Alrighty. So I’ve all but decided on the Fight idea for my thesis. As I said in class, it’s more visually dynamic, and frankly just a better idea for a thesis (and to be honest, I’m downright giddy at the idea of seeing it on The Big Screen at the end of May). Plus, it’s less work than modeling six full characters for the Montage idea.

Now, the Fight idea’s most obvious inspiration is obviously (since I mentioned it last week) Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. I love the idea of messing with an audience by leading them one direction then quickly jolting them in an other. Larry the Cable Guy has perfected that style of joke (like the one that begins “I went in for a check-up the other day…” and he goes on to describe a proctology exam in detail, and just when you think you know where the punchline is going, he hits you with “That was the worst trip to the dentist I ever had.”). That’s the most obvious influence.

There are many different aspects to my thesis, so I’m looking in very different places.

---For the idea of a Man facing a Giant, I’m looking at scenes from

The Incredibles, where Mr. Incredible fights the giant robot on the island,

Ghostbusters, where the guys first see the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man, and

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, where Gandalf faces Balrog.

---For the idea of a Man fighting a creature he doesn’t think he can beat, I’m looking at various scenes from Jaws, The Ghost and The Darkness, Tremors, Predator, and Hellboy. Now my character knows he can beat the robot, but I might take something from these to nudge the audience further into the belief that he can’t win.

---For the idea of a showdown between the two, I was thinking an old west, center of town type of showdown, as I said in class. For that, I’ve gone to my Western section of DVDs. Specifically, I’m looking at Tombstone, Unforgiven, and the Man With No Name series (A Fistfull of Dynamite, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and High Plains Drifter). Off the top of my head, I know there are amazing showdowns in For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Now I’m obviously not going to use all of these as reference. I just wanted to give you guys a heads up as to where I’m bouncing ideas around in. If you have any suggestions for something I should check out, please let me know. I’m just going with the DVDs I own that I can use.

For the style of the characters, I created them myself, so the artistic style will be my own. But my influences as far as comic book artists go are easily Mark Bagely, John Cassaday, Howard Porter, Jim Lee, Michael Turner, and especially Frank Miller. You can’t read comics today without being inspired by Frank Miller. Over the next few weeks, I’ll try and find specific panels of theirs that inspired me, but for now, I’ll just post my initial sketches of my Ice/Electric Man, that I drew over the summer, having no idea I’d use him in my thesis.

Below are my sketches, as well as my properly spaced out Thesis Idea.

Thesis Idea:

This would be a 3D animation showing a face-off and fight between 2 characters as another looks on.

Thesis Summary:

In a 1 – 2 minute 3D animation, focusing on modeling, I would have two characters square off and engage in what could barely be called a fight. The environment would be a simple city street, with buildings on all sides, with the street looking like a capital ‘I’. The villain would be a giant creature, possibly a robot (or revealed to be a robot). The hero would, instead of engaging in a long, dangerous fight, simply use his powers of ice and electricity to destroy the villain in one swift movement. The villain’s mad scientist creator would be watching intently from a dark lab. The animation would be similar in theme to the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when a swordsman shows his skills with a sword to Indy, and the audience expects a fight to break out, but Indy simply pulls his gun and shoots the swordsman.

Narrative:

The animation begins with a shot of the hero’s legs hitting the street, as if he just landed on the street from a building rooftop. He would stand and look ahead at his giant opponent. The camera would then circle around the villain, from his feet to his head, finally going inside the villains head to his Point-Of-View, which would transition to the view of a computer monitor watched by the mad scientist. The villain would let out a Godzilla-like roar, and our hero would look down, smirk then look back up at the villain as his eyes frost over, with an electric glow behind them. Our hero would then quickly raise his hand to the villain, as a steady beam of ice launches out, and pierces the shoulder of the villain. Electricity would then channel through the ice, destroying the villain who then falls to the ground. The hero would nod, as the last shot is the villain, on his knees, pounding his hand in depressed frustration.

Sketches:

Head: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~swr227/ice001.jpg

Costume: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~swr227/ice002.jpg