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Live Action Neon Genesis Evangelion Concept Art
Xzan writes "CGNetworks has released some concept art pictures of the upcoming feature film of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. I think the characters look really ugly, especially "Ray"(Rei in the anime).
The concept art is made by Weta Workshop, who also did the special effects for Lord of the rings."
...not the finished product. I'm sure that if you email them that you don't like the concepts (of "Ray" as you say), they will at least make an effor to take into account your feelings on the matter. (Esepcially if enough people do it.)
;)
However, I suspect that it will likely be that many fans of the original will be disappointed unless everything in the original is replicated exactly...
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But have you seen the early concept art for LoTR? Some of that was remarkably poor too - that's because they were sketching it to get an idea of one aspect of the whole, and you're looking at it as a finished product. Combine that with the fact that they produce literally hundreds of sketches working toward a single character or creature simply to explore all the different (some good, some bad) possibilities. Anyone who has seen all the concept sketches of the Cave Troll, or the Slime Balrog (not used in the films) will know what I mean.
Give them a chance to work through their ideas, and judge their finished product. I have a lot of faith in Weta Workshop (partly because I know some of the people who work there), and I'm sure they'll have something spectacular by the end.
Jedidiah.
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makes them all look like dumpy 20 or 30somethings IMHO.
Anyone who thinks the girls in those images look "dumpy" needs a good quick reality check.
Also note that if this is going to be "Live Action" it doesn't matter a damn what Weta draws the characters to look like - it only matters what the costumes look like. The characters will look like whatever the casting agent casts. Take your concerns up with them.
Jedidiah.
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How dare they spell a word which was written in JAPANESE originally differently from the way I've seen it written using latin characters before!!
Fans of the series will hate the live-action movie no matter what happens, so why even bother? It might be a good movie to people who dont already dream of fucking Ayanami, and with the best of luck it will bring the Giant Robot Genre into mainstream Hollywood.
If you already know what Eva is, this isnt worth keeping track of- just see it when it comes out, hate it, and then complain about how they changed things and took out all the subtle religious symbols that you need to be intelligent to pick up on.[/sarcasm]
I liked Eva, but shouldnt the moderators kill any post that's "Hopelessly Fanboy"? It's CONCEPT ART, moron. It's a LIVE ACTION MOVIE.
Would you prefer Jake Lloyd and Emma Watson?
It's not going to be the same. Deal.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
And, on top of it all, the name change isn't definite. It's probably a temporary thing stuck on by the Weta guys/gals. I doubt they've decided on names this far in advance when there isn't even a script to speak of as far as I know. So, don't cry just yet, Tyrdium. They may keep Asuka as Asuka.
What do you think they'll call Pen-pen?
While I am really glad that this is actually getting some hopefully serious attention and wont be a cobbled together movie I am seriously worried about how they are going to portray Shinji.
The reason I love evangelion is that Shinji neither wants to be a hero nor has the qualities of one. That single characteristic is what makes the series incredible because you see the emotional development of Shinji in a situation he doesn't want to be in. The only reason he stays put is not out of valor or a sense of justice but by the deep feeling of loneliness which he supplements by trying to please the people around him. ie an extremely normal person this day in age.
The thing that I am worried about however is that they might portray him as a hero and not the messed up person that he is (Anyone remember in the first few shots in Evangelion the movie where he wanks off to Asuka comatose in a hospital bed?)
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
There are Evangelion art books out there not to mention all the printed manga and the anime itself. The concept art that Weta Workshop is showing seems to be nothing more than some non-anime drawings of the same thing... which is exactly what they should be. Only I don't think they should bother since plenty of the art already exists.... However, I don't see why they have to go to such lengths to change the character names so drastically. I mean, granted they're not going to get Japanese actors for Misato, Rei, Asuka (who's supposed to be half-Japanese half-German anyway)... but changing such a detail would be akin to Lord of the Rings if Frodo were renamed to "Mike", Aragorn to "Steve" and Elrond to "Smith"... it's just wrong.
The anatomically impossible proportions of anime characters have nothing to do with reality! Seeing as real women need internal organs and space inside their skull for stuff other than their eyes, and actually have gravity affecting their breasts, you will never find a human being that doesn't look "dumpy" next to a hyper-lithe anime plaything.
My cut on this movie is that in the long run, it's going to fall through. Evangelion is pretty esoteric - it has a large fanbase amongst people who like anime, but there just ain't that many of us to support a blockbuster film.
Yes, anime sells, but it doesn't sell THAT much. Sure, last year an anime film won the academy award, but it still didn't make nearly as much money as "Elf", let alone "Finding Nemo". That means the film isn't going to get the $100 million in financing it needs to avoid looking like a bad episode of Doctor Who.
And I think that's a good thing, because Evangelion is way the hell too complicated to condense into a two hour film - and even if they narrow the scope of the film down to just the first few episodes, it's not going to be enough. Think about when you actually watched Evangelion (I'm assuming you wouldn't bother reading this thread if you didn't). How long did it take for you to figure out what the hell was going on, if you ever did? There were so many mysteries as yet unsolved after episode four that a four episode arc cannot stand on its own without radical changes to the storyline - the movie would be a giant robot rocket-sockem, but wouldn't really be Evangelion.
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I agree with the article submitter. In the anime the eva pilots are all teens correct? (Even Rei...sorta. )...the concept art Weta presented makes them all look like dumpy 20 or 30somethings IMHO. granted the anime style in general presents females as perhaps over-thin, but thats part of the character in some isntances--for examle Rei, who seems so frail and wispy and so forth.
