Godzilla: The Look/Appearance Speculation

[King Caesar]

this...

http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=godzill ... 4#/d1kowo6

Whoa-ho! Somebody's been eating at McDonald's lately.

[SaiyanRider54]

This would look awesome if it was colored grey/black.
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=godzilla&order=9&offset=216#/d2onpzd

[Tohosaurus]

This would look awesome if it was colored grey/black.
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=godzilla&order=9&offset=216#/d2onpzd

I have a feeling it won't be that popular, but I'm going to agree with you. I have that picture saved on my computer. I like it, but there are some changes I would make, minor though they may be:

1) Get rid of the extra spikes on his chin and the back of his jaw.
2) Change the green-on-blue color scheme to the appropriate grey.
3) I dislike the purple-grey looking thing on his chest too. Whatever that is, I'd have it be gone.

Otherwise I like the design. The head looks good. The overall form is powerful and solid but not overweight (not really a fan of the bulging arm muscles though). The spikes on his tail getting larger at the end help give credibility to him being a monster that can dwell in the ocean, being an intermediary dinosaur and all.

[Jomei]

If Godzilla is muscular like a Trendmasters figure, I'm going to be a little bothered.

[CatfaceFourtoes]

Simple Godzilla design

- Stands up-right, Yes i think he should.. I hate the fact of thinking of Godzilla like GINO all hunched over like a Raptor of T-Rex.
- Deep roar, much like Godzilla 1985 or Godzilla 1954, not all high pitched screeching like in GINO.
- Grey or blackish tent skin, to imply a burnt, rusted, an tortured animal...
- Thick Legs, an chest.. Godzilla does not need to be skinny or thin, it's a very bulky animal an has no need to run.. since it shouldn't be running from anything.
- 4 claws an 4 toes, it should not represent a T-Rex foot.. Should look like Stan W. design for the rejected 94 script.
- spines, pretty much like the early 90's series.. didn't care for the 2000 series where he had 1 giant one in the middle.
- Godzilla should stand 350 to 450 ft tall...

This is my opinion on how i think Godzilla should look.

I wholeheartedly agree, save for the height. It's hard enough already to suspend belief that Godzilla is that tall in the Japanese films, and some people have complained about how inconsistant the size of the Cloverfield monster seemed to be in the movie, so you know even CGI might be hampered if Godzilla's any much taller than he has already been depicted.

Personally, I like the more mammalian features on Godzilla's face. It adds a menace to the creature that bird or reptillian faces are rarely capable of. Compare a lion's face with a Komodo dragon's. The lion can contort it's facial features and show more of it's teeth, making it far more intimidating, even though a Komodo dragon is just as capable of maiming and killing you, heck, it can even break bones with its bite.

[Tyler]

If Godzilla is muscular like a Trendmasters figure, I'm going to be a little bothered.

I don't get when people give him muscles either.

And if it came down to it I'd rather a more Millennium look as opposed to Heisei.

[Tohosaurus]

I wholeheartedly agree, save for the height. It's hard enough already to suspend belief that Godzilla is that tall in the Japanese films, and some people have complained about how inconsistant the size of the Cloverfield monster seemed to be in the movie, so you know even CGI might be hampered if Godzilla's any much taller than he has already been depicted.

The issue with Godzilla being depicted as huge as he was has more to do with the miniatures and suit than its sheer height, I suspect. While in G54 they often shot at low angles which really helps the viewer get a sense of immensity, most later Godzilla movies often shoot Godzilla at mostly neutral angles. Being that it's a man in a suit, even the proportion of Godzilla to water and smoke are usually dead giveaways that Godzilla is not 50-100 meters tall. These are things that can be addressed, but I think there is proof here and there that CGI can help give us a good depiction of an enormous creature, at least big enough to suspend belief. Cloverfield and Kraken are two examples. You did mention people complaining about Cloverfield's size inconsistency. While I haven't personally heard complaints about it (not that I'm denying it), then that would point to the need to do a better job of depicting the size properly, not that its size cannot be properly depicted at all. JMO

Personally, I'm all for a 100+ meter Godzilla but I by no means would be displeased with a sub-100 meter Godzilla. As per the norm, I'm concerned with the quality rather than size.

