Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124104
The other three monsters had remained stuck in a distant and mostly hilarious look from decades gone by, which gave plenty of room to work within. Late in the process of phase one, it became clear which team among our collaborators was becoming more in synch with Michael's goals for each monster. As a result, phase two landed Ghidorah in Legacy's hands, Mothra with Miguel and Tran, and Rodan with ADI. They continued to wrangle their monsters through the film's post-production phase. Rodan was originally conceived as a pteranodon mutated by radiation from a massive nuclear waste dump while living within an island's deep underground. The entertaining result was that he grew insanely large and developed a massive appetite for way too many things. Michael had the idea of maintaining Rodan's winged silhouette but changing his heritage. This Rodan is rooted in the world of predatory birds, leaning heavily on the creepiness of vultures. His wings aren't plumed, but there is a surface quality about them that is evocative of feathers. Rodan's evolutionary environment is a live volcano (!) where he is being held in stasis at the beginning of the film. With his violent emergence from the volcano, a terrifying flying predatory monster is discovered with a crackly volcanic rock- like hide powered by a surging molten fire within. Who is very angry...and very hungry. Ghidorah is the menace from another dimension in this film, although his conflicting back story has also defined him as the guardian monster of ancient Japan, or as a genetically engineered creature from the future. In this tale, he's an interplanetary predator who sees the Earth seriously out of balance. He arrives to battle whatever he must to take it over. This three-headed dragon posed a few defining challenges, including how to make him truly scary (no easy task these days) and how to find a fresh way to look at dragons themselves. Given the preponderance of scary creature design in current entertainment, the solutions were once again anchored in the specifics of the character itself and what made it individual. As with the other creatures, his viscerally kinetic aspects were emphasized. He is portrayed as a cataclysmic disruptor by showing his tornado of devastating D E C. THE DANGEROUS AND COMPLEX ICE CAVE ENVIRONMENT WHERE GHIDORAH IS MONITORED, CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY DEAN SHERRIFF. D. ILLUSTRATOR MILENA ZDRAVKOVIC DEVELOPED A COHESIVE SERIES OF ANCIENT CULTURAL HIEROGLYPHS FOR THE HERO CREATURES, WHICH PLAYED A ROLE IN THE REVEALED MONSTER ENVIRONMENTS OF THE FILM. E. GODZILLA, MOTHRA AND RODAN, CHARACTER CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPHER SHY. SHY WAS HIRED TO COLLABORATE ON A COLLECTION OF IMAGES THAT WOULD CAPTURE THE MOOD AND ATMOSPHERE INTENDED FOR THE HERO MONSTERS, REFERENCING THE PORTRAITURE OF REMBRANDT AND THE POTENT ABSTRACT ATMOSPHERICS OF PAINTER J.M.W. TURNER'S SEA AND SKYSCAPES. SHY'S IMAGES PROVED TO BE A VALUABLE GUIDE THROUGHOUT POST- PRODUCTION VISUAL EFFECTS DEVELOPMENT.