[ROARING]
This moment in Stranger Things is
pretty satisfying for the viewer on the first watch.
It's filled with tension and suspense.
It feels like the natural conclusion
to what the show has been building
towards the entire time.
However on subsequent viewings it doesn't quite
have the same effect.
For those not quite in the know, this is the Demogorgon.
The central monster at the heart of the season one
of the now beloved Netflix modern classic,
Stranger Things.
The Demogorgon is loosely based on creatures
appearing in the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons.
This shot should be the grand debut
of a new iconic cinematic monstrosity,
but when revisiting it, it kind of falls flat due in large part
to something that could be termed as concept design
groupthink.
What does that mean?
To put it in no uncertain terms, a lot
of the conceptual designer world is very stylistically
incestuous.
It is an area of artistic self cannibalisation.
The monsters in A Quiet Place, Cloverfield,
the MUTOs from Godzilla, the creatures from The Host
and a bevy of other things that go bump in the night all share
a common visual vocabulary.
Every one of these creatures has long angular limbs, a bulbous
or oddly shaped torso, a round or extended skull shape
that splits into either a distended jaw or literally just
opens up into a teeth filled death flower killing machine.
Isolated from their contemporary brethren,
these creatures are horrifying and effectively create
a general sense of unease in the mind of the viewer.
However when looked at as a whole,
it is readily evident that these creatures are working off
the same visual rubric.
A lot of them just feel like a plug and play design aesthetic.
Part of the issue is the simple reality
that most of these creatures are being
worked on by teams of visual effects and concept design
artists that are all constantly looking at each other's work.
This modality of working spawns a melting
of styles, a softening of big swings visually.
Ultimately this way of working breeds executions that
don't necessarily have as iconic a footprint.
Just think about the movie monsters
that have changed the face of cinema.
Lon Chaney Sr. makeups, Frankenstein's monster,
created by Jack Pierce, or even something
as deeply psychosexual as HR Geiger's alien design.
Or Stan Winston's predator design.
All of these characters are created using
computer generated animation.
There's nothing inherently wrong with CG.
The issue at hand is that very few filmmakers
find new or inventive ways to utilize the technology.
However, there are some key examples
of directors creating truly nightmarish visuals with CGI.
Take, for instance, the antagonist
and Dave Bruckner's The Ritual.
Shockingly grotesque, truly otherworldly,
and definitively stylish.
This beast is one for the ages.
It's that most people opt for the same visual solutions
over and over again.
One of the key reasons why so many CGI creatures look
the same is that the computer animation excels
at very specific textures.
The Host, Pacific Rim, Quiet Place,
and many other contemporary monsters all
have the same textures to them.
None of these films are bad in their own right,
and most of them are good.
The issue is that when juxtaposed against one another,
they all feel the same.
One of the things that separates movie monsters of older
eras from the current one is that they were constructed
using corporeal rubber suits.
These constraints caused the artist
to have to work harder to create compelling designs.
You know a Stan Winston creature when you see it.
Most of the monsters created today
are only effective in generating scares on the initial viewing.
They lack staying power.
The half life of these creations is distinctly smaller
than in cinematic generations past.
Has there been an army of xenomorph rip offs since 1978?
Yes, of course.
However none of them have rivaled the impact
of that original film because Gieger,
the creator of the monster, wasn't involved.
He has an individualistic specificity to his work,
both a sculptural aesthetic and airbrush
technique that are virtually impossible to mimic.
Today with an army of hyper skilled CG rickers
and concept artists who all literally
graduate from the same four or five schools, these characters
aren't as idiosyncratic, individualistic, or impressive.
An additional point of evidence is
that the shape languages on display
are created and stolen from one vis dev
artist to another so rapidly that sometimes you'll
have three films debut in one year
and they all have monsters that look virtually identical.
The codified, logically grounded creature design aesthetic
is something that is so dialed in at this point
it's very difficult to do anything divergent.
Another reason why these creatures
have a specific aesthetic is that many of their shapes
and forms are defined using speed painting and Photoshop.
Some are even created in a process called
photo bashing, which takes photos that the concept
designer likes and they cobble them together digitally
and digitally paint on top of them.
Once again there's nothing wrong with this approach
to creating concept designs, it just
has a specific aesthetic it produces,
and it's an aesthetic that almost everything
has currently.
Many of our favorite movie monsters
were created by drawing with pencil and paper.
This isn't to say that one is better than the other.
It's just to say that one requires more time, energy,
and attention to detail to produce a finished product.
And the other is engineered exclusively
around speed and efficiency.
There are drawbacks to each, and very tangible upsides to each.
And if there was a balance of which methods were being used,
we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
Here's a design created by Oscar winning makeup effects
artist Joel Harlow.
On its own it's a really cool, if not slightly Alien-esque
design.
And here's a design created by Armand Surano
for a potential Pacific Rim kaiju.
Also really cool, just using a lot of the same jagged shapes,
oblong head design, and obviously influenced by Gieger
alone.
Each of these designs are great.
Together, they each feel significantly less impactful.
It's the same shapes over and over again.
The bulbous heads.
The Gieger style tubing defining musculature in the anatomy.
The very specific limb distortions.
All of these creatures are playing
in the same stylistic sandbox.
There's a saying that an artist is defined by their canvas.
This is a pithy idiom, but it also
summarizes the difficulty of understanding
what the perimeters of your challenge artistically are.
Meaning if you have endless money and endless time
and an endless amount of space to create,
you're going to just shunt creativity out
into a void of never stop working.
However, if you have to create a drawing on an 8 and 1/2
by 11 piece of paper, pencil, and a little bit of paint,
you're going to be doing something completely different.
Therein lies the paradox.
Today filmmaking techniques have evolved to really create
anything we can think of.
We can create endless vistas of stars, or three grains of sand
on a beach, with more or less the same amount of effort.
Because of this limitless ability in a truly human way,
we choose to squander it.
We choose to only mimic what our proverbial neighbor is doing.
In generations prior there were very
strict practicality and monetary restrictions
on the artists at work.
The canvas was very tangibly defined.
This required a select few people
to create everlasting imagery that has influenced
our culture ever since.
They had a creative box to burst out of,
and they were able to break the rules
and foster innovation because it was harder
to create something new.
Today, as evidenced by Stranger Things and A Quiet Place's
creatures being cut from the same cloth,
there is a nearly limitless canvas.
You can create anything you can think of.
The only problem is that everyone
is only interested in doing what's
already succeeded before.
And what do you know?
That's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic?
What do you think?
Are monster designers are going to figure out
how to crack this nut?
Will we get some new iconic creatures?
Or will we be trapped in a CGI hellscape forever?
Let us know in the comments below.
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