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Reconceptualizing a 1950's movie monster

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#1

Hi all!,

Here’s a project from a recent class I took where we were randomly assigned a “classic” monster from movies ranging from the 1920’s to the 1980s. We had the option of either doing a recreation of the original monster as one might for a figurine or we could opt to do a redesign and build that. I ended up with the MetaLuna Mutant From the 1955 Unversal film “This Island Earth” and after watching the film decided I’d like to try coming up with a new approach based on the technology we have now. Here’s the original picture (I hope I put all the necessary attributions for copyright etc. I believe the image was a promotional photo by Universal) and then the resculpt I came up with from watching the film and then kicking around how a modern “update” of the film might work.Let me know what you think.

Johannes

Metaluna-Mutant_original.jpg

Attachments

Metaluna_Mutant-Reimagine_1.jpg

Metaluna_Mutant-Reimagine_2.jpg

#2

Wonderful job mate!

#3

It looks pretty good. The only thing I would suggest is to etch in some more tiny surface details throughout. :slight_smile: :+1:

#4

Interesting. Can we see a head closeup too? I like the body and how slick and yet disgusting it appears. Mutants and monsters usually seem over done here- but I think this guy has promise.

#5

Hi!,

Here are some renders of the MetaLuna Mutant rework’s head. I ended up having to hide the rest of the body so I could run up the head area to full-res, but hopefully it looks ok. The one thing I definitely need to do if I’m going to expand on this model is to retopologize things so that the poly count doesn’t get so high - having a critter with 6 appendages and a long body definitely balloons the polycount quite quickly. I think that in the future the best way to do this kind of mix of organic and hard surface might be to do a retopologizing once one has the rough position of all the hard surfaces and then yank them into their own sub-tool and then treat the organic parts as a seperate tool so that one can get clean edges between organic and inorganic (I did this with the head but the tosro and legs are each just one piece each with a resulting waste of polys). Oh well, live and learn…

Johannes
MetaLuna_Head_detail.jpg

#6

Pretty sweet. If you need a critique (and I’m saying that, because I’m not sure you do) the brain could use some attention. Currently it looks like bumpy mass and not brain tissue- I would suggest you look at your photos of brain matter and the original photo- see if you can find what might be missing.

BTW- I think you hit why I like this work- this mix of organic and inorganic makes it stand out compared to most Zbrush monsters.

#7

Nice, creepy, alien spider-like redesign. I have too agree about the crit on the brain matter, but the rest of the design is working for me.

#8

nice

#9

Very good style; i love it:D

#10

Hi all!,

Thanks for all the kind comments. I think you all have hit on something with the brain needing further work. As it stands I ran into some severe poly count limits, so I’ll have to retopologize and then use the projection brush to get a more efficient model, but I agree that reworking the brain could really improve the model. The other thing that I thought of after reading the critiques (very appreciated by the way! :slight_smile: ) would be to put in some of the big “feeder” arteries that, in humans, supply the blood to the brain and maybe use that and the improved tertiary form of the brain to help “anchor” the design in reality a bit better (I’m debating between either sculpting them into the head subtool, doing either a “convert to main” trick with z spheres or trying a mesh-extract from the tool menu. Decisions, decisions…)

Again, thanks for all the help, everyone!

Johannes

#11

just a suggestion…
what about some heavy elephant/bug like eyelids?
:slight_smile:

#12

very clean and professional

#13

Stunning! :+1: :grimacing: :+1:

#14

Wow. Great character. Huge difference from the old pic. I’m curious…Why didn’t you extract the hard edged surfaces off the body?

#15

It’s a huge difference between the two alright and I guess many die-hard fans wont like it.

I however do like the reconceptionalization a whole lot better! Why, much more alien, less human and less bound to fx-makup and prosthetics limits of the olden times!:smiley:

Great work!

When’s the next update?

#16

What a great project.

This reminds me a lot of the creature from the updated film Lost In Space.

I haven’t watch This Island Earth since I was a kid, but I like your redesign. It’s just that the huge brain is such a trademark for that film. It’s like redesigning the Death Star, and removing the death ray. I think it would better with a huge detailed realistic looking brain.