Following the examples in the tutorial last week helped me to begin creating silhouettes for my own characters. This has identified the strengths and weaknesses more clearly.
Leonis (Hero)
Lingua (sidekick)
Vipera (Villain)
Some of these ideas are strong especially for the sidekick but it is clear the weakness lies in the costumes and props of the hero and villain so I aim to get more reference image to how my specific choices in costume should be worn and how another attempt at silhouette designs on Photo Shop to try another method of ideas.
Funny Games address's the rules of the torturer and the victim similarly to Scream. “A stylish, darkly satirical horror-thriller, raising serious questions about Hollywood’s sanitisation of violence.” (Wise, 2008) In the film, the characters Peter and Paul play a lot of mind games with the Farber family, which conveys to the audience that they have done this before and know how the situation should be played out. The cast in Scream also have a clear view of the rules of the victim and the stalker/ torture stereotypes. Funny Games addresses the 'torture porn' theme in a darker light because the tone becomes uncomfortable when Peter and Paul start killing off the family and looks as if the torturers are going to win. It emphasises the dark and the awkwardness that most horror films try to mask from the innocent audience.
Figure 1, (2007), The arrival ofPeter and Paul, everything seems normal
The characters of Peter and Paul are perfectly portrayed in this film as the nice friendly neighbours to the sick and twisted villains of the story. "Haneke's own film making doesn't miss a beat. If you saw the original, the elements of surprise may be missed but dread and suspense and nastiness are translated perfectly." (Rigg, 2008) Paul and Peter in the film are typical characters the audience love to hate because they play the torture porn roles successfully convincing the viewer that they have pulled their stunt off many times before and are therefore believable when they show their true nature. Their nastiness is realistic enough that the audience are praying that somehow the Farbers overcome them and regain the power lost when the torturers enter the house. However the director rewrites the classic rules of the victims triumph with the scene where Paul rewinds that point of Anna grabbing the gun and shoots Peter, this robs the audience of the outcome that wanted to see and puts the situation in Peter and Paul's favour. The director has deliberately written it this way to make the audience feel a certain horrific way towards the film.
Figure 2, (2008), Paul torturing Georgie
Another trick the director puts into the film is his choice to stage Paul to look at the camera at crucial points where the torturing almost becomes unbearable. "Haneke's minimal plot explains almost nothing about the family that we can't glean from their possessions and nothing about the sadists who toy with them except that this is neither the first time they've done this nor will it be the last. But as the situation escalates, the torturers occasionally address us, the audience, chastising us for any pleasure we might derive from the proceedings and provoking the question of why we remain in the theater." (Davis, 2008) This technique of stage direction envolves the audience into the story so that they are no longer just simply observing and it creates a level of interaction that the viewer recognises what will happen next the moment he looks up at the camera. The strongest evidence of this, is the moment Paul strolls up to Farber's friends home and uses the excuse of 'wanting the eggs' again. He puts on that fake nice person routine but the moment the friend exits the shot Paul looks at the audience again with the sinister glare and the viewer instantly knows that the whole game is about to be placed with this new victim and the torturers will get away with it. The film feels theatrical interms of shot direction and the inclusion of the audience indicates that we are right there in the twisted film and are not allowed any comfort from what they are witnessing.
Figure 3, (2009), Paul looks at screen in end scene
District 9 brings the theme of racial aggression to the surface. "...then District 9 opens the Pandora's box of systemic human cruelty so wide that the notion of one step forward, twelve steps back can certainly be applied." (Wegg, 2010) The film takes a lot of ideas from the history of racism in South Africa and the prejudice on Black people of that time. The director, Neill Blomkamp potrayed the white South Africans in the film to have a strong hatred towards the aliens because they are not willing to fully understand them as living forms and strike out in fear of thier advanced technology. The differences also causes the humans to keep the aliens in well guarded camps, out of sight to the public because they don't want them to mix.
