Meeting with Lynn

Today I had a meeting with one of my lecturers, Lynn. We discussed everything I had done so far and what I wanted to continue on in this project. We talked about animals and their anatomy and the film industry and creatures/aliens roles within certain films. Below are bullet points on topics that we both discussed.

Films:

• Pacific Rim
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• District 9 
• Life of Pi
• Jurassic World

Animal studies:

• Animal documentaries
• Existent animals

Creatures:

• Look at modern designs
• Boundaries/creative license; do my creatures speak?
• Is the creature the antagonist?
• Is the creature in a role or just part of the ecosystem?
• Communicates to the audience
• The audience can connect to?
• Features for specific purposes?
• Planet boundaries, gravity, gasses in the air etc.

Overall, we discussed many things; we talked about my previous case studies on Avatar and Alien and how the Xenomorph was the antagonist of the film and designed to be so, whereas the creatures in Avatar were there to create a fuller environment and not take part in a very specific role.

In the films bullet points are a list of films I could take into my research and create case studies on, I’ve actually only seen Pacific Rim and District 9 out of these films which is shameful but will be interesting to watch them with my project in mind.

The animal studies bullet points are to study in animals that are existent such as dinosaurs and also to watch documentaries like Inside Natures Giants. We talked about what could affect the design of my creatures such as the boundaries of the planet such as gravity and how the audience would react to them. Will I design a creature that is reminiscent to something from earth so the audience feels connect to it? Or create something as new and unique as possible that is designed to its environment in such a way that the audience believes that this creature is possible.  

I’ll be taking everything me and Lynn talked about and incorporating it into my work and to try and create creatures that have specific boundaries within their world.