Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Jeroen Hoekstra

#32

Don’t worry, Shiroii, “first contact” is an epic idea: worked for Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick and it turned out to be a pretty good concept for the last decent Star Trek flick. I think the design of the visitor is a very important element – something hi-tech to offset the fantasy feel of the current characters, maybe? I think some are seeing your ideas as “funny” because you’ve drawn the characters all happy and smiley. Are they really totally peaceful or do they have a dark side? Maybe they’re hiding their blasters behind their backs or something (a twist like sky_one mentioned). Of course, that contradicts what you wrote about before, so nevermind, just my warmongering getting out of control :smiley:

#33

Thanks you all for the kind words :smiley:

I’ll keep “the twist” in mind. I think you guys have got a really good point there. It might be the factor that would distinquish a nice/intresting image to an image you’d really really like, intresting point. I’ve worked some more on the story tonight and it’s getting quite intresting actually. Will think about the twist factor for sure and see what I can do with it.

markw7, yes, the explorer is a vital piece of information. I think I will have be sure to make him the focal point. I’ll also think about the underlying darker/negative side a bit.

Thanks all :thumbsup:

#34

Nice sketch work dude,
i thought ill check out wat the ducht people do over here,
and i like what i see (proud to be dutch)

i wish ya a good contest
(of te wel een goede contest to ya man :stuck_out_tongue: )

#35

double post :banghead:
remove please

#36

tripple post :argh:
remove please

#37

Hi, I’m back. Took a little break, but I’m back with a clearer view of what I’m gonna do :smiley:
I started modeling the kings head, but I don’t feel like I’m far enough to show you (half-way so…) I also promised a color sketch of the scene, but as you’ll read below there are some concept changes and a lot of extra things involved. Really gave thought to the “twist” and I’ll have to revise some things and write some more :slight_smile:
Kay, this is the third attampt to write this stuff :frowning: One crash, one lack of sleep, but now it will work (I hope)
Here it goes (in one post I hope)

Basic Overview of happenings
Humans are strange. The last couple of years more and more scientists have warned people of the population grow and polution, but none of it mattered. The biggest part of the population just let the scientists talk and prefered the easy way of denying and keep using all the easy fast food and fast products. Inevitably things go wrong and the population on earth gets out of hand. Lots of children were born, especially in asia asia despite of all the birth control regulations, the kids grew up being poor and not having enough space. School classes were too big, too much traffic, no work because there arn’t enough jobs for all the people. People were getting extremely annoyed and are on the brink of war. In the meantime, scientists have found alternate solutions.

The most obvious one would be to go to the moon. Several famillies went to live on the moon, of course it was widly marketed and on every television channel. Things went very well and more and more people moved to the moon. Space technology was developing at lightspeed and around the year 2069 the first custom atmosphere/ozon layer was created. This atmosphere was originally build to fill up the hole in the Ozon Layer. Because of all the unhealthy living the hole had become way to big and more and more UV-beams arrived earth. Most of the population died or were awfully sick so a solution was demanded. After The Patch was astablished, scientist decided it woul be a cool experiment to test it on the moon, it worked. For the first time people could walk on the moon and could breath and walk around without any equipments.

The atmoshpere heavily relied on the gardning industry. Plants were used to provide the oxygen (air ^.^ ) With the latest technologies planting trees and flowers was possible on the moon, but one had to find the right soil to plant them in. There was one spot that was really favoured for plantings, The River Scape. There flewed a river on the moon at that area, making the “earth” around it very good for plantings.

Humans lived on the front side of the moon, on the darkside of the moon, the conditions were to cold and icy for the humans to live. But when more and more people moved to the moon and started living there, the moon warmed up, becuase most of the heat waves stayed inside the atmosphere of the moon. The icecaps were melting, creating a river. This river was widly used by the people living there. The river seemed to make the people more energatic, fresh and less vulnurable against sickness. After this was concluded, the source had to be found.

Diggings near the Icy Rocks showed signs of minerals storred under the ice. After recearch scientists found that the crystals had a sort of energy field just like a heat field or radioactive field around them that provided a positive energy to the water. Of course the water was used a lot and on earth it was a valuable medicin. Of course we needed to find the real sourch, how did the crystals get on the moon? More diggins took place and it was discovered that the crystals were formed after a meteor containing a certain material collapsed with the moon. Soil samples were taken and scientists were highly paid to find out where this meteor had come from and if the place still existed.

Around the time of 2081, scientists had selected 7 possible planets. Robots and sattellites were send to check out the area and report to the labs. The results was postive and samples were taken and exemined. 3 planets of the 7 showed really positive samples. One planet had the highest comparisen with the moon surface around The Icy Rocks. Obviously a team had to be send to the planet. The mission was to be one of the most important missions ever to come in the history of space craft. The newest technologies were used. A Highway was created to the planets. Bots build little rings containing virtual black holes. The technique basically worked like a teleporter, you go in on one side and get out on the other. After test, the first human team was to be send to this quir planet.

Present happenings
Now here is the part where I’m not entirly sure. I’ve thought about my concept and I think it would be more usefull to create a team. It would be quite illogical to only send one explorer. At least one scientist will have to come with the explorer and there will probably be need for people like an biologist and an historicus to record things about the nature, plants, trees, earth, people etc.

