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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...
libertarianswag.com
Am I mistaken of will the cast of this movie NOT include any japanese actors?
If so... I already hate it.
Only Images mirrored. here
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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.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
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.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
*cough*
Character name changes. Massive rumors are currently circulating as to whether Rei Ayanami has been christened "Ray" and similarly Asuka as "Kate Rose". There is nothing concrete to suggest they have - as these names appearing on the images are very likely to be the names of the artists or costume designers who produced them. However, a few points to consider are; no other pictures have a similar name appearing on them, Rei and Ray maybe too similar to be a coincidence and why would an artist put only a first name down, especially if it's a signature? On the other hand, on the image it does say "Kate Rose plugsuit" and "Ray plugsuit" however these maybe concepts drawn by another artist to simply incorporate and show a costume design by Kate Rose / Ray. "Kate rose plugsuit" would then be required to distinguish which plugsuit design is being viewed. Kate Rose is a costume designer (i.e. the images were not drawn by Kate/Ray but they are an interpretation of their current designs).
That site has loads of other info on the movie as well.
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
I, for one, would love a movie of nothing but Shinji's psychedelic dreams as in episodes 25 and 26 of the series.
"Kate Rose"
"Susan Whitnall"
It's just not the same... and the poor children who are doing this will probably never realise they're filling tohe roles of characters that have been the fantasies of many, many sad, depraived anime otakus out there...
Did they forget that the three pilots are supposed to be about 14 or 15? The concept drawing of Asuka makes her look like she's about 40. That, and the fact that they're calling her Kate Rose. There is no Kate Rose in Evangelion. They've also taken a few too many liberties with the architectural design, to the point where it completely changes the atmosphere.
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?
Why would they want to americanize Evangelion? Much of its cool factor comes from simply being Japanese.
I can see it now... turning Nerv into the "Department of Homeland Security" with Johnny Depp playing Gendo Ikari..er.. "Tom Ridge".
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.
Is it just me or does the title of the article sound like another bayesian-poison spam?
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.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
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...
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. Even by hooking a few curiosity seekers at the theatre, it's hard to imagine anyone shelling out for a DVD to remember this attrocity by, thereby padding out the numbers to anything resembling profitablity.
What's that you say? Geeks can't possibly account for their entire target demographic for this still born failure? You're right. They will no doubt try to "broaden" the movie's appeal beyond it's fan base to bring in more revenue and will end up failing both fan-boys and joe-six-pack alike. And it will be a disaster.
"But how can you say that?! The movie's not even out yet!" one might say. Yes, they may have time to fix some of these things before things go full-bore on production.
But when they're making so many obvious mistakes so early on (obvious to me, at least and I'm only a casual Eva fan) it's hard to believe they can be entrusted to ensure me a pleasent movie-going experience for my 1800 yen.
Gainax, to me, is such a cornerstone of quality Japanese animation it's a shame to see that they've sold out such a decent series to the foaming-at-the-mouth Hollywood execs...
*sigh* Can't anyone just leave something that people like alone?
I can only hope for another Impact...
I'm pretty sure that a lot of anime fans do not, in fact, think that it's okay to have a woman raped by a multi-tentacled creature. You can't sweep all anime under the rug of pornography any more than you can with American cinema. "Anime" itself isn't really a genre any more than "novel" is - it's more a creative medium that people can use to tell any story they want.
(Anime Fan 1): Damn this sucks. I mean, they gave them American names for god's sake!
(Anime Fan 2): Yeah... but wasn't some of the character not even japanese? German, etc.?
(Anime Fan 1): So? What's the point?
(Anime Fan 2): Nothing, just my brain trying to think a bit, it's ok now. Anyway, I'll only watch the movie if the character's names stay in japanese.
(Anime Fan 1): Yeah. And if they shoot it in japanese only...
(Anime Fan 2): Subbed. Oh yeah, and count me out if they do not follow the serie to the letter, all XYZ episodes and fit them in 2 hours without anything missing or added.
(Anime Fan 1): Oh! Oh! And it must be all anime, I mean, Live Action will just suck you know? Will lose all the exagerated proportions and all.
(Anime Fan 2): Yeah... Hey, lets just go watch the serie again.
(Anime Fan 1): Ok.
In the same position as the name "Ray" and "Kate" is the "name" "Eva 01" on a different drawing.
The appeal of anime goes beyond the fight scenes and robots.
:
It's about human beings and how we live today.
Something you'll never see, even in a metaphor like Eva, in Hollywood.
Right right, I do not deny the quality of Animes (I enjoy them myself). But don't fall in this Hollywood=>crap business please, it is total non-sense. There are plenty of hollywood movies dealing with the human condition, society and psychology, as soon as you notice that Hollywood is not only {Daredevil, Starwars, Terminator, etc}.
Here are a few hits if you want interesting, deep hollywood movies
- American Beauty
- Donnie Darko
- The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola's latest excellent Lost in Translation is more japanese than hollywoodian, but still worth watching of course)
- Apocalypse Now
- 2001, A Space Odyssey
etc.
theefer
I'd be surprised if it had any ASIAN actors in more than a bit part. I don't recall any in the American version of Godzilla either, which is what this movie will probably turn out like (lots of eyecandy, and a total crapfest beyond that).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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...
There are a bunch of comments expressing fears of Hollywood pushing up the ages of the actors/actresses, and with good reason.
It's culturally understandable that the movie studio wouldn't want to put 14-year olds in tight-fitting lates plugsuits, playing roles with some sexual tension and innuendo (sometimes creepy and yet plot-vital, like Gendou/Rei/Ritsuko), and showing them off to an army of otakus with a reputation for keeping a subset of the porno industry alive on the basis on hentai doujinshi of EVA and similar series....
Having them "just turned 18" would be a very convenient cop-out, allowing them to hire appealing nymphettes for the lead roles and market their sexual appeal to a larger crowd.
The problem is, a large part of the emotional complexity of the series had to do with the fact these were Children with the weight of mankind's survival on their shoulders. Immature Children. Very screwed up Children, as a matter of fact. Still having to deal with classes, bullies, family, puberty, and oh, wait, another big monster appeared and is going to rip your robot's arms off and you're going to feel everything because that's the kind of technology we use and that's the kind of guy you are.
Young college-age adults, specially the young precocious 18 year olds that Hollywood can cast as tragic heroes, would be more prepared to deal with those issues and concentrate on the big-robot-fight-to-save-the-world part of the job. They would look childish having some of the emotional crisis that made EVA's characters believable.
This could turn the movie into a typical big-robot movie, an update to the likes of Ultraman. It would miss the point of EVA, and the truth is there are plenty of more simple/typical robot-series they could adapt better, and more easily, to that format.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
My first thought wasnt exactly "nice". More in the lines of "How the f*ck do they get away with changing Asuka's name to 'Kate Rose'? Someone please stab them repeatedly with a spork."
Oh, and I'm equally horrified by the rest of the name changes. I mean seriously, why is it so impossible to keep the original names?
So with this much computer generated imagery in a "live action" film, where do we draw the line between animation and film?