Anime character typically have exagerated traits, most notably the proportions of the legs, and most obviously the large eyes.
Those concept art pictures depict normal humans with proportions that actually occur in nature and not just on paper. The kind of humans that are likely to actually show up for casting.
You can't take the sky from me...
In the same position as the name "Ray" and "Kate" is the "name" "Eva 01" on a different drawing.
The art is good, however Asuka or should I say Kate looks like she's in her early twenties. One of the major parts of the plot in Evangelion involves all the pilots being 13. And her and Ray sure as hell don't look 13, 18 at the youngest. I perfectly understand Americanizing it a bit. The world's not Japanese and a film of the magnitude this thing would be would more than likely get shown around quite a bit. However they do need to at least keep to the plot as closely as they can. If it's just a bunch of robots fighting monsters then it could be neat but it's not Evangelion.
Way to generalize. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's character designs on Evangelion were purposely made more realistic than typical anime - the eyes and faces are in more or less correct proportion, and except for some too-perfect bodies on the adults, the overall proportions are pretty much right as well.
I have here the Evangelion concept art book and a human anatomy book.
The evangelion characters' legs account for two thirds of their body lenght. Normal humans are about 50% leg in height.
You can't take the sky from me...
If so... I already hate it.
Why? Most *anime* I've seen doesn't have very many Japanese characters. Sure, their *names* are Japanese, but that's about it.
In fact, Evangelion itself seems to have the standard mostly-caucasian cast.
I am really interested to see how this film turns out. I liked the robot designs and some of the concepts of the original anime, but watching it at a friend's party was totally tedious - especially the last episode. "Oooh! It's the same frame of animation... for two minutes! This must mean something!"
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
The 'geeks' who are supposed to love this movie and provide the revenue these guys are hoping for at the box office are already slamming it from every angle they can.
I am classified as a geek, and I'm not slamming it. It looks like they're going to take the cool bits from the anime and turn it into something better.
All of the "negative" aspects you mention sound like good things to me.
26 episodes stuffed into 90 to 120 minutes (Akira anyone?)
I saw about ten episodes of Eva at a friend's party last year. Most of it could have been compressed into a smaller chunk of time because it was the sort of pseudo-intellectual circular logic "philosophy" that's too common in anime, to say nothing of the incredibly lame last episode.
No matter how great the CG is, it will never fulfill the fans expectations.
Fans who can't appreciate something different are taking things too seriously. It reminds me of some of the people into my favourite series (Legacy of Kain) who haven't liked any of the games since the original Blood Omen because they haven't been Diablo-esque RPG games.
Some changes are bad (like a lot of the new Battlestar Galactica), but there are a lot of things about Evangelion that could be improved upon.
Rei's er... Ray's hair isn't black.
It is now. Maybe she got tired of dying it the other colour.
The ages of the characters (none of whom will be of inferious Japanese decent mind you) will all be jacked up to 18 so they are american-legal-eagle jerk-off-able
I think this is more to avoid the Episode I syndrome. Watching an action film with mech pilots who are children is not believable, and would be a sure way to get this one labelled as a kids' film.
All non-robot battle nuances and themes in the film will be trodden upon, underused, and thusly underappreciated due to lack of time, budget, and the clairvoyance necessary to see that this film is a freaking boondoggle
In the original anime (at least the episodes I saw), it was the other way around. There were something like two robot battle scenes in the last ten episodes of the series.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
26 episodes stuffed into 90 to 120 minutes
I wouldn't say 'stuffed'.
For starters, cut out all of the stand-alone episodes that don't have much or any impact on the main story line. Like that Jet-Alone one? The angel in the volcano? Half of the other ones? Snip!
Now take out everything remotely funny.
Then cut out most of the battles. In a movie, they'd just be repetitive and boring. Yeah, everybody will want to see giant robot asskicking, and they're be plenty of it, but we won't need to see every Angel battle.
Then cut out most of Shinji's whining about how he's not going to pilot Eva. Seriously, that's 2-3 episodes' worth right there. Sure, it's an important part of the story, but we don't need to follow him all the way to the train station six times just to see him change his mind.
Then fuck around with the linearity. Use flashbacks. Start the movie toward the middle of the series, so you don't have to introduce characters in the middle of the movie. Wait until Shinji starts going nuts before you show how it all started. Also, spend one minute showing Second Impact at the very start instead of ten minutes telling about it.
By now you've got something that a good director (what you should be hoping for) can wrangle into a good film. Mix with good casting, good effects, and a firm willingness to piss off fanboys who get mad about a character no longer having unnaturally-colored hair, and you've got something that could turn out quite well.
They tried that in the "Lost in Space" movie, I don't remember any controversy.
There is no way that this lady is supposed to be Japanese.
Maybe in some crazy alternate universe where Japanese people are indistinguishable from Europeans, but not this one.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Who then would you cast to play Ritsuko, then? There are no Japanese people that look like Ritsuko. I'd be more disapointed if Japanese actors were used over actors that actually "look" like the anime characters.
26 episodes stuffed into 90 to 120 minutes (Akira anyone?)
I love Akira! It's a real classic. The music, the actors, the dialogue, the graphics - this is the anime movie. This is probably the first anime to make it to movie theathers outside Japan and resetting the standards to a new level
Besides, your points againts Akira are weak. Akira was directed by original author of the Akira manga. The spirit of all the episodes is there, even though somebody calculated, that it is 3.33 seconds / page. =)
And Akira is not under 120 minutes. It is 124. =).
So with this much computer generated imagery in a "live action" film, where do we draw the line between animation and film?