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Godzilla2014 — Godzilla Concept Art 2 WIP
Published: 2009-02-16 20:21:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 2146; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 94
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Description
This is the Work In Progress Concept Art of Godzilla. I haven't drawn his spines or hands yet, but it should give you a feel of what it is going to look like overall. To assist with the missing hands and spines, I'll describe them. The spines will look the GMK Godzilla's spines, but sharpened. The hands will look like a real theropod.Related content
Comments: 22
*Clears Throat*
You asked me to take a look at you Godzilla designs, correct? Well, I’ve finally returned to Deviantart, and I have.
I agree with Gregole, to a degree. The reasons have already been argued between the two of you, but the fact remains, the tripod stance works because it gives the sense of power and stability, things that modern Godzilla redesigns lack because they try to trade everything that makes Godzilla a giant monster in the first place for “realism“, he’s not an animal, he hasn’t been in a very long time.
Think of it this way, Godzilla was a dinosaur, once. He isn’t anymore, he’s been mutated so horribly and his genetic code has been damaged so irreparably by the radiation he’s become something else, something more. He’s a monster the likes of which the world hadn’t seen, it’s like a tadpole becoming a frog, or a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, but this is much more a perversion of that process. Yes, go with that, Godzilla is a perversion of the natural world, not an extension of it.
If you choose to ignore me, that’s fine, but you wanted me to take a look at the design, I have and I’ve stated my opinion.
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Awesome design. Much more dinosaurian than the original. Even though 2014 is a long way away, I'm looking forward to this.
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Alright, I see what you're going for here. A modernizd, non-cheesy take on Godzilla.
However, I'm going to have to point out the inherent flaws in this approach.
Godzilla is not a T-rex. He never was. From his very conception, he was an amalgam of several different dinosaurs, and trying to isolate any single one of them destroys his character. I assume that you want to preserve that character, so I would suggest making him less generic tyrannosaur. I would actually suggest taking a cue from Godzilla Neo, seeing as how that's a much more saurian take on him that actually still feels in character.
I'm also going to point out how turning him into a giant T-rex actually makes him more ridiculous than the original.
For all its goofiness, the classic Godzilla design is surprisingly plausible. It's bulky, bottom-heavy and has a huge, dragging tail to keep it balanced in its upright position. The head is small but mounted on a fairly long neck, so it can still see. The dorsal fins act the same as an elephant's ears, in channeling excess heat. It's not designed to be quick because it doesn't need to be quick. He preys on whales and smaller monsters, so he doesn't have to worry about running quickly, or even swimming all that quickly.
On the flip side, while Tyrannosaurus could indeed swim, it was VERY awkward. It could do so, but it probably wouldn't be very comfortable doing it. Its entire body would be prone and both its legs and tail would have to seriously exert themselves just to move at a decent pace.
Contrast this with Godzilla, who swims more like a lizard or a crocodile than anything. His legs already tuck below his torso, and his arms can be held reasonably out of the way. His small head gives him a triangular, bullet-shaped form he can use to swim.
Godzilla doesn't share any aspect of lifestyle with a T-rex, so modeling him after one really just makes him far more absurd than the original.
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He is however, in this universe, an amphibious descendant of one. Trust me he will have his brow, his spines, his charchoal grey alligator scales, his powerul arms with four-fingered hands, et cetera. They'll just be dinosaurian interpretations of them.
Your logic defending the classic posture is flawed. The hips wouldn't be able to take the pressure from all of the weight bearing directly down on them. It is far more ludicrous that dinosaur would look so much like a man. I really like the Toho Godzilla but the anthropomorphism puts people off. The idea is to modernize him, and more palatable to modern audiences who want realism. They look at Toho's Godzilla and laugh their asses off. So long as he is a man in a suit, they will never try to take him seriously. He needs to be able to evolve or the series will die. Even Toho themselves are moving away from that image.
He DOES have dorsal fins, but I can't draw them well. It's a work in progress.
Thank you for your critique.
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I assure you, my logic is not flawed.
True, those hips of his wouldn't be able to logically support his entire weight. However, the concept of making him look like a T-rex is even more flawed, because his legs would be supporting ALL of his weight, whereas the original had a heavy tail to rest on.
The legs of a tyrannosaurus are MUCH more fragile than the legs Godzilla displays. They're longer, thinner and far more precarious.