Figure 1, (2009), Eviction of the aliens
In the film, the aliens are also preyed on for their advancements in technology and what their differences could offer to a high bidding coporation. "But despite it's sharp-edged, satirical social overtones, "District 9" is not a political soapbox. it's a rocking, rolling action drama about alien castaways that just want to go home, an evil corporation that wants to capitalize on them at any cost, and one man who freakishly gets caught in the middle." (Pond, 2009) This also relates to events from human history where rich Western cultures tore up Primitive tribes and profited on what they grew and made to sell to the mass market. This is represent in the film with a black gang culture buying off all the weapons from the aliens and consuming their body parts to understand how to use them to advance thier state of warefare. Towards the end of the film Wikus, who slowly converts into one of the aliens sets an example to retailate and the alien captives show the power of their weaponry. The viewer can now understand that the aliens can fight back to protect their exsistence and their right for freedom.
Figure 2, (2009), Alien Technology
The character Wikus van de Merwe plays a crucial role in the film, to start understanding the truth about the alien culture. "But something happens to poor, luckless Wikus (well played by actor Sharlto Copley), something to change his outlook on inter-species co-operation and respect." (Vance, 2011)
Wikus begins to feel distant from the alien creatures in the beginning but during his conversion of slowly turning into one of them, Wikus seeks a couple of the aliens to hope to cure his condition. Over the time spent inamoungst the aliens, they begin to trust Wikus and he in return protects them as they try to leave on the ship. He learns to respect them as living creatures and not as evil savages like the other human natives in the area. Wikus himself becomes involved in their ways of communicating and using their technology but they are also distant towards him at the beginning but when they see him fighting against the human coporation to come in and save Wikus from the soldiers who try and kill him. By the end of the film the aliens and Wikus trust each other, the audience recognises that the characters are now equals and their racist prejuidce has been forgotten.
I had a bit of experimentation in photoshop to try and produce some logo ideas for Studio Crawler.
I quite like the fifth design because it goes back to a previous idea of the electricity and I think the colour scheme works better.
@Sean and Dayle, let me know what you think about the designs so far and if you like the font choice because I have only experimented with one example that I found and I have five other fonts that I thought might work but figured this particular one might work well.
I have put together an influence map using the more updated inspirations of the one eye theme and the female wolf spider which was the original inspiration for the mother spider.
This was a very useful class because I learnt that the silhouette is crucial to read how a design will work anatomically and also tells us what that character is like. I can now apply these techniques to the characters I am designing.
To put this into practice, we were given a theme to produce characters from and we had to think of the hero, villain and sidekick and size. The height scale of individual characters gives a client the idea of which character has the most power and more about what the role of that character is.
My theme was Ninja
Our second task was to add more detail into costumes on characters, making decisions on the various folds and creases of how a character's clothes would fit and bulge. This consisted on simple lines to understand the weight caused by gravity and how they fitted.
I find Environment concepts harder to produce but I decided to try and the visualise the corridor at the pinnacle moment when the Spider's gaze causes a strong red light to occur from the ceiling vent. I decided to paint the space black and white so that the red light would be strong and show how it would cause an impact into the dark corridor. This has caused this concept to have a film noir feel, which was not my intention but I think it works to create an abandoned ghostly feel to represent that these characters are going back to an enviroment to how it was left in the past.
I took Justin's advice and picked my favourite design for each character and begin tweaking the original idea and started to develop ideas from it.
Vipera (Villain)
Lingua (Sidekick)
Leonis (Hero)
Obviously a lot more development and decisions have to be made but I like how these developments have made solve some problems and starting to think how the fantasy mutant mash will work for each specific character. I intend to make silhouette pages as this a quick and successful way to work out pose, body language and generally good for creature - like designs. I hope they help solve some of the problems with my drawing.
The style of this film and story is set to be a fairy - like musical that centres around the very obvious theme of love. "Christian and Satine often serenade each other, using snippets of modern day rock love ballads, which I guess is supposed to make this turn of the century romantic fable more relevant to the teenagers of the turn of this century." (Gonsalves, 2008) A lot of the songs are taken from other artists as a way to commute a more modern culture for an up to date audience so that they can relate to the story better. The songs create a familiar sense of fairy tale alongside all the theatrical sets and characters, the plot develops on the typical love story using the songs as a secret code for how Christian and Satine truly feel towards each other.
