#again no shade to the more humanoid/movie inspired designs

[ohfugecannada]

The movie design for Groot is cute and all, but I love the 2008 versions of Groot/the flora colossi that look like big freaky Kaiju beasts.

[script-a-world]

When I'm writing a story fully set on alien worlds, is there a such thing as race as understand by humans? If a character appears 'white' or 'black' or 'asian' etc, it probably means nothing to aliens. But building these characters it seems inevitable someone will attach it to human races? Especially when professionals get these things filmed, the characters are looked at as representing their actor's race. How do I build so that the aliens represent aliens, not aliens that represent humans.

Tex: A very, very long history of film short - they have to be non-humanoid. Twi’leks from Star Wars have been pretty good at the “non-human” alien body types (Star Wars), for all their flaws in sexualizing the women. Xenomorphs from the Alien franchise are varying shades of horrifying by their non-human physiology, as are the Yautja from the Predator franchise.

The Alien Species Wiki has two starting points that might help you for building up different species: Sentience, and Sapience.

After playing around with those two concepts, it’s just a matter how how human-shaped you want them to be - there’s nothing restricting you from the number of limbs, what kind of limbs, and quantity and arrangement of organs. Generally, the more “alien” type of aliens are a type of horror, so it depends on how you want to present your species to your audience. Klingons were meant to be intimidating and foreign to humans, but their depiction in Star Trek challenged their audience’s initial perceptions.

Feral: So, I’m not entirely sure what you want to do with your alien species building. Are you specifically building species based on real world cultures? Are you building species that just so happen to share certain physical characteristics with humans, including things like different skin colors? Are you trying to have racism in your story but between aliens instead of human peoples? Let’s take it one by one.

Specifically building species based on real world cultures: This is the most basic first step in worldbuilding. Everyone does it. Why? Because the real world is the only world we have ever actually lived in. (Probably.) However, it’s also a route through a minefield. If you’re using cultures that are not your own, it’s very easy to get things very wrong and offend, or worse contribute to ongoing bigotry against, real people. What’s generally recommended is that you don’t wholesale base a fictional culture on a broad, generalized, stereotyped version of a real world culture. There are a couple ways to avoid this. A) Take several aspects of a few disparate (preferably geographically distanced) cultures, throw them in an inspiration blender, and pour into your brainstorming session. B) Take that one really specific thing you find cool about a real world culture or history and build out a different culture from it. Basically, what I’m saying is if you have an “Asian” alien race… reconsider.

Physical Characteristics that just so happen to match up: Tex went into a lot of detail about how best to avoid this, so I won’t add too much. But basically, nothing “just so happens” to be a certain way in a story because everything is decided upon by you the author. Why do your aliens have a certain skin color or hair color or nose or eye shape or any stereotypically “ethnic” feature? Even if an alien - a humanoid alien - is described as having black skin, I’m probably not jumping to “that alien must look exactly like a human of African descent” because in most cases there are going to be other physical characteristics that make me think “this is an alien and not at all a human.” You mention being concerned that an alien character will be perceived as being akin to a certain human race because of the actor playing them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of Gamora as being Afrolatina because Zoe Saldana plays her; I think of Gamora as being a Zen-Whoberis because that’s what kind of alien she is. However, if you are doing what I recommended against in point 1 and basing your alien race on stereotypes of a particular real world people, and then an individual of that group plays the alien character, what you fear will happen and it’s not great for you when it does. Google “Orcs Are Racist.”

Fantastic Racism: It’s a thing. And it’s not usually a well crafted thing. There are people who will tell you that it is impossible to actually do well or get right. And while people have a right to this opinion and I agree with them most of the time, I would guess that the Never-Evers are people who have never read Discworld. The thing about Fantastic Racism is that again it typically requires the thing I recommended against in point 1 (you’ll see it on TV Tropes as Space Jews). It also has the troubling tendency to draw parallels between real world oppressed minority groups and non-humans, which can have the effect of further dehumanizing them. There are also a lot of cases in which the Strawman Has a Point wherein the strawman is representing real world racist bigots.

