For an article about a sunken fishing ship off the coast of the North Sea, I made a 3D model of the fisherman's ship UK-58 for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.
I built the 3D model based on old archival photos, architectural drawings, and descriptions from sailors who had sailed aboard the ship. The ship was animated in a short loop and labeled to show the sections of the ship that likely caused the accident.
The article featured the personal stories of several family members of the men who died on board the UK-58. The article begins with the story of the son of one of the fishermen, who was 5 years old at the time. At school the next week he was asked by his teacher to make a painting, and he spent the art period smearing black paint over the entire paper. He had kept the painting his whole life, and we show a photo of it in the article. I also designed an artistic impression of black paint in the introduction, which is smeared across the screen as the reader begins the story.
Photography Mark Rammers
The ship had been retrofitted with a new motor, new rails, and new fishing equipment (including the two large booms to hold the nets). This meant that I could use the original blueprints to build the 3D model for the very base of the ship, but the most important fishing section of the ship needed to be built relying on other sources.
For historical context, I also made a map of every known shipwreck in the North Sea area, highlighting similar Dutch ships that had also sunk nearby. The black shipwrecks highlighted in the map are fishing ships.
Using the 3D model, I also made small mini icons of the ship to accompany the story as an illustration above every chapter. The story also featured a "live listening" function which allowed readers to switch between reading and listening to the author reading the story aloud. The development of this feature and the visual design for the article was done by Adriaan van der Ploeg and Martijn Eerens.
