His book “The Metropolis of Tomorrow” served as the drawn out scenarios for various movies including Batman and its Gotham city. His drawings became the icon of the vertical city, futuristic and high. His perspective urban scenes are impressive even today, he created images of a world that was yet to be built and developed a personal style of illustrations with monumental scale. Countless drawings serve as proof of his creativity, through the application of charcoal on paper he was able to create incredible monochromatic effects, with a strong emphasis on light and shadows, usually dominated by masses of strong architectural lines. His environments often took place in dark, dreamy and often foggy conditions, which is a clear influence of photography and films of the time.
https://arc90274.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/17bb6-hugh_ferris-metropolis_babel.jpg
http://newsfeed.kosmograd.com/images/ferriss_01.jpg
“He draws in charcoal, an imprecise, impressionistic medium that relies on the suggestiveness of planes and the manipulation of what they are, essentially, smudges. By using the one medium incapable of depicting the eclectic surface trivia, Ferriss´drawings strip as much as render. With each representation he liberates an honest building from under surface excess” Rem Koolhaas, 1994, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, p.113, New York, The Monacelli Press.
from the ground up 