Finally I want to add a post-script to one of Tex’s points: “Generally, the more “alien” type of aliens are a type of horror, so it depends on how you want to present your species to your audience.” How your non-humanoid aliens are perceived by your audience is also going to have a lot to do with how you write your story. How do you introduce them? What’s the tone of the story? What are the representative characters like? How are they perceived by the more humanoid (and thus easier to identify with for your human audience) characters?

The Heptapods of “Story of Your Life”/Arrival are pure horror movie design except they’re not. They’re called Abbott and Costello by the main characters; all their actions are in an attempt to peacefully communicate with humans. They’re mysterious but not threatening. (And actually kinda cute if you’re like me and think cephalopods are cute.)

In Young Wizards, a YA series by Star Trek EU author Diane Duane that is a brilliant blend sci fi and fantasy, there are aliens called the Rirhait, which are human-sized omnivorous (and I mean omnivorous) metal centipedes with multiple stalked eyes. Nightmare fuel? Nope. A major character on Team Good for the series is Sker’ret, and he is super darling.

[10138512]

Symbolism and Coding Devices in Disney Villains: Disney’s Use of Colour, Visual Appearance, and Queer Coding

At the heart of all Disney films is a general principle of a good versus evil. This dichotomy is, of course, explained and developed throughout the movie with dialogue and plot, typically with the antagonist directly impeding the progress of the protagonist’s journey in some way. However, Disney also employs many more subliminal techniques in their films to strengthen the audience’s awareness of the antagonist’s villainy. When developing characters, writers must flesh out designs and personality traits for every individual, essentially coding how these characters will look, walk, and talk in the film. While many choices made in this stage of development can seem trivial, there is often deeper meaning to be found in them. The characters’ colour, design, settings, and representations can be deliberately controlled to empower desired meanings and evoke certain psychological responses and attitudes towards characters, adding to their complexity (Artz, 2003). For one, likely the most noticeable use of symbolism in Disney movies is their expressive use of colour. Disney typically applies very different colour palettes to their heroes and heroines compared to their villains. The light and bright tints of Disney’s protagonists are juxtaposed by the dark and muted shades of their villains. As discussed by van Dam (2014), “evil counterparts tend to dress darkly with shock value”, creating a noticeable distinction between the two (p. 35). Likewise, the visual form of characters also contributes to furthering the differentiation between protagonist and antagonist. The features of Disney’s heroes are drawn in curves, smooth, rounded, and flattering; oppositely, the villains’ features are more jagged, extreme, and menacing (Artz, 2003). The last mode in which Disney distinguishes their heroes from villains is much more underlying than these first two. A trope that is commonly used by Disney, specifically for their villains, is the use of queer coding. To give context, this essentially means that while the villainous characters are not explicitly deemed queer, they are given traits that would typically be associated with the opposite gender or queer folk. By giving antagonists inverted gender behaviour, they are quickly but subtly distinguished as separate from the commonly very heteronormative protagonists and deemed villainous (Coca, 2013). As exemplars of these methods used by Disney, I will be discussing The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid. As shown in these movies, by utilizing colour, visual appearance, and queer coding as indirect methods of differentiation that extend past the narrative itself, Disney is able to quickly develop, strengthen, and sustain a sense of difference and otherness for their antagonists.

In The Lion King, Simba, along with his father Mufasa in the early scenes of the film, acts as the protagonist of the story, with Simba’s uncle Scar serving the role of antagonist. Mufasa and Simba are both brightly drawn, strong, and smoothly curved; meanwhile, Scar is drawn much more darkly, frail, and angular (Artz, 2003). In fact, Scar’s colouring is starkly different to any of the other lions in the film. With a much darker body and black mane, his colouring serves to contrast him from the others. Moreover, his piercing light green eyes and even his darker teeth add to his ominous vibe. Scar’s visual design is also much different than Simba and Mufasa’s. Scar is shown to have much sharper, more pointed claws and teeth than the other lions, and his claws are exposed more often as well. While Simba, Mufasa, and other lions in the film have very full, flowing manes, and appear generally well-groomed, Scar appears much more unkempt: his facial hair is scruffy and his mane is much less fantastic. On top of this, he is depicted to be much more frail, slender, and physically weaker compared to the other lions. Scar’s physical weakness is but one trait of his that also serves to queer code him. Paired with his thin build are his comparably more delicate voice and gait, as well as a vast amount of dialogue that serves to exemplify his difference. Many of Scar’s lines are littered with sass, and some even subtly feminize him directly, such as when he sarcastically announces that he’ll “practice his curtsy” rather than his bow for Simba, his future king (Hahn, 1994). Also, when referring to Scar, Zazu mentions that “[there is] one in every family”, a line that is often said about queer people (Hahn, 1994; Ourri, 2017). The summation of all these qualities reveals Scar as a character very separate from the others, and evidence of all these traits can be seen in the following clip from the film.