Figure 1, (2011), Christian and Satine
The director gives a lot of the story away through hints and how the story arcs with the show that Christian and performers of the Moulin Rouge use to disguise the truth. "We know the ending of Moulin Rogue! at the beginning. There is no need to stop and actually consider the developments or invest time in teasing the intricacies of the plot out... What is Moulin Rouge! about? Truth, beauty, freedom and above all love." (Kupo, 2010) There is not much for the viewer to wonder which way the story will turn because the viewers are experiencing a second similar story during the production Spectacular Spectacular, in the film in which the characters are stereotypes of the actual characters in the film, Christian is the poor guitar player, Satine is the courtesan and Duke is the Maharaja. It plays on the idea of how Christian can offer Satine truth and love, whereas Duke cast as the rich and powerful villain can offer her the world and her dreams of become a star. The film chooses the route that is inspired from classic love stories, of freedom, to break the boundaries that forces them apart. However, the end of the film has more of a Romeo and Juliet influence to visualise the consequences of Satine's decision as her illness kills her, it marks to the audience that actually they are not destined a happy ever after.
Figure 2, (2011), Cast of Moulin Rouge’s theatrical show ‘Spectacular’
Moulin Rouge also takes inspiration from Characters and stories of classic Disney fairy tales. "...or when Kylie Minogue appears spreading her magic dust as a Tinker-Bell-like fairy, one wants to applaud. But then almost every shot is as demanding of our appreciation and after a while of patting yourself on the back for 'getting' Moulin Rouge's many references, watching this breathless, over-excited film becomes wearisome." (Arroyo, 2001) The director of this film interweaves many stories happening at once, all taken from inspiration from character's stories to make their purpose in the film seem credible, Satine is similiar to Cinderella because the character has also been kept in the dark from true love and expected to carry out the tasks set by her master. Her meeting with Christian helps Satine to realise that she actually longs to be free of the lies and faked world she comes from.
Robert Wise has created this film to be B-Movie comical, adding all tricks such as the character Helen Benson falling into a pile of deck chairs, the first time she encounters Gort the robot. However there is also enough seriousness in the tone and theme of the film to be credited as a serious Science Fiction film. "Edward H North's intelligent script and Wise's smooth direction are serious without being solemn, while Bernard Herrmann's effectively alien-sounding score reinforces the atmosphere of strangeness and potential menace." (Time Out, 2006) The music does a lot of work to make the viewer believe the cast are in the presence of aliens as Klaatu is human - like in appearance so the decision was made to have the sound create the atmosphere and keep the tone to a science fiction genre. Wise's directing and staging of the characters also implies the seriousness of the situation and how humans would interact with violence to an alien presence they don't fully understand.
Figure 1, (2011), Klaatu and Bobby
Klaatu in the film tries to offer a peaceful solution to the way mankind behaves and doesn't want there violent nature spreading to other planets. This theme and metaphor links to America and their policy to supposedly make life better in third world countries. "Klaatu's scheme is the template for how the U.S. government prefers to envision it's own interventions (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq). Wise's thoughtful tidiness turns the idea of extraterrestrial extermination into a high minded debate,..." (Croce, 2009) The film reflects some of the behaviour of what America has done and is doing today in third world countries of trying to govern their own laws of the chaos of terrorists and dictators causing destruction that threatens to spread right across the world. Wise suggests this in his film as the human's primitive violence as a plague that threatens to spread across the universe because the 1950's was the time of atomic energy and space shuttle tests so Klaatu is acting to stop the tragedy before it starts.
Figure 2, (1999), Space ship Interior
One key aspect of the Science Fiction Genre is fear of advancement of technology, In Wise's film it is in the form of the robot Gort. "His giant mechanical assistant, which someone named Lock Martin animates, is also oddly unmenacing for all his grossness and his death-ray eye." (Crowther, 2003) Gort appears human - like in appearance to evoke the cheap budget costume that doesn't seem terrifying. The eye is the crucial part of Gort that creates the fear of an unknown being that could destroy the world and shatters the illusion of the human - like qualities on the surface. Wise decided on Gort shooting a bright laser beam to disintegrates anything in his path which helps the viewer identify that the aliens are much more advanced. The eye is also unnerving and captures a real sense of a robotic form trying to awkwardly look around it's environment. The interior of the ship is another indication with all the typical gadgetry the screams science fiction, the fact they are advanced in medicine and healing strengthens the theme that aliens are peaceful and not interested in war or domination.
