Our site 11 years ago
 

Do you know that first diagrams were black-and-white?

I've found in some old magazine drawings that may were taken from SsP.

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/9128/p0137.gif


Now we have thousands high-res pictures and shall have more!

I knew already that some black-white traced diagrams were inserted in past, but those outline wireframe diagrams of only black-white are not allowed or not desired to be done anymore. It must have a minimal of quality accuracy in colors. So nowadays they are not approved if submitted, because it is highly disencouraged to be done, cause low representativeness of the building, if it is not only a construction concrete frame phase during u/c or an unfinished remaining structure frame on-hold.

I do not believe also that those diagrams you got, were from SSP cause i made a research and considering the ones already active, not the deleted diagrams, those are the earliest ones this site has, you can check also if i am not wrong:

Marine Building | Vancouver | Canadá | Belongs to initiator the site: Dylan Leblanc | 1930 | 21 floors | office | 97.8m roof.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=1
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?buildingID=1
Building ID: #1 FIRST BUILDING ENTRY
Drawing ID: #84

One Wall Centre | Vancouver | Canadá | Belongs to the fellow Buck McAllister | 2001 | 48 floors | Mix Use | 157.7m Spire.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=3
http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?buildingID=3
Building ID: #3
Drawing ID: #1 THE FIRST DRAWING ALREADY ACTIVE IN SITE.

Below is the example an outlined diagram still remaining, from a famous building.
Trump International Hotel & Tower | Chicago | USA
Illustrator: Brian Towsend
Building ID: #16
Drawing ID: #1831
see: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?buildingID=16
Brian Towsend was illustrator 173 who did only 2 outlined buildings in black-white, here they are: http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?memberID=173
he was one of first illustrators and joined on January 2003, 6 years ago and 5 after the launch this site.

If those illustrations that you show from this magazine were earlier and older, it is really hard to know, maybe were already deleted cause quality, who knows. :shrug: or registrations of history this site's diagrams were not thought yet. Only 5 years after of 1998, on 2002, better registers started to happen to be followed.

Drawing deleted register started only on 19.12.2002 with Diagram The Chelsea by Dylan Leblanc Drawing ID #7401 Building ID# 7290, it was replaced from same illustrator with Drawing ID# 10898. It means the diagrams which were deleted from a total of 7400 and before of ID#7400, the earlier and most old ones, before this date are not registrated anymore. Anyway, maybe some of them are the ones on the pic you show, taken in 1998.

By the way those are the buildings of your pic:
1- (not recognised from me)
2- Moscow State University | Moscow | Russia | Built | Building ID # 182
3- Chrysler Building | New York | USA | Built | Building ID # 83
4- Empires States Bldg | New York | USA | Built | Building ID # 23
5- WTC | New York | USA | Destroyed | Buildings ID # 15 & 30
6- Sears Towers | Chicago | USA | Built | Building ID # 5 (One of oldest entries documented)
7- Petronas Towers | Kuala Lumpur | Malyasia | Built | Building ID # 22
(Exactly from 1998, so maybe this is probably a comparing of in 1998 about the most tallest famous buildings done in a historical line)

Damien Koh has a lot of his original outlines in his diagram still. Those are all about 10 years old?

Damien Koh http://skyscraperpage.com/members/profile/?4 is said to be registrated only on January 2003, but he is Illustrator ID #4, the number 4, and has most of its 321 diagrams already active black-white outlined with ID from the oldest one ID # 99, lowest number, until some drawing ID of about 600, this means very old ones from a range of 99 - 600. Its diagrams are still active and were not deleted, maybe 23% of his diagrams are the earliest ones outlined, 76 of 321. This means some conclusions:

1- On 2002 or 2003 had a big reformulation of SSP to have all been historic registered. So, maybe members still between 1997 - 2002 had their account reformulated again to fit in those today way of registrations and were kept.

2- He could be one of the oldest guys together the starting of this site because he is illustrator number 4. So probably he entered here before 2002 and maybe already in 1998. Site started on End of 1997, almost 12 years now.

3- Although most of his outlined black-white illustrations are still here, probably he is one who made that in greater quantity among the beginners, but his illustrations are found as the diagrams' buildings that Artemka 1998 old pic shows, according this link http://reach-for-the-sky.50megs.com/Tall.htm , but not already in SSP as active, among all of the 321 still today registered. If those illustrations belonged here to him, then probably were already deleted, replaced or has no register from them anymore. This reason could be that those illustrations are among the ones deleted before 2002 and not yet registered.