(Hahn, 1994).

Similar to Scar, Jafar acts as the antagonist in Aladdin, with princess Jasmine and the titular character of Aladdin serving as protagonists. In the narrative, Jafar is described as “a dark man…with a dark purpose”, and is drawn darkly with extreme angles (Clements & Musker, 1992; Artz, 2003). Again, the difference in colour is blatant: Aladdin and Jasmine don predominantly light blues and neutrals, while Jafar is cloaked in dark reds and black. Also, Jafar’s teeth are a darker shade than his heroic counterparts, much the same as Scar. In Aladdin, the colour red plays a crucial role, as scenes involving Jafar and his villainy are doused in red hues. Further, Jasmine is dressed in a red version of her main outfit when enslaved by Jafar, strengthening the relationship between the colour and its representation of evil. Visual appearance continues to differentiate good and evil, becoming even more noticeable in this film. While Jasmine and Aladdin’s clothes are very loose and flowy, Jafar’s attire is much sleeker. His garment’s shoulders and the toes of his shoes curl sharply upwards, and the feather often present on his headdress is shaped much like a sword. The design of Jafar’s long dress-like robe and flowing cape is also rather effeminate, and he has a very thin build, implying physical weakness. Further feminizing Jafar is his penchant for sarcasm and the eyeliner and eyeshadow visible on his face. By subtly differentiating Jafar from Aladdin and the other male characters with makeup and costume, he is increasingly associated with femaleness (Putnam, 2013). Andreas Deja, the openly gay supervising animator for Jafar, has even gone so far as to admit that Jafar was conceived as a gay man in order to give him his theatrical quality and elegance, strengthening the idea that Jafar was queer coded (Ourri, 2017; Griffin, 2000). All these qualities, both visual and personality-based, assigned to Jafar’s character can be seen in the following clip from the movie, and serve to distinguish Jafar as different from the protagonists.

(Clements & Musker, 1992).

To show that female antagonists exhibit the same villainous tropes used to differentiate from the heroes, Ursula from The Little Mermaid serves as a brilliant example. In a sea of light flesh-toned mermaids with bright, colourful tails, Ursula’s light purple skin tone is completely nonhuman, with deep purple and black tentacles. Regarding her shape, while other female characters are demure and petite, Ursula is a large character, both literally and figuratively. Her tentacles also differ her from the rest of the humanoid characters in the sea, who appear as mermaids and mermen. While these other sea-dwelling characters have long locks of hair that flow gracefully through the water, Ursula’s short, coiffed hair makes her even more noticeably unalike the others. Having been based on the real-life drag queen Divine, many of her features bear an uncanny resemblance to the late icon: her overwhelming size, extremely exaggerated eyebrows and makeup, bright red lips, sharp painted nails, and her monstrous toothy grin (Putnam, 2013).

(Galella, 1978).

In addition to her appearance, her often overtly sexualized performance and deepened voice are reminiscent of a drag queen on stage (Putnam, 2013). Her remarkable likeness to Divine also makes an incredibly compelling argument that Ursula was queer coded. A myriad of Ursula’s personality traits can also be attributed to being a result of queer coding, even separately from her visual similarity to Divine. Talking in her deep, husky voice, Ursula often exudes much more sexual and mature mannerisms that counter Ariel’s delicately feminine and gentle persona. A great example of Ursula’s character being deliberately separate from Ariel and the others comes from her performance of the fan-favourite song, “Poor Unfortunate Souls”, where the discussed qualities of Ursula culminate in a high camp number clearly inspired by Divine.

(Musker & Ashman, 1989).

