OK, so I just watched Avatar and I’m not going to even fight the influence this is going to be having on my sketches for the foreseeable future.
It’s a great movie and I absolutely loved it. It has attracted some criticism for a certain simplicity in the story, but I think that’s missing the point. The alien planet and ecosystem is so richly imagined and contains such detail, that if a more complex or ambivalent story were attached to it the whole movie might have become too complex. And visually the movie is fantastic. For an old-school nerd like me it was great to see the 2001-like spaceship in the opening shots, and although a certain suspension of disbelief is required for the floating mountains, I think it’s worth it for the sheer majesty of the images.
Here is an earlier version of the illustration with a lot less detail. Even in this early version the influences from Avatar should be obvious to anyone who has seen the movie.
Just like in the movie there are two wings on the flying lizard. There is a huge gas giant in the background blocking out most of the horizon and the colour scheme of the creature is very lurid. There are of course a lot of differences too. Avatar took 12 years and a quarter of a billion dollars to create, while my image has had about four hours work done on it so far, and as I’m working in GIMP, the cost is just about zero.
I also had the great idea of opening FarmVille on my other computer and catching up with some of my chores while I’m sketching away on the graphics tablet on the first computer. It’s a great way to do some multitasking.