4- Although most building of the 1998 shown pic were drawn from him, only the building #2, the Moscow State University, is redrawn also by Damien Koh as building ID# 182 see http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=182 , 2 of the illustrations of this structure belong to him. So probably the oulined one showed in the pic could be yours, but maybe already replaced with one of those newer ones. Same way to do, but now coloured.

5- The illustration ID #99, the oldest outlined of him, still active, is this Building ID#101, an old one, Umeda Sky Building, see http://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?buildingID=101 a building built in 1993, 5 years before the SSP diagrams documentation. When this illustration was done, the building structure had already existed for at least 5 years.
As he had also made some outlined illustrations with touches of colors and he has made same building with 2 versions, an older outlined and a newer coloured and more detailed one, he probably replaced some of the most outlined of his illustrations with newer versions, a self-understanding development.

As conclusion: his most of old outlined illustrations, still here, could be from the time period between 1998 to 2002, at least 6 years ago and probably sure of aged 10 years old at least. But it could not be said that all are of at least 10 years old.

This Illustrator is one of the most historical ones.

Curiosity: Even the fact the site started in Canadá, suddenly a guy from the other side of world joined to it in a blitz short time, cause he is from Australia, a country of about 20 thousand km far away in south hemisphere, other the the north one. This shows how international this site is and internet made communications much faster since 1998, not to say about the evolution of 3D and Graphic Softwares, that implemented a lot the quality the drawings.
History: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...craperpage.com Imense work was done then since 23.11.1999, mainly at 2005 & 2007, when i entered the site like this layout: http://web.archive.org/web/200706151...raperpage.com/

First building in picture is an old Equitable in New York
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=45876

The majority of his drawings on this site are from before 2002.

Here's Damien's website. Different from the last time I looked at it about 3 years ago.

http://reach-for-the-sky.50megs.com/

Ah, I'm so pleased to see discussion over my old drawings!

I started drawing buildings in black-and-white outlines in paint in 1997. Around July 1998 I put them online. Around that time Dylan was putting together the database and saw my diagrams online. He asked me if I was interested in becoming one of the first contributors.

I agreed, and supplied diagrams. Around 2000 I began doing illustrations in colour. By 2002 I was starting to do vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator, but by this time, there were many other illustrators contributing.

The last diagram I drew and submitted was the Chelsea Building in Dubai, in 2006. I "retired" from drawing skyscrapers, instead working on a science fiction webcomic (which I still draw to this day) I do get to design skyscrapers for the comic though!

I remember looking at all of your drawings DamienK and i remember finding it interesting that you had black outlined drawings so I thought to myself "that's a good idea"... but lmich wouldn't except them ha. that was about a year ago

our site 10 years ago
 

one interesting site web.archive.org can take us to trip how SkyscraperPage were changing last 10 years since 1999.

http://web.archive.org/web/200009030...iles/title.gif http://web.archive.org/web/200009030...udoskyline.jpg

The old logo is better than the current one! :P

That was the logo when I first discovered this site. I forgot how many appearance changes this site has gone through.

I hope one day the gallery makes a comeback.

Nice site you found Artemka, is amazing to see all those records, on case of disaster we could re-built some of the database...

we do need a new logo..... check out my portfolio

Juice Creative

we do need a new logo..... I'd be happy to pro bono
check out my portfolio

Juice Creative

The very first SkyscraperPage diagrams were drawn at a scale of 5 feet = 1 pixel and buildings were arranged together in a static GIF image. About 50 buildings could fit on one image, and multiple image files were created to accomodate more buildings. This started in 1997.

When the diagrams became more popular they were increased in size to 1 meter = 1 pixel and the set of colour drawings I had created was merged with the black and white drawings done by Damien Koh that were featured on the WorldsTallest.com website.

Eventually so many buildings were drawn that it was becoming difficult to put hundreds of drawings into image files. A database system was then developed to allow drawings to be stored and displayed as individual image files, and searched and manipulated using database capabilities. The database system, which first went online in 2000, has continually developed to the system we have today.

The diagrams seen at the start of this thread posted by Artemka aren't actually original SkyscraperPage drawings. They may or may not be Damien Koh's drawings though. I do have some of the original diagram image files saved in an archive, which I hope to put back on display at some point.

Here's the old diagram! This is from 1999, when the diagrams were static images. Each image would have 30 to 50 buildings on it. This image
contains the tallest buildings. The scale is five feet per pixel. In 2000 we switched to a database system and to a metric scale.

http://skyscraperpage.com/gallery/im...2/1diagram.gif

^Pah! Sell that to Ikea. ;)

What a difference 11 years has made. Great to see the vintage stuff though.

If i remember correctly, the original diagram had 163 buildings in it?

It may have at one point. It started out with less than 100, and grew.