Thursday 23 October 2014

King Kong

King Kong (1933)

King Kong is about a giant ape that lives on a mysterious island alone with other creatures. This giant ape is like a god to the tribe that live on the island. The tribe people are an uncivilized group of people that are protected by a giant wall. A film maker called Carl Denham buys a map to the island, where he wants to film a new movie. He hires a woman actor called Ann Darrow to play the main part. Once they get to the island they go ashore and see the tribe doing a ritual for Kong. The tribe notices them and Ann. the chief of the tribe offers a trade for Ann so they can offer her to Kong.  Carl Denham says no to the chief and he back to the ship. Ann and Carl's friend Jack Driscoll fall in love. Ann is then kidnapped by the tribe and offered to Kong. Kong takes Ann into the jungle. Carl and the crew then go after her to get her back. this leads to them being attacked by all different types of creatures before they get her back. during this time where they are trying to found her Kong fall in love with Ann. once Jack finds her and bring her back to the tribes location Kong follows and this is where Carl knocks Kong out with gas and brings him but to the US. Carl puts Kong in chains and show him off to the world, but when the press start to take pictures of Kong he flips out and breaks free. Kong finds Ann and takes her to the top off the empire state building where he is then shot down by spitfires. 




Figure 1: Film poster of King Kong (1933)

King Kong (1933) directed by "Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B.Shoedsack" is a well know film with iconic moments through out the movie. These memorable moments include Ann being taken my Kong, Kong fighting the T-Rex and Kong on top of the Empire State Building. The iconic moment of King Kong on top of the Empire State Building is shown in Figure 1. 

  
Figure 2: Ann being taken by Kong

This is the iconic moment where Ann is taken by Kong and she screams, because of this part the person who played Ann was nicknamed the Scream Queen. During this scene the tribe were shown to be like savages and undeveloped with their rituals. Figure 2 shows the moment when Ann is kidnapped by King Kong.

Figure 3: Kong chained up on stage

"King Kong represents the American black, a creature who is taken forcibly from his homeland to America where he is exploited in chains but then breaks free and conquers New York." This is said because during the time the film was made, segregation was present in the United States, keeping African Americans and White Caucasians separate. This created a fear within the white race about African Americans still being like animal-like and savage. 



Illustration List

Figure 1 :  http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FKing_Kong_(1933_film)&h=0&w=0&tbnid=mKqPm6jFKV-XqM&zoom=1&tbnh=320&tbnw=157&docid=AX0ezleQ0VmYeM&tbm=isch&ei=6XpJVOkbqq7uBoPDgbAJ&ved=0CAQQsCUoAA

Figure 2: http://cinemavortex.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/kk-ss03.jpg?w=600&h=451

Figure 3: http://jojo610.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/king-kong-1933-review.html

Figure 4: 


Bibliography

Nigel Honeybone (2010): http://horrornews.net/5051/film-review-king-kong-1933/







CD cover


one, two and three point perspective





main influence map


Octavia final concept art




Octavia third concept art




My interior shot

Octavia second concept art


second concept art of Octavia in colour.

Octavia second concept art



Second concept art in black and white

Octavia

Added some noise to the image.

Octavia

this will be my first final concept.

Octavia

took it back in to black and white and added some more detail to the buildings.

Octavia


My first go of Octavia.
 

slight help with my view


As I am terrible with perspective drawing i made a real basic maya city to help me with the layout and perspective.

who's who (Mike Sebalj)

https://www.scribd.com/doc/244094879/Mike-Sebalj

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Monday 13 October 2014

Detail Octavia Thumbnail.

More detailed thumbnails of Octavia, with a layout of the city building in a sort of spider web design. Also a few thumbnails of how I might  hold up the base of the city.

Scene modeling


render with Maya software and also with mental ray just to see how it would look with basic lighting.

Friday 10 October 2014

Character modeling

from the character modeling video.

ball animation (1st)

My first animation of a basic ball bouncing. I will redo some of the pages to make the tennis ball have the same size shapes at the right points.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

https://www.scribd.com/doc/242334489/Green-Light-Review-invisible-cities

Influence maps

My exterior influence map. Images taken from Assassin's Creed, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tomb Raider and some cities.