Now I’m thinking about the “twist” It’s pretty complicated. I really like my concepts, but I’ll have to find a good situation in this whole history, which is epic and nice to look at, with the “twist” :wink: I’ve wrote a bit of the history now and I think I’ll start to write some more about how the party gets to the planet and how they react with the people there, what events will take place, discoveries are made, first encounteres, meetings etc. Write some more stuff about the people and nature on the planet, make up a little history, just type away and check out if I have any usefull ideas in my head. After that I’ll probably have a really good idea of what I’m gonna do and all the mess in my head will be cleaned up I can and make it one big image to show you guys. I liked my previous idea, but I’ve got to evaluate some other ideas to check what would be the best and most epic thing to show and get this thing rollin’!! :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for reading all this and be sure to check again soo, because there will probably be (alot) more :wink:
Shiroii

#38

I suppose one of the mods will be able to fix this :thumbsup:
Thanks for your support 3D-DuTchman! Did you enter the challenge too?

#39

Well done! Very detailed. It was a good read :thumbsup: I like this universe you’re creating. As for the twist, as you say it will probably reveal itself just from more writing. I suspect that if you define the moment more – 3 explorers entering the king’s chambers, observed by attendants and guards and whatnot, meeting an alien race for the first time – that the twist will emerge organically. For instance, there are a few pivotal moments at the beginning of the first Alien that would make great book covers – the crew enters the Alien spacecraft and stands in front of the giant pilot; the crew discovers the pods for the first time. Although these are both creepy examples they have extremes in scale, they’re not immediately about graphic violence (not yet) and they are about “first contact”. I guess the crux of my example is bringing two things together that don’t match, heightening the differences to make a visual concept clearer, and then manipulating the environment to create an emotion. The environment is very dark, the camera angles are skewed, etc to create tension.

Keep going!

#40

Wow. I see about your development of concept philosophy we were writing about in markw7’s thread! I would also tend to go with the second concept. But I wouldn’t show the back of the Earthling’s head. You could show him in profile, after all he has to sweep his head to take in the huge size of the welcoming meeting. It could show the moment when he encompasses the vastness of characters he is faced with. Shades of a Star Wars bar. And I like the huge window curved arround. Reminds me of the mirror at the Moulin Rouge. Lots of strange ships with telescopes can be hanging arround getting a glimpse of this auspicious occasion! I’m working on some spaceships in 3D myself now. Lots to do! Yay!

My 3D Grand Space Opera piece

#41

markw7, Thanks man! Really apreciate the support. I’ll write some more things out around tommorow night. About the alian movie. I’ve never seen it :hmm: I think I saw one movie, but that was some years ago and I can’t recall much of it, I’ll see if one of my friends happens to own it :thumbsup:

userBrian, Yeah, I like to work it out and get the best idea possible. I could of course have gone with one of the original ideas, but when I work this things out, all kinds of possibilities enter my mind and I can see little flashes of images apearing in my head and I get all these tingles of exitment in my stomach becuase I know it will be cool if I work hard :smiley:
I’ll show the faces of the humans for sure. I figured that out some time ago and in the previous post I stated that I’ll probably will use more than 1 person, so don’t worry, you’ll get a good look of him :wink: You also understood the big window thing very well, that’s kind of what I have in minde :thumbsup:

#42

Wow! great concept you got there, but you are missing one point, or I missunderstood your writting (probably)

How long did it took after the implant was made on the moon, for humans to walk around the place with no suit. I still think, you should give it a long period, I mean the place has to get used to the “air” It will cause a raised in bacterias unknown by men.

I don’t know I think you should add some sort of transition change in there. After reading the whole thing out. I realised that the period of time is too short, I think you should work just a tiny bit in the scale of time .

  • cheers!
#43

Very involved and in-depth storyline.I think the concepts shown with this story show a very promising final here,keep at it,your thoughts and passion show here,I’ll be keeping an eye out for your progress Jeroen…Nice start.:arteest:

#44

Hey there, guess what! I started the model :smiley:

Here you can see the head of the king. Still WIP and I still gotta add the body :stuck_out_tongue:

#45

I’ve made some quick test shapes to see how the model will react to facial expresions. It works quite good, the mouth shapes works pretty well and I’m happy about it :slight_smile:
Some thing I should work on are:

  • the masses at the brows, to make a better brow squeez.
  • improve the mouth-crease-loop (which isn’t really there atm)

Cya!
-Shiroii

#46

Great work you have done here… there is one thing I don’t like and I think you should re-consider… The nostrils are kind of weird looking… I mean, he has such a big nose, I think you should reconsider the nostril design. Look at yourself in the mirror and stare at your nose “nostrils” I know this is not an human “but its a humanoid” there is no much difference from this character to us, when it comes to fisical anatomy (muscles, facial muscles, expresions, etc) But overal, it looks very good.

Congratulations!
-cheers; keep the good work.

#47

Cool modeling so far… i like the expression test. :slight_smile:

For the nostril i’m agree with ARSA, but it’s just a opinion… you are the master of your work!!
Otherwise keep going!! :buttrock:

#48

Here are some more model screenies.
I updated the head topology, it’s much better now IMO. The ears are like in the concept now.

I also started working on the body. I kept it simple. Blocking out all the volume and after that I’m going to add details and little borders, fancy things, juwels etc. As for the leg, it’s blocked out too, nothing fancy, don’t even have feet. The leg will be quite detailed since most of it will be visible.

tell me what ya think!

#49

Well like I said before! Great job man!

My only concern is the shape of his head and the size of his brain… For a creature so smart/wise it doesnt have a front lobe and this might cause problems in the way this creature develope his functions and the way it makes desitions. I think the back of his head is ok, but the way his cranius is flat (front and top) makes me wonder… where is the brain…

Again this is my personal opinion…

- Cheers!

#50

heya…

the modelling is coming along nicely, I like the test shapes you posted - more life into the character.

I’m not a fan of the nostrils tho, but that’s my 2cents

#51

Where are the updates??? I have been gone for about a week!!! common get back to work dude! :slight_smile:

-cheers