In each of these three films, it can be seen that Disney utilizes many techniques aside from plot and dialogue in order to create an immediate and lasting distinction between their heroes and villains. Disney’s use of colour, visual appearance, and queer coding on their villains can be noted in many other of their films as well: Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty has a distinctly dark colour palette and sinister form, while Hades from Hercules and Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas both carry clear traits of queer coding. While Disney’s use of colour and visual appearance can be written off as merely aesthetic choices, their interesting use of queer coding can begin to raise some questions. If Disney were using queer coding on all types of characters, this would be of little issue; however, Disney’s nearly exclusive use of queer coding towards villains could pose problematic. Despite how subtle these representations may be, it is worth considering how the repeated correlation between queerness and villainy will be interpreted by audiences. Especially when one considers that Disney has only begun showing very miniscule representations of LGBT characters rather recently, with the intended audiences of these films being quite young, is it detrimental to show children numerous examples of queerness being associated with villainy?

References

Artz, L. (2003). Animating hierarchy: Disney and the globalization of capitalism. Global Media Journal, 1(1), no page listing. 

Clements, R. (Producer/Director), & Musker, J. (Producer/Director). (1992). Aladdin [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Coca, A. (2013). A reflection on the development of gender construction in ‘classic’ Disney films. Amsterdam Social Science, 3(1), 7-20.

Galella, R. (Photographer). (1978, June 12). Divine 6702657 [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.ca/license/77800917

Griffin, S. (2000). Tinker belles and evil queens: The Walt Disney Company from the inside out. NYU Press.

Hahn, D. (Producer), Allers, R. (Director), & Minkoff, R. (Director). (1994). The Lion King [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Musker, J. (Producer/Director), Ashman, H. (Producer), & Clements, R. (Director). (1989). The Little Mermaid [Motion picture]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.

Ourri, A. (2017). The construction of evil: The evolution of Disney villains from the Golden to the Revival era. Retrieved from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/53698897/Report_8.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1520640626&Signature=7c0cUEdJO%2FoRb%2F2nvBScs0tndzc%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DThe_Construction_Of_Evil_-The_Evolution.pdf

Putnam, A. (2013). Mean ladies: Transgendered villains in Disney films. In J. Cheu (Ed.), Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability (147-). Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

van Dam, B. (2014). Disney’s fashionable girls: Signs and symbols in the costume dress of Disney’s female characters. (Dissertation). Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-105532

[meohmayah]

Art Improvement Challenge! By @pencilcat

Self-Portrait - Introduce yourself

Draw a figure using a reference - link to reference

Draw a figure that’s in action, using a reference - link to reference

Draw a part of the human anatomy you have trouble with. x20, with atleast 5 being skeletal/musculature studies.

Draw more figures. Quick gestures and silhouettes. x20, with atleast 10 different body shapes

Let’s have some fun. Design a character from either This or Thischaracter generator! Be creative and bring something to life!

Pick the weirdest object in your house/room. Draw it. Shadows and Highlights.

Find 2-3 objects, make a scene with them. Draw it. Bonus points for creativity. Double points for dramatic lighting.

Draw a landscape of a place you’ve never been or drawn.

Draw a BG with 1pt Perspective. Negative points if it’s a railroad or an empty street.

Draw a BG with 2pt Perspective.

Look out a window. Draw what you see. Bonus points for adding something interesting.

Draw an interior setting with the character you designed on Day #6 in it.

BG with either bird’s eye or worm’s eye view.

Halfway there! Draw three 'action’ scenes with different compositions in each. Quick sketches are fine, just make them interesting and understandable! Bonus points if it’s the same scene, but different composition.

Draw a single page comic with 5-7 panels (the story begins and ends on one page).

Draw an animal you’ve never drawn before. x10  Link references.

Draw a car. Negative points for whining. Hint: Use a perspective grid.

Think of the thing you hate drawing the most. Guess what? Draw it! Negative points for lying to yourself.

Pick an object in your house/room. Now design a character from it, using the shapes, forms, textures, purpose and colors as inspiration. Also link/post the object you used. Negative points for using a humanoid action figure.

Draw a character/object/scene, and shade them using ONLY solid blacks and whites. Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows

Draw a different object/scene/character. Shade using hatching, crosshatcing, and/or pointillism. Bonus points for lights/shadows andtextures.

Colors! Pick a color palette, and paint a scene/character/object using only those colors (some blending allowed). Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows.