[JoshK]

The size shifts of the Cloverfield monster didn't bother me, but the variations in the Emmerich film did.

I don't have an issue with CGI. But the better uses of CGI were often when the shots were framed like they were really and on set and being shot, whereas a lot of films these days have opened up the scope and have done some insanely impractical shots, that we subconsciously see as unnatural. We already know that these things aren't real, but if the shot doesn't feel natural, it usually comes across as a gimmick.

I always felt like the first Jurassic Park was good with its uses of CG, staging them to fit into the shots, not trying to fit the real shot into the effect.

Miniatures and costumes do have some set backs with scale. No matter what, you can't miniaturize water or smoke. And the movements of a suit are often confined how bulky and heavy it is. So personally, I'd go with motion capture. Or perhaps a man in suit, with enhancements made to the texture and facial expressions, to give it muscle movement.

[Cimmerian Dragon]

I always felt like the first Jurassic Park was good with its uses of CG, staging them to fit into the shots, not trying to fit the real shot into the effect.

You hit the nail on the head here. Spielberg was all about staging the scene in a down-to-earth way. Even his most stylish, virtuoso shots are laid out in a fairly restrained manner. We don't see the cameras swooping around like mad, but instead they grant us compositions that the human eye could, conceivably, have taken in had we been in the scene. This may be due in part to the fact that Spielberg was active during the era of practical miniature and photographic effects, when each effects shot had to be carefully controlled.

Now filmmakers have spent so much time in a world of almost pure animation, that they've forgotten how to look at a scene through the eyes of a man on-set. Even though they can use CGI effectively, they no longer have the memory of how it ought to be done. Limitations breed discipline and a careful eye, where near-limitless freedom can leave a director drunk on the sheer vastness of possibilities open to him.

[TokyoVigilante]

You hit the nail on the head here. Spielberg was all about staging the scene in a down-to-earth way. Even his most stylish, virtuoso shots are laid out in a fairly restrained manner. We don't see the cameras swooping around like mad, but instead they grant us compositions that the human eye could, conceivably, have taken in had we been in the scene. This may be due in part to the fact that Spielberg was active during the era of practical miniature and photographic effects, when each effects shot had to be carefully controlled.

Now filmmakers have spent so much time in a world of almost pure animation, that they've forgotten how to look at a scene through the eyes of a man on-set. Even though they can use CGI effectively, they no longer have the memory of how it ought to be done. Limitations breed discipline and a careful eye, where near-limitless freedom can leave a director drunk on the sheer vastness of possibilities open to him.

In film school, we've spent all of the first half of the semester working with old school manual film cameras with the idea being to force us to slow down and lean that discipline, since we literally have to pay for it if we screw it up! It's very refreshing and fun having to line up all our shots, check light meters and exposure instead of taking 200+ photos on digital cameras.

[ゴジラ]

I prefer a modern Gojira 1954 version with a few original aspects mixed into it.

Though from what I've read from Legion's post about the concept arts, it seems that LP are really drilling down deeply into the nuclear aspect of Godzilla's origin.
I do find the fission part to be very interesting, and would like to see it to be honest. Though the dorsal spines to be on "fire" doesn't sound all that promising.
But I'm a open minded kind of guy, If I had seen it, though I would properly judge it. Can't judge what haven't experienced.

[CatfaceFourtoes]

I wholeheartedly agree, save for the height. It's hard enough already to suspend belief that Godzilla is that tall in the Japanese films, and some people have complained about how inconsistant the size of the Cloverfield monster seemed to be in the movie, so you know even CGI might be hampered if Godzilla's any much taller than he has already been depicted.

The issue with Godzilla being depicted as huge as he was has more to do with the miniatures and suit than its sheer height, I suspect. While in G54 they often shot at low angles which really helps the viewer get a sense of immensity, most later Godzilla movies often shoot Godzilla at mostly neutral angles. Being that it's a man in a suit, even the proportion of Godzilla to water and smoke are usually dead giveaways that Godzilla is not 50-100 meters tall. These are things that can be addressed, but I think there is proof here and there that CGI can help give us a good depiction of an enormous creature, at least big enough to suspend belief. Cloverfield and Kraken are two examples. You did mention people complaining about Cloverfield's size inconsistency. While I haven't personally heard complaints about it (not that I'm denying it), then that would point to the need to do a better job of depicting the size properly, not that its size cannot be properly depicted at all. JMO

Personally, I'm all for a 100+ meter Godzilla but I by no means would be displeased with a sub-100 meter Godzilla. As per the norm, I'm concerned with the quality rather than size.