Frankly, people are stupid. Who cares if they laugh at suitanimation? Suitanimation is a far superior means of special effects than CGI, when it comes to humanoid or quasi-humanoid monsters. And having seen how Godzilla operates in a CGI media, I stand firm in my preference for a good, tangible costume.
I agree, Godzilla needs to be able to evolve. His STORIES need to evolve. As a monster, Godzilla's fine the way he is. His body shape is perfectly logical - or as logical as you're going to get with the series - and turning him into an oversized T-rex is about the least logical or realistic thing you could do to him.
Yes, even as he's built, Godzilla could never exist. However, he's at least built to be large, whereas a tyrannosaurus is already straining to be able to hold itself up. You can point out all sorts of reasons Godzilla couldn't work, but those same reasons all apply to an oversized T-rex tenfold.
If you want realism, you're going to have to do something besides change Godzilla's design. He's already at the peak of realism as far as the genre goes. What you need to do is update the story that goes with it.
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Godzilla does not put weight on his tail. Hell, in recent films he carries it off the ground. That arguement doesn't work.
The legs will be thicker than T. rex's.
If he has no new fans, the series cannot continue. I do not like being in a cult. Being the only Godzilla fan I know offline. Zilla is not a good demonstration of CGI, but I think G could look awesome in CGI by ILM. We fans are not chronologically immortal (yet). No group, whether it be a series' fanbase or a nation, can prosper by just saying, "Fuck all outsiders!" What if Toho said that. We would have to learn Japanese just to see the Godzilla damn movie.
I think both need to evolve.
He will be built to take his weight. This is mostly a preliminary sketch. I didn't have a reference for Godzilla while drawing.
I want to update the science, the story, and the monster himself. No more psuedo-science bullshit, or as little as possible, instead, using real science. I think he is closer to possible than most people think.
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Ok, if you're going to throw out the pseudo-science, and the cheese, and the suitanimation, and the Godzilla-ness, then what are you even doing in this fandom?
Those things are all crucial to the franchise.
Godzilla will NEVER be taken seriously, no matter what anyone does. And I'm glad for that. You can try to make him look more "realistic" to an uneducated, half-retarded layman, you can try your hardest to rely on hard science, and you can make him into a CGI monstrosity, but it's still going to be just as cheesy as the original, minus all the fun.
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What do you mean throwing out the Godzilla-ness? I am here because he is a metaphor for the atomic bomb. A man-made force of nature. We provoke his wrath as we hunt him, because of his size and power. "Monsters are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, that is their tragedy,"-the genious G54 director himself Ishiro Honda. I thought the original was a masterpiece and that wasn't cheesy. Even Steven Speilberg said it was the most masterful of all the dinosaur films he saw as a child, because it made you believe it was really happening. I call the Godzilla of the 70s films GINO. Different strokes for different folks.
How is psuedo-science crucial to the franchise?
You are acting like we are talking about Gamera (before Kaneko). This isn't Gamera, this is Godzilla.
Godzilla was taken seriously, then Toho lost their way in th 60s-70s and in the eyes of the public they haven't returned. I think that is because Toho insists that Americans want the silly superhero Godzilla, failing to try what they did with Japanese audiences that succeeded. I think we need to go back what the first film did: Make the audience believe that it is really happening. If he cannot, why?
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Uh, I dunno what movie you were watching, but the original was just as cheesy as any other entry in the series. Sure, it had a serious metaphor, and wasn't nearly as self-mocking, but it was as cheesy as any other.
If you wanna try and make a serious Godzilla, then that's your own damn business. But if you're going to act like the classic 60's and 70's Godzilla who almost every single one of us grew up with was a faux, insist on calling him GINO and act like we all want serious, non-cheesy movies, then you've got another thing coming.
For the record, the Heisei and most of the millenium films were every bit as stupid, shlocky and absurd as any of the other films. The difference was, they didn't acknowledge it, and wound up sucking all of the fun out of them.
No, Toho did NOT lose their way in the 60's and 70's, and the amount of pretensiousness you keep displaying when you say that is working my very last nerve.
You can TRY to make Godzilla serious. And who knows, if you REALLY know how to do it, you might be able to make it genuinely good. But you don't seem to want to acknowledge what defines Godzilla, and want to pretend the bulk of his legacy didn't exist, so I highly doubt you're going to be able to pull it off, unless you start looking at the grand scheme of it.
