Re: For the artists: RIP

[Colin McHenry <cmchenry@westserv.net.au>]

They must have spent a fortune on this work.  I see two problems with it;

1. you need a huge team of artists to get everything right; a scupltor 
to get the initial shape of the animal, then various 3d digital artists 
to do the fine details, rendering, etc.  Then the thing has to be posed 
/ animated, and the background and lighting need to be worked out (plus 
whatever other critters are in the scene with the main subject).  In 
short, there are a lot of people in between the scientific information 
at the start and the art director at the finish.  It is inevitable that 
most of the people in that sequence will understand very little of the 
basics about what they are dealing with (for the sea monsters, apart 
from the basic anatomy, this means things such as; how animals move in 
water, how light behaves in water, that sort of thing)  So there will 
inevitably be lots of mistakes.

One the other hand, when you (as a palaeontologist) are working directly 
with one artist it's a lot easier to make sure that basic things that 
are going to make it look realistic don't fall through the gaps.

For example, one of the main problems with the animals in the NG spread 
is that they are all swimming around with their mouths open.  While it's 
ok (if a little repetative) to show a carnosaur showing off its dental 
work, for a marine animal this is a no-no.  You open the jaws on 
something like a pliosaur, and there's only going to be one result - the 
animal's going to come to a pretty rapid halt (that big maw makes a 
really effective water brake).   So 20 pages of close ups of various 
marine reptiles swimming around with their mouths wide open is, apart 
from being a tedious compositional cliche, just plain stupid.

With all those artists in the way, you also seem to lose the opportunity 
to correct small details - the whole process takes on a life of it's 
own.  So for example, the teeth in the Kronosaurus pic are all shining 
bright - my dentist would have been proud of those.  Even if the 
scientific consultant gets a chance to look at the images before they go 
to press, it is apparently too difficult to change small details like 
this using Nat Geo's new approach... :-(

2. For all the amazing resources they poured into this, I frankly (and 
this is just a personal, subjective, I-don't-like-that-sort-of-art type 
opinion) don't think the result looked that great.  For mine, the images 
lack life - they are very flat.  Compare this with the depth that Dan 
gets into his underwater stuff (yes, its ironic that the 2D techniques 
and the 3D techniques have opposed results...). 

I wonder if part of the problem was that the artists in this team didn't 
really know a lot about the medium they were potrayng - in the news 
article they mentioned that they wanted to start with a marine 
environment because most people looking at it wouldn't know enough to 
spot mistakes, but I think this approach may have backfired on them.  To 
me, it's very suggestive that the stand-out image in the feature is the 
ariel shot of the Shonisaurus pod - i.e. an image that is basically 
'terrestrial'.  Again, maybe it goes back to their 'cast of thousands' 
approach - when you've got one or two artists who 'own' the whole 
process, it's going to be in their interests to do everything they need 
to in order to get the result right.  If this means that they need to 
spend a couple of days at the sea-park watching the sea-lions swimming 
around to get a feel for how plesiosaurs move, then they'll do that.  
It's hard to imagine an animator in a graphics studio, who is only one 
cog in a huge chain and doesn't really feel much ownership of the 
project, and who has a number of jobs on their desk that they have to 
get done by Friday, going to the same lengths.  They might not even go 
as far as renting out the "Blue Planet".

I reckon they'd if they'd used people like Dan and John (to pull a 
couple of names out the air!) they'd have saved themselves a heap, got a 
better result, and given a couple of palaeoartists a decent lifestyle 
for a month or two....

My 2c.  I guess, like Jim with the Kong movie, I'd been looking forward 
to this for a while, and was underwhealmed by the artwork.  (As opposed 
to the content of the accompanying article, which just made me furious 
and profoundly depressed...)

And, just to get it off my chest, Dakosaurus ("pants lizard"?) is a pussy.

Cheers
Colin





John Conway wrote:

> Apparently bypassing us 2-dimensional digital artists entirely. What 
> ever happened to evolution?
>
> Punctuated equilibrium gone mad I say.
>
> Danvarner@aol.com wrote:
>
> > I guess us brush jockeys have  gone extinct, too.
> >
> > http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-12-13-national-geographic-digital_x. 
> >
> > htm
> >
> > DV