 

My interior influence map is composed of abandoned house and wooden cabins.



The city i have chosen.

After doing a few of the cities, I stopped as I produced a few thumbnails that looked the most interesting for the city Octavia. I think Octavia stood out to me from the point I read the source material. "the spider-web city" "the city is over the void," and "suspended over the abyss" these were the quotes that jumped out at me while I was reading.

These were my orignal thumbnails I done for Octavia which I thought I lost, but re-found.


After doing these basic thumbnails I moved onto doing these thumbnails which were a little bit better then the first lot I did.

Once finishing these thumbnails I wanted to develop them a little, so i did some more detailed sketches of Octavia.

So far I have done one developed thumbnail and two different colour comps of that more detailed thumbnail.























Tuesday 7 October 2014

Film review of Metropolis

Metropolis was created in 1927 and directed by Fritz Lang. The original 1927 showing lasted for a totally two hours and 33 minutes, but since then that copy of the film has been lost. Because of this, in 2002 they got together all the film bits they could find and recreated the film. With the bits they were missing they used a black screen with writing to tell you what would be happening during that scene. This version of the film lasted just short of two hours but later on in 2010 more clips were found and made the film last a total of two hours and 28 minutes.

Metropolis is a film about upper class citizens who own the city of Metropolis and lower class citizens who make it run by working at its machines. The plot of this film is that there is a ruler of Metropolis called Joh Fredersen who is a mean and ruthless man. He's son Freder is not like him, he is more caring then his father. These upper class type of citizens live in the upper level of Metropolis, where as the lower class citizens live underground in the level just above the machine rooms where they work. 

Within the lower class there is a woman called Maria. Maria helps give hope to the lower class citizens by saying "between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart". Freder meets Maria and instantly falls for her. He follows her down into the machine level. The story goes on a bit with Freder trying to find her and seeing an accident happen within the workers. A piece of paper is found on one of the workers who was hurt and is taken to Joh. Joh gets annoyed that this has been bought to his attention by the head floor man and not his right hand man, so he fires his right hand man who then tries to kill himself, but Freder stops him. 

There's a crazy scientist who loved Freder's mother before she died and he's been trying to find a way to get her back from the dead. He builds a robot that he will make to look like Freder's mother. As the story progress' on Joh finds out about Maria and dosent like the fact that the workers listen to her. Joh tries to destroy her by getting the scientist to make the robot to look like Maria. With the robot looking like her Joh thinks the scientist has given him control over the robot but really the robot is still listening to its maker. Later on in the story, Freder finds out that this Maria is not the real one and that she is trying to stir up a rebellion. 

After the workers listen to the robot Maria and stop working at the machines, their home level is flooded and all their homes are destroyed. The workers soon realise what they have done and that she is evil, they burn her at the stake. This is where they see her turn from the Maria they see back to her robot form. At the end Maria tells Freder that he is the mediator, Jon is the mind and the works are the hands. Freder takes his father's hand and the hand off the head floor man and says they can work together.

This film was a great show of what could be done during 1927 within film. Even to this day the ideas and iconic scenes of this film still help progress other sci-fi films. This is proven within the film Star Wars as the whole of this film is basically a mirror of Metropolis. (Young, Aug 18, 2014) "The thematic thesis of Metropolis is also mirrored in the entire Star Wars saga. The people and machines are the hands of society, and the upper-class serves as the mind in the equation. Unless there is a mediator of both worlds to provide the heart, tyranny ensues." Although this is an old film, the hierarchy that is protruded in this film is still happening in the modern day, yet the modern day hierarchy is not so bad. There is still such a thing as "classes" and these are protruded in every day life and situations.

bibliography:

Young, B. (2014) The Cinema Behind Star Wars: Metropolis. At http://www.starwars.com/news/the-cinema-behind-star-wars-metropolis


Monday 6 October 2014