Zombie Cliche Lookout: Variable Zombie Awareness
I’ve long maintained that zombies are great monsters because of their ability to adapt to a number of different situations. Vampires are cool and all, but they’re only scary in certain situations. Werewolves? Same deal. Swamp Creatures? They only really work within a certain radius of a swamp. Get away from the wetlands, and Swamp Creatures are no longer terribly effective at creating terror. Because honestly, what’s the Swamp Man doing in Las Vegas?
Zombies work because they’re us. Anywhere you see people, you’re going to see zeds come the zombie apocalypse. They’re inescapable. They don’t have any special power, except perhaps their inability to get tired or discouraged. Despite this lack of ability compared to other traditional monsters, they’re able to mount quite a body count in no time. All that being said, the efficacy of zombies as threats, the demands of the narrative also puts constraints on their ability. When a character needs to accomplish something to push the plot forward, the zeds aren’t going to bring their A Game.
About this Episode:
These outside episodes are always tougher to shoot because I simply don’t have a large enough area built up to give me as many options on camera angles. Directly behind that house? Just a big black sheet. I don’t like that sheet to show in my photos, and try my damnedest to make sure it doesn’t. Despite that, it’ll still pop in here and there.
Discussion Question: Best Monsters
Here’s a quick, easy one for you guys. Not counting zombies, what is your favorite monster, and why? I just love monsters. I love seeing all the different creative designs that writers and artists come up with. I l love seeing all the different abilities and weaknesses they exhibit. Monsters are just a ton of fun.
Typo alerts: “Swamp Creatures a no longer terribly effective” a–>are
“what’s the Swamp Man doing Las Vegas” should that be “doing in Las Vegas”?
Fixed both. A lot of swamp creature-based typos today.
Hmm, I don’t really mind seeing blank areas pop up now and then in a scene, although if it bothers you that much, simply photoshop in a baseplate background or coddle together a wall of mountain BURPs. Personally, I favor trying to set up at least a 32 high or standard height LEGO baseplate wall or the equivalent in bricks for scenes to fade out to. The reasoning behind doing so is very simple: Most, if not all, of the time one is looking to get camera angles that are either pointing down or looking at your minifigs from a near horizontal angle.
The bigger the scene actually is, the bigger the wall will have to be, you can actually work this to your advantage here: Simply cap the distance the background fades out at to whatever suits your photography best. If any of it is too gaudy or bright looking when editing, simply use a blur, darken, or fade operation to take a little at a time out of the background until it looks normal. 😀
As for making that wall, well that is equally simple: Use of headlight bricks or other right-angled bricks means simple and quick mounting points for the wall. Throw in some random flowers or leaves for decoration on these bricks and they’re a well-hidden asset that nobody should notice! 😉
Some good points here; I definitely take advantage of the narrow field of focus to help this. I’d say this is my main weapon when combating this problem. I also try to do the baseplate/wall technique where space allows. In this case, the table I’m shooting on was too narrow to allow it. I suppose I could Photoshop them in, but shooting from an acute angle worked in this case. I’ll definitely keep that in mind for future episodes.
About large area shooting : you may remember I work on my comic with Lego Digital Designer, so I have theorically unlimited space and unlimited number of bricks to work with (theorically only, because my PC abilities are actually a real limit). BUT… How about using microscaling and forced persepective? Both those technics prove to be a real challenge but as I remember, you tried it already (back at the cabin) and the effect was quite good!
My favorite monsters… Angels in Evangelion were awesome. Each was different with different abilities.
I need to try the microscale thing. I’ve been experimenting with it here with limited success, but need to put some more time into it.
Not exactly a monster, but monstrous: ROBOTS.
Battlbots, Frankenstein’ monster and the ‘nators series showed us the dangers, and strengths, but any 3rd law, or learning ability errors and the results aren’t has programmed…even going to grey goo possibility.
Seriously put any monster and add robot after it, plus who has or can make an actual working “large enough” e.m.p. ? If it flew, how do you get out of the way/ away from the crash?
Picture this: rogue scientists and inventor falls for girl working at a failing blood bank. The rogue makes bug bots that drain blood. The “defense” program is a little too strong and someone swats and breaks one bug-bot. What happens next is a movie.
Robots are a great monster, especially because there are so many different ways for the robo-pocyapse to get started.
As for monsters, generally I am a fan of hyperdimensional creatures. IE, monsters that exist in more than 3 dimensions or Directions.
Imagine if you drew 3 axis’s on a paper, X, Y, and Z. Hyperdimension creatures would occupy all 3 directions and a /4th/ direction leading streight up and off the paper.
Hyperdimensional creatures are fun to spawn on heroes as they are mysterious and down right terrifying since there is no way to even propperly imagine them.
Think…the Stranger Things monster who was able to just APPEAR right behind you at random (although that one was an interdimensional monster rather than hyper dimensional) or this from the atomic robo series http://www.atomic-robo.com/atomicrobo/v3ch1-cover
Mutants. While zeds are an expression of the mass of everyday people, Mutants are an expression of one particular part of the human condition or sometimes an environmental condition taken to an extreme. The STTOS episode about the race of beings white on one side and black on the other and the movie THEM are two of my favorites.
Hmm what happened to the comic for today? It’s about the usual time for publishing, and no comic yet! 😀
Sorry about that; I put in the wrong publish time. It’s live now.