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And should be re-buried.
Good zombie films are actually not boring at all, and the genre is no more overused than comedy, or superhero films or Westerns. What you have are a lot of filmmakers that simply don't understand the genre, or have nothing new to bring to it.
Zombie films -- and by that I mean the modern variety technically started by George Romero in 1968 -- were never really about zombies. They were about how people on different levels of sociey handle themselves when that society breaks down. That is not boring at all; in fact at this point in American history it's pretty damn relevant which is probably why you see it's resurgence and staying power. People under stress is actually a lot more interesting than endless action set pieces and stuff blowing up every 10 minutes.
That's good for you, but for me and many others, they are boring. They are disgusting to look at and mentally such a concept is abusive. Can you tell me what people were doing for entertainment in 1750? I doubt it, so zombies are just another fad that will be swept away like other fads. If there is one thing I've learned when something becomes mainstream in pop culture it is then considered uncool and on its way out. Not that I decide when & by what zombies will be replaced by the next fad but they will. That's entertainment!
It's not like zombies are the equivalent of a panda bear or someone wearing goth styles. Bands like the Cure I can appreciate. Pandas I can appreciate. 24/7/365 zombies as culturally relevant entertainment? No, enough, really.
Exactly. I GOOD zombie novel or movie is extremely interesting and isn't really about the gore at all. Although it can be quite fun. Zombie/post apocolyptic fiction/art is actually one of my favorites. I have a rather (very) large collection of books, some of them are fantastic, some of them are truly awful, just like any other genre.
And for the record, I buy fairy stuff, I love elven stuff, love medieval and fantasy themed stuff and love sci fi stuff as well. Not super hugely big on horror but own a fair amount of stuff that if I needed to put together something it would not be difficult at all. I have very little use for anything modern so for me, all this other stuff is great, up to and including some of the horror, although I am not as drawn to it as I am to the medieval/fantasy stuff. Just goes to show there is stuff for everyone and it must be selling fairly well, or they wouldn't be making more of it.
Which is what commercialism is all about. Letting the lowest common denominator drive social norms and fiscal energies.
Greetings,
Whurf; the air got a little...snobby in here. :-)
Yeah, I've noticed the trend towards the dark, but the thing I've noticed much more than it is the volume of items each day has been at a breakneck pace since the start of 'sale season' back in mid to late September.
I don't care that there's more dark stuff; that's fine for the folks who like it. The thing I like is that there's more of everything, which means more of the things I occasionally like.
As for elven stuff, well...I sometimes buy it to render with D&D campaigns (either real or idealized), fantasy novels/stories (either written or imagined), and sometimes because it's pretty. The outfits today I didn't care too much about, but with the various discounts, the bundle which included the outfits was super-cheap, like 75% off, so I didn't see a reason not to buy it. So that's a vote for the outfits, in a way. :)
The Clarice bundle had some neat stuff, but too much creepy, and not enough generally usable by me. But there are folks for whom it'll be the black cat's meow...
-- Morgan
I like monsters for fight scenes but I'm not too into the horror stuff too much especially not this time of year when I'm looking for winter-themed content. In general I don't mind zombies although I don't like the gory bloody kind. They make nice canon fodder for my characters to fight and look nicely menacing and have an aura of unstoppable menace which I find interesting. I don't like monsters thatt are derivative of copyrighted work though if it's a Disney or video game knockoff I want to know.
Here's what's weird. I adore vampires. (Could you tell?- heh) I don't like zombies. Ghosts, demons and possesions creep me out, and I cannot stomach gore, action movies with tons of bloodshed, or slasher flicks. Intellectual Frankenstein flicks are fine. Tim Burton movies rock my world. The image of a haunted girl with a knife or animated dolls is so powerful to me I don't know how to express it. I blame The Twilight Zone and the "Talking Tina" episode for my fixation.
We are selling the dream here. Be it fantasy lives you want to live, your own Utopia, or the twisted side of one's imagination, I say bring on the Dream.
I'm actually starting to get to the point where I'm glad when a days' releases do not interest me. My poor bank account...
;)
Laurie
I'm waiting for Darius.....
You and me both. I love the lulls where I'm not tempted to spend money on stuff I'm planning on getting to month's down the line, or items that spur me to want to create a scene I had no thought of before I saw that item.
The one thing I like more than anything; however is that item that comes out of nowhere that somebody does just because it seemed like a cool idea, like Chungdan's Sci-fi Medusa. I'll snag stuff up like that in a minute, because it isn't so obviously calculated to appeal to everyone like a Hollywood blockbuster. So I can't say I mind the horror theme. When I get in that mood at least those items are going to be there, and it's always better to have something and not need it, than to want it and not have it especially in the land of Daz.
