I need a few answers from a pro concept artist
polycounter lvl 18
As part of my film studies, I'm working on a written essay about monsters in movies and other media.
I'm trying to find out if monsters need anthropomorphous (human-like visual cues) in order to be threatening or if anything goes as long as it's done well basically.
while I appreciate any thoughts, for a research, I need the thoughts of a professional, just a few answers - it would take you around 10 minutes at the most I figure. I'd also need your name and where you work for refernce though (not that you'd get asked anything just having a name I can quote).
If you might know one who'd sacrifice a few minutes for me (I'd be eternally grateful) or are a professional concept artist that ever had to work on monsters and think a bit about the subject, please drop me a line.I'd also be happy for a link as to where some potential "victims" might be.
Like i said, while I know many nonprofessionals are awesome talents and their opinion is just as much worth of quoting as that of someone in the industry, I'm not sure if this would fly with the people who will review my paper...
Thank you for reading!
I'm trying to find out if monsters need anthropomorphous (human-like visual cues) in order to be threatening or if anything goes as long as it's done well basically.
while I appreciate any thoughts, for a research, I need the thoughts of a professional, just a few answers - it would take you around 10 minutes at the most I figure. I'd also need your name and where you work for refernce though (not that you'd get asked anything just having a name I can quote).
If you might know one who'd sacrifice a few minutes for me (I'd be eternally grateful) or are a professional concept artist that ever had to work on monsters and think a bit about the subject, please drop me a line.I'd also be happy for a link as to where some potential "victims" might be.
Like i said, while I know many nonprofessionals are awesome talents and their opinion is just as much worth of quoting as that of someone in the industry, I'm not sure if this would fly with the people who will review my paper...
Thank you for reading!
Replies
As we work on a more or less realistic title at the moment I dont have much to do with monsters right now. However, as artist I can say that nor anthropomorhpous nor the opposite is "needed" to create a threating look.
I think there is always refrence needed in order to create a believable "realsitic" look if you create a character. The viewer should be able to refelect and refrence to him. Same goes for a monster in a way. What I want to say is, that the more the viewer understands the character and its world, past and predictability, the more vibrant the environment is arround him the more can the director pull of a threating moment, with or without "monster".
I like to bring up a few well done examples:
Aliens. Yes very obvious, but it worked. H.R. made a good effort in creating a world around the aliens. He used more or less known things and mixed them well together. The kind of insectoid, metal work, perverted look with the colors and design of the environemts, both of the alien planet and on the ship) work very well together and give a away the claustrophobic feeling Ridley Scott intended.
Zombie, Zombine from Half Life 2. The player understand immediatly that these zombie were more or less ordinary people that turned into zombies by the headcrabs, creatures of the living world of xen, yada yada yada. They added a more robust model to the zombies to its predecessor and a interaction with the environment (thowing crates and shit).
Valve created a breathing world around these zombies and made them highly believable in it. I think they are quite threatening and placed well in terms of the level design (Ravenholm aka Traptown).
I went abroad a bit i know...
my 2 cents..
i think anthropomorphic qualities can lend a certain creepiness to a monster, like the typical grey alien, or yes, giger's alien. while it's not that simple, because there's alot of creepy qualities to giger's alien, i think it derives alot of it's creepiness from it's anthropomorphic features.
anyway, might try posting your subject here as well if you haven't done so already: www.conceptart.org
I ment to ask if anthropomorphous creatures are the most fear-inducing in general - much more than human monsters (Lecter, Torrance, Bates, you know examples) or inhuman monsters (big bugs, blob, King Kong and so on).
As a kid I saw many horror movies, I was really curious and wanted to know them all despite having problems at night because of them and being afraid - and I was afraid of the anthropomorphic monsters (Xenomorph, Brundlefly and so on) almost exclusively - hence I want to see if this is a normal trend or not. (Watching horror-movies as a kid and "enjoying" the fear/thrill actually is)
And while I certainly agree with shimmer's statement about the monster needing proper cinematography around it (like sets, acting, sound effects and so on) and that these things are probably the main contributor as to why any monster is even scary in a movie and not what type of monster it is, I do believe that there must be come trend. I.e., did you know that the least monsters are normal humans in horror movies? While, if we define villains as monsters, they are the biggest group in general cinema? I'm looking forward to my survey to see if people are more or less afraid of human monsters.
And thank you for the link!
And wasn't the ant a good guy who even died for the kids? :P
but on further thought, i guess i'd have to agree with you. insects or insect-like creatures definitely make it a close race, arichniphobia is the best example i can think of, and tying the two together(giger) seems to produce the most chilling effect. but yeah, in general, i'd say most of the monsters i was afraid of were anthropomorphic. to humiliate myself again, i was scared as fuck of e.t. when i was a kid despite him being a friendly creature.
My point is mainly about the back and forth, interaction, reference and reflection, conscious or subconscious, that the viewer has to have in order to create some sort of connection to the monster. From there you can evolve.... I think of the overall silhouette of the aliens from hr giger. Human esque body but long phallic head.
Zombie, Zombine from Half Life 2. The player understand immediatly that these zombie were more or less ordinary people that turned into zombies by the headcrabs, creatures of the living world of xen, yada yada yada. They added a more robust model to the zombies to its predecessor and a interaction with the environment (thowing crates and shit).
Valve created a breathing world around these zombies and made them highly believable in it. I think they are quite threatening and placed well in terms of the level design (Ravenholm aka Traptown).
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HL2 'zombies' are a terrible visual example. Every zombie had a labcoat. The audio cues, and the level design were the major factor there. Along with the startling surprise when one attacked you. I could make a grandmother look threatening with the right audio and have her chasing you around the level beating you with a walker. You could do the same with a shopping cart in a parking lot. No human features at all, but if it is somehow following the player, and trying to bump into him, it becomes creepy since the human mind has to try to reason out why it's attacking, in this case most would assume it's posseded. So I disagree that human/animal features are needed. 'Referencing' with something makes it easy to sort out, scary is defined by what your brain cant grasp as normal. You'd be better not referencing anything for fear. Aliens worked well because nothing at the time was anywhere close in design, it only connected to humans as the host, the host to the chest bursting etc. But to look at an alien by itself if you had never seen one before would'nt really be scary.
Motion is also a big cue, anything abnormal. Take the ring's final scene for example, the crawling combined with the body contorted in positions it's not normally in. The stair scene from the grudge etc. Anything moving in a way nature does'nt intend the brain will pick out as odd, and when the brain tries to analyse it and make sense of it, only to see a dead girl, it's startling.
It's about the situation and environment more than the character. Take Nosferatu, simple kinad silly now-a-days design, but the premise while watching the movie is still quite creepy. 2 cents.
1)gigers alien
2)the t-1000
3)the tetsuo BLOB at the end of akira
... and ... i guess they all qualify as anthropomorphous tetsuo being border line.
in general everything unstoppable apocalyptic everything that grows/expands/reproduces at a high rate frightens me
Basically, things are at their most terrifying/disgusting/etc when they are sorta human, but not quite.
Look at the general "scary" things you have in film and popular culture. Aliens, zombies, vampires, werewolves, mutants, and many other humanoid monsters are in the uncanny valley: Close, but no cigar. To us this makes them freaky, and we'd piss ourselves if we saw them in real life and not on the screen.
And it applies to non-humanoid things as well. Pretty much all monsters are regular things that are perverted to the point where they fall inside the uncanny valley. The regular twisted so that it illicits a negative response, stuck in limbo between what is familiar to us.