a quality poster on its website here store.scmp.com/products/city-…

Thanks for reading. I'm not familiar with doing long threads, and maybe I messed up it

Steve Case --> @casegrafix