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How was the first film cheesy? Did its tone suck all the fun out of it, like the Heisei and Millenium series?
You're right, I went too far with the GINO comment. I also shouldn't have generalized about us fans wanting serious films. If you like the nearly self-aware campy style of the Showa series, that's your opinion.
OK, I can see I also went too far on the lost their way comment, Toho didn't lose their way in 60s and 70s. I guess it was an evolution of the series like I said, even though it was in a direction that I don't really care for.
I really wouldn't like to burn this bridge before I walk on it. I apologize for any nerve damage I might have caused.
I hope we can agree that ZILLA-style of faux serious, oppresively brainless movies suck and writers need to realize that we don't need any more of those dime-a-dozen films.
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For a guy who seems so gung-ho about liberating Godzilla from perceived stereotypes, you've been sucked into one yourself.
A common arguement made by those who use Godzilla's likeness in unauthorised products is that he's just an overgrown T. Rex, and therefore his design cannot be trademarked. Toho counters these often used claims by pointing out his specific features that define him as a unique character: his name, his roar, his theme music, his kangaroo posture, his jagged dorsal fins, his bumpy skin, his humanoid arms, his long beefy neck, his plantigrade feet, his puffy face, his furrowed brow, his little ear thingies. I disapprove of Toho's draconian methods of protecting their intellectual property, but I agree with the basic logic behind it; the more anatomically correct one tries to force Godzilla to be, the more generic he becomes.
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The arguement is bogus in the first place. That is like saying Hulk is not copyrightable(?) because he is an overgrown superstrong man in jeans.
Unfortunately, those are bogus arguements on Toho's behalf. The posture is an artifact of both old paleontology and suitmation, one they are trying to move away from. The plantigrade feet, the humanoid arms, the long, beefy neck are all artifacts of suitmation. Godzilla has not had external ears in as many films as he had them, and they look stupid anyway. The other stuff will be kept, but in more dinosaurian interpretations. He will still be Godzilla but it will just be modernized.
How are Toho's methods like a dragon's?
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dra·co·ni·an (drā-kō'nē-ən) Pronunciation Key
adj. Exceedingly harsh; very severe: a draconian legal code; draconian budget cuts.
Toho is well known for being very banal about defending their trademark. Just last year Toho threw a hissyfit over a monster in a subway commercial that looked only slightly like Godzilla.
The posture is an artifact of both old paleontology and suitmation, one they are trying to move away from.
Nope.
As far back as 1989, a special effects director tried to reinterpret Godzilla as an anatomically correct dinosaur, but Tomoyuki Tanaka (the man who *created* Godzilla) immediately put the kibosh on that, saying "Damn it, he's a monster!" It's been 20 years. Godzilla still walks upright.
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Yes, they need to loosen up.
Yes it is. "It's a monster" is a bullshit justification for laziness. Making him more anatomically correct does not make him look any less like a monster.
Are conceding on my points you didn't discuss?
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I still say, put some mammalian features in his head. Not ear, more like larger canines.
Maybe slightly longer arms.
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Interesting. You might want to beef up his arms a skosh, though. They're a bit too scrawny in my opinion - one thing that really set Godzilla aside from other theropods were his longer, stronger arms, which makes sense considering he's supposed to be amphibious. Other than that it's a pretty good take on a more modern Godzilla.
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Thanks for the comment. That's the beauty of being a work in progress, eh? I am trying to keep his arms from being too anthropomorphic. Is the length good? How would longer, stronger arms help him swim/be amphibious?
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Long stronger arms would help him swim by being stronger paddles. Given that Godzilla's tail has been shown to move up and down more often than side to side (although it does that as well), he probably swims more like a whale than a reptile or fish - that is, he undulates his spine up and down instead of side to side. Strong arms and legs are helpful to that style of movement because they can paddle. Creatures that swim with a side to side movement have either smaller arms and legs that can curl up against the body or fins instead.
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My Godzilla swims using horizontal undulation (like a crocodile). How do I make them look more muscular? I don't want them to look too anthropomorphic. How does this one compare to the first one?
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Well, if we're going for a more crocodilian swimming pattern, then they're just the right size - he's more likely to stow them away than use them during swimming.
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How much thicker do you think his arms should be?
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Twice as thick at the bicep/deltoid area, and 50% more thicker for everything below the elbow. It's a little exaggerated for a dinosaur, but Godzilla is a different species than any we've seen before.
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