Just found this thread but I ahve to say that I love your dark stuff. some of the best in teh store.
I think it's the "Walking Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead" effect. Although there are a lot of vampire shows on TV. Even Ridley Scott's current Civil War series "Mercy St." is pretty gory.
About Iray perhaps not being good for indoor (re: MistyMist's comment), the IG Easy Iray Studio lights set is "indoor". Seems to work ok for me; the attached piece of a primitive shape is lit with it, and separately the object seems to be picking up a stock "outdoor environment", a canyon scene of some sort... not sure what generates that as I've seen it pop up before.
See also http://www.daz3d.com/ig-iray-stage-lighting - that's indoor as well.
I used to love the Frank Frazetta-like fantasy paintings of "Hunter" that appeared in Heavy Metal for a while IIRC. If you aren't familiar with this one it was a post-nuclear apocalypse of some sort and this one young guy drifted around the wasteland wearing an old jet pilot helmet, the oxygen hose dangling. I never would have predicted a giant genre/industry along these lines, with zillions of TV shows and movies!!!
I went to a rare screening of A Boy And His Dog once (movie with Don Johnson is based on a short story by Harlan Ellison) here in my major center and bingo, right outside the subway exit the line-up was all the way down the street and around the corner to the cinema! Has to say something!
so you noticed too thought I was starting to get paranoid again then gain turned out wasn't then either. Funny I think there has been a huge variety of stuff released for all tastes much of it gets ignored it seems and only that which they hate gets noticed by certain ones, guess we now know who to blame for the reason of no creature creator 3, other types of g3 creatures like werewolves, centaurs, other human creature cross breeds, and so on. There's a lot of content from a lot of creators that they sell on other sites (including the stuff they hate and lots more of it as well as more revealing) would love to see here as well as some creators but guess they don't because of the negativity and it does get to some of the ones here too from things they've said elsewhere. Used to hate myself because of people telling me to, but now I'm a proud geeky nerd into fantasy, scifi, horror, comics, gaming, pinup art, cartoons/animated/anime, cosplayers , heavy metal/hard rock music, supernatural-ghosts/mythology/ufos aliens strange and weird stuff legendary creatures and myths and a dazaholic fanboy so to daz and the creators of the content here thank you oh and if all these things are considered just fads well they've been around for a very very long time so they're doing pretty well then as fads
Haha, We had Harlan Ellison come to our college to give a lecture and he brought a ton of stuff with him including films and television shows based on his works, including A Boy and His Dog. If you've never seen Uncle Harlan live, GO. The man is a consumate showman, and he's always a hoot. You won't be disappointed -- and if his wife Susan is with him he isn't nearly so curmudgeonly as people would have you believe. He'll even sign your parapanellia.
Let's keep the conversation civil and on braaaaains...I mean on topic. Thank you.
I haven't had all that much trouble lighting interiors. The thing to remember is that you don't have to be slavishly devoted to realistic lighting. Photographers and movie makers aren't.
(realistic, here, in the sense that 'it's only going to be lit by a simulation of the sun and candles, darn it!')
Also, any dark/nighttime thing? Overlight it. Use really diffuse/large light sources to light everything blueish, add some brighter 'actual' lights, be sure to use a canvas so you can massage that into as dark a scene as you want.
When Kubrick made 'Barry Lyndon', there was much talk at the time about how he had managed to photograph a candlelight scene purely with available light. It was an interesting bit of photography, but you don't see a whole lot of it decades later, when it is technically much easier. Especially in Iray, I think you have to think like a photographer. Photographers put up extra lights and/or reflectors even when shooting outdoors.
One interesting observation in Jeremy Birn's book on digital lighting and rendering is that city streets in movies seem to be unusually wet at night. The reason is that a wet street provides a nice reflective surface for the surrounding lights, which brings out the street surface textures and makes for a more interesting and well-lit scene. The more we learn about well-established photographic techniques like this, the better results we will be able to get from Iray (and, really, 3delight too).
Yeah, one reason I'm doing so much better with 3DL than I did before Iray is because Iray really helped make a lot of things clear to me.
Reminds me of how much I learned about English from taking Latin in HS...
I enjoyed the book World War Z far more than I ever thought I would because I found the author's take on how the world would react to a massive gobal pandemic so interesting. How would we react if the world was turned upside down? It's sad the movie had little more than the title in common with the source material.
I don't have much (any) use for the horror-themed content that seems to be released in a large quantity lately, as I'm a sucker for the post-apoc stuff. But I'm glad others are enjoying it all. :)
Good observations! I've struggled a little making the jump to Iray, and you're right- it's a different way of thinking about the light. I didn't have as much trouble with the 3Delight lighting because I have a theater and broadcasting background. The lighting of both of those seems a lot like 3Delight lighting. PBR-based renders have been more challenging for me personally but the photography anecdote is a good one. Helps me wrap my head around it better.