Supposedly the inconsistency in scale is between the helicopter shot of the monster reaching up toward the Helicopters POV hand smashing into the sky scraper and when Hud is filming from beneath it. I didn't notice, it just looked like the shot from 'Zilla 1998 where animal was looking up at an approaching Zilla from beneath and I did not make anything of it. And as for the use of suitmation and miniature sets, film makers could take shots of smoke and water and digitally graft them into the scene to bolster the idea of scale. If this can be done just for laughs, in The Nutty Professor, I don't see why Toho cannot acheive the same result with computer aided suitmation that Eddie Murphy did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9NIwHKBqy0

The suspension of belief in these shots can go toe to toe with the CGI used in Zilla '98 and Cloverfield, not to mention the bang up job they did with the CGI in "He's getting fatter" morph sequences. Sure, its a big fat Eddie murphy and not Godzilla, but the feeling of mass and speed at 1:35 seems perfect for a realistic. depiction of Godzilla running. Suitmation+Digital Effects FTW.

[shinmattiathekaiju]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9NIwHKBqy0

The suspension of belief in these shots can go toe to toe with the CGI used in Zilla '98 and Cloverfield, not to mention the bang up job they did with the CGI in "He's getting fatter" morph sequences. Sure, its a big fat Eddie murphy and not Godzilla, but the feeling of mass and speed at 1:35 seems perfect for a realistic. depiction of Godzilla running. Suitmation+Digital Effects FTW.

He looks like King Kong with titties.

[CatfaceFourtoes]

The fact that the statement is comedicly valid is testament that the visual effect pulled the scene off well. It actually looks like a giant Sherman Clump, on par in size to the Mr. Stay Puft. Both effects with suitmation were believably pulled of. The best part being that there isn't an animation flub in the motion reminding me that what I'm looking at is not real.

[TheSecondComing]

Stop laughing and pay attention.

It seems to me that in large part, you can tell how serious a Godzilla movie is going to be based on the number of toes Godzilla has. He started out having four in Gojira, then later in GRA, the Heisei series and much of the Millenium series. He had three toes starting in KKvsG and through the rest of the Showa series. So since the overall attitude of the movie can be determined by toe amounts, how many should Godzilla have?

I want a fun movie, so I think Godzilla should have 3 toes per foot.

[Blackout286]

Four Toes, started with them, why not continue on with that? Three toes kinda put me off somewhat, especially within the showa series. It just didn't seem right, it didn't annoy me, but it just felt off.

[DaddlerTheDalek]

I just say four Toes.

[MechaJahgeezilla]

OVER 9000!!!

Really, I want 4

[ゴジラ]

Stop laughing and pay attention.

It seems to me that in large part, you can tell how serious a Godzilla movie is going to be based on the number of toes Godzilla has. He started out having four in Gojira, then later in GRA, the Heisei series and much of the Millenium series. He had three toes starting in KKvsG and through the rest of the Showa series. So since the overall attitude of the movie can be determined by toe amounts, how many should Godzilla have?

I want a fun movie, so I think Godzilla should have 3 toes per foot.

So, wait.

The films in which Godzilla has three toes, then the films aren't serious? o,o I thought Godzilla vs. Hedorah was a serious film.

[FlamingZilla23]

Stop laughing and pay attention.

It seems to me that in large part, you can tell how serious a Godzilla movie is going to be based on the number of toes Godzilla has. He started out having four in Gojira, then later in GRA, the Heisei series and much of the Millenium series. He had three toes starting in KKvsG and through the rest of the Showa series. So since the overall attitude of the movie can be determined by toe amounts, how many should Godzilla have?

I want a fun movie, so I think Godzilla should have 3 toes per foot.

So, wait.

The films in which Godzilla has three toes, then the films aren't serious? o,o I thought Godzilla vs. Hedorah was a serious film.

at some points it's not very serious