Draw and color a scene/object/character - no lines allowed! (aka - lineless art). Don’t forget light and shadows!

Draw a scene/character in a style you’ve never drawn before. If emulating an artist, credit+link. Bonus for color style.

Draw a character. Draw 10 emotions/expressions. Bonus points for 'uncommon’ emotions. (i.e. anxiety, guilt, despair, loneliness etc.)

Draw three random shapes using your opposite hand (or your foot). Now design characters from those shapes.

Turn on the tv (or load your illegally downloaded movies). Pick an actor and draw them.

Almost done! Let’s have some fun. Draw some fanart. Bonus points if it’s super obscure and unknown. Make people guess what it’s from.

Last day! Find a drawing you did within the last year. Now draw it again using what you’ve learned! Link it for comparison!

This is @pencilcat ‘s original challenge that I’ll be undertaking this month :) I hope to see some improvement, and I encourage anyone who feels like jumping in to tag your posts with #Improvement Hell. 

[rookieash]

30 Day Challenge

haii! sekarang kan masih hitungannya tahun baru, buat kalian yang gak sempet buat new years resolution, jangan khawatir, ada challenge lain yang gak kalah seru yang bisa kalian lakuin!

30 Day Challengen adalah tantangan-tantangan yang harus kita lengkapi setiap hari selama satu bulan. tema challenge ini banyak banget, tapi aku di sini baka nge-share 3 aja.

30 Day Challenge yang pertama,

30 Day Art Challenge

Self-Portrait - Introduce yourself

Draw a figure using a reference - link to reference

Draw a figure that’s in action, using a reference - link to reference

Draw a part of the human anatomy you have trouble with. x20, with atleast 5 being skeletal/musculature studies.

Draw more figures. Quick gestures and silhouettes. x20, with atleast 10 different body shapes

Let’s have some fun. Design a character from either This or This character generator! Be creative and bring something to life!

Pick the weirdest object in your house/room. Draw it. Shadows and Highlights.

Find 2-3 objects, make a scene with them. Draw it. Bonus points for creativity. Double points for dramatic lighting.

Draw a landscape of a place you’ve never been or drawn.

Draw a BG with 1pt Perspective. Negative points if it’s a railroad or an empty street.

Draw a BG with 2pt Perspective.

Look out a window. Draw what you see. Bonus points for adding something interesting.

Draw an interior setting with the character you designed on Day #6 in it.

BG with either bird’s eye or worm’s eye view.

Halfway there! Draw three 'action’ scenes with different compositions in each. Quick sketches are fine, just make them interesting and understandable! Bonus points if it’s the same scene, but different composition.

Draw a single page comic with 5-7 panels (the story begins and ends on one page).

Draw an animal you’ve never drawn before. x10  Link references.

Draw a car. Negative points for whining. Hint: Use a perspective grid.

Think of the thing you hate drawing the most. Guess what? Draw it! Negative points for lying to yourself.

Pick an object in your house/room. Now design a character from it, using the shapes, forms, textures, purpose and colors as inspiration. Also link/post the object you used. Negative points for using a humanoid action figure.

Draw a character/object/scene, and shade them using ONLY solid blacks and whites. Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows

Draw a different object/scene/character. Shade using hatching, crosshatcing, and/or pointillism. Bonus points for lights/shadows and textures.

Colors! Pick a color palette, and paint a scene/character/object using only those colors (some blending allowed). Bonus points for good use of lights/shadows.

Draw and color a scene/object/character - no lines allowed! (aka - lineless art). Don’t forget light and shadows!

Draw a scene/character in a style you’ve never drawn before. If emulating an artist, credit+link. Bonus for color style.

Draw a character. Draw 10 emotions/expressions. Bonus points for 'uncommon’ emotions. (i.e. anxiety, guilt, despair, loneliness etc.)

Draw three random shapes using your opposite hand (or your foot). Now design characters from those shapes.

Turn on the tv (or load your illegally downloaded movies). Pick an actor and draw them.

Almost done! Let’s have some fun. Draw some fanart. Bonus points if it’s super obscure and unknown. Make people guess what it’s from.

Last day! Find a drawing you did within the last year. Now draw it again using what you’ve learned! Link it for comparison!

wah, cocok banget kan buat kalian yang suka gambar? yuk ikutan!