The zombie fad is part of a larger post-apolcalyptic trend, a sign of the [bad for many] times. When we have bad economic times, when people are struggling and have less confidence, for whatever reason the horror and darker themes rise to prominence. Right now zombies are gigantic. In the 1970s we had an oil crisis and stagflation, bad unemployment and a general malaise as Carter put it. And we had the rise of the slasher flick (Halloween, Friday the 13th) and the demonic posession flick (Omen, Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, etc) In the 1930s during the great depression you had gangsters and monsters (frankenstein, dracula, wolfman, mummy, etc) crushing it at the box office.
You always have a monster or horror flick here and there, I'm saying there was a trend of multiple such films doing very well at the box office during tough times. Its a sign of the times.
Anyway it's my theory. If I'm right, someday when things are a bit better economically maybe the post apololypitc / shows / comics, etc will taper off.
A scholar, sir, and a gentleman.
Actually your theory is right on the money, and horror/ SF has usually been on the forefront of these societal trends. During the height of the Red Scare/ Cold War paranoia was a huge theme in films, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or I Married a Monster from Outer Space; when fears of the Atomic Bomb were out, giant monsters became a theme. And sometimes when things become dark in reality audiences will flock to films that offer an alternative. Star Wars probably benifitted from this more than any other movie in recent history. Of course it will eventually taper off as we find something else to worry about, but as I stated you will have good examples of creative use of the theme and mediocre examples, but it's simply a sub-genre, and to dismiss it without looking at it in it's totality and the environment in which it emerged is simply being a genre high hat.
I agree. The book was awesome (the movie was ok). Written in the same style as two others I really really enjoy, Robopocalypse and RoboGenesis, both by Daniel H. Wilson.
As for zombie movies, I always thought 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later were excellent 'zombie' movies. Not all action-oriented like Resident Evil, but more thinking and the exploration of how people would react... more 'real' to me.
I guess that's why I like End-of-the-World type movies and books. I study human nature.
Meh... I ramble... (better than Shamble...)
Everybody should take latin in HS. Being able to parse any grammatical construction has made me a better and happier person; so has knowing what the pluperfect is. (There's one in the first clause of the second scentence of this paragraph, you know. The subject is a gerund phrase)
Grammar! *Jazz Hands*
Those are absolutely adorable.
I believe the recent influx of darker stuff has to do with not just Hallowe'en, but Iray. Creature-related stuff benefits hugely from the added photo-realistic detail, because it allows for slick skin and infinitely more realistic blood. This is something which Iray materials will have direct artistic inspirational value for. A good example of this was the recent product which allows G3F to be depicted as headless (while also allowing for a 'cracked statue' alternative apperance). That happened to be something which I actually purchased, not for horror reasons, but for cybernetic characters! The hinge at the back of the neck and associated opening morph, were really great for that. I'd like to see a G3M version to create a 'headless horsemen' character with.
Personally, I'd like an awful lot more in the way of horror-related things! Too many of them are related to humanoid or mammalian-looking creatures (werewovles, zombies and so on) and, while I actually have a need for virtually anything vampire-related for a few serious projects I'm involved in, I'd really love to see some reptilian, insectoid/arachnoid and mollusc-related original Iray-compatible creatures in the store. We hardly ever get things along those lines and, so far as I'm concerned, the more exotic and diverse, the better! I'd also really like to see some more geografted cybernetic stuff, too.
But, yeah, I believe the recent few sales are more down to the combination of Hallowe'en and more creators simply learning how to properly employ Iray materials, than anything else. A few of them pretty much overlapped one another (like the G3F vampire and zombie characters, whose skins were very similar), which actually meant the diversity hasn't been all that massive. We actually got two or three G3M zombie-alikes very close to one another and I suspect most people only obtained one of those.
The undead-themed Creature Creator sets were slightly disappointing for being so restrictive, but I hope to see the other morphing sets, like extraterrestrials, before much longer. Especially non-feathered/non-furry wings and tails.
Honestly, a lot of the time, while things like vampires are superficially directed at being predatory, there's no reason you can't use them for comical or light-hearted stuff. A great example of this was Hinky Punk's Myrtle character, who is quite possibly the most ideal Tim Burton-esque character I've ever seen in the store. I wasn't planning to obtain Aiko 7 or Star 2.0, but had to, just so that I could access Myrtle. She's fantastic! Just her skin, alone, is incredibly impressive. I really hope some kind of G3M counterpart is eventually made, so that I can combine various morphing dials and populate entire Burton-inspired scenes with them. I actually used her to create some official promotional art for a television documentary which features the man, himself, being interviewed. :)