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Sci-Fi Art Design Question

 
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larryfoster
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 6:49 am    Post subject: Sci-Fi Art Design Question Reply with quote

I became curious about the various designs of Captain Nemo's "Nautilus" submarine. One thing I liked of most of them, is his furnishing them with Victorian era furniture. That may have been 'state of the art' for the time setting of his adventures. But now, it seems like 'excess opulence' - which is wholly unexpected on a ship or uniform design.

I then came across the "Nautilus" submarine of the more recent movie: "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". I was shocked by the artwork design applied to exterior of that ship. I am referring to the artistic (decorative) designs, which serve no functional purpose. See here, those that are applied to the bow of the ship.



I am not an artist, but I think these designs are called 'filigree'. It's the kind of artwork that is used to decorate the boarders of currency and old book pages.

I was also thinking how... as technology progresses, ship interiors become more visually boring. Consider how once a ship flight control had many blinking colored lights. Later, they were replace with colored buttons and computer monitor screens. Now, dump the buttons for touch-monitor screens. Soon, the touch and monitor screens will be dumped, for human brain interface chips. Ships will simply be controlled by thoughts, and no need for anything resembling a 'flight control' station. Boring!

Now, pulling these concepts together and extrapolating... I ask:

What would fans think of other classic ships, like: the Forbidden Planet's "C-57-D", the Star Trek's "Enterprise", etc. - sporting elaborate filigree designs, marble statue decorations, and button-tuck upholstered carved wood furniture, - to their exteriors, and interiors? Can such added classic artwork compensate for the visual boorishness of advancing technology?

Additional note... the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" car was also arti-fied to excess. What if such artistic decorative creativity were to be applied to something like the Battlestar Galactica "Landram" vehicle? And crew member uniforms, sporting function-less wrap-around sashes - just for visual art style attractiveness? Cool, or not?

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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While the Nautilus from TLOEG was an impressive design its size was that of an aircraft carrier! Hardly what Verne established in his classic novel.
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Pye-Rate
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The "car" was a monster built on a truck frame that needed 3 lanes worth of room to turn.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
While the Nautilus from TLOEG was an impressive design its size was that of an aircraft carrier! Hardly what Verne established in his classic novel.

The Nautilus exterior and interior, along with the car and the spherical mini-sub, were all designed to be very ornate and extravagant, in the same style as the graphic novels.

These classic stories and the characters in them were all "re-imaged", as they say — which of course just means "drastically changed" from their traditional style.






To be fair, Verne didn't provide a lot of details about the Nautilus' design (as far as I can remember), so what Harper Goff did was provide a design which is so appealing nobody in their right mind would ever criticizing it by saying, "Hey, Verne never said it looked that good!"





The version in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, on the other hand, is difficult to accept for several reasons, including these.

~ It's so huge that its rapid speed across the ocean defies logic.

~ It's so ornate that we find it hard to believe it could have been constructed by anything other than the world's biggest shipyard.

~ It does everything wrong that the Harper Goff's version did right — so, by gum, we just don't like the beastly thing! Rolling Eyes

But if we try real hard to accept the notion that the whole movie is intended to look like art-for-art's-sake, it does succeed as an experiment in turning a graphic novel into a film version.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Keep in mind that Nemo was an Indian (Sikh perhaps?) and his Nautilus reflected traditional Indian motifs. Opulance was part of that tradition.
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's a website that covers just about every version of the Nautilus that ever appeared in print or on film.

Link: https://www.vernianera.com/Nautilus/Catalog/


larryfoster wrote:
I then came across the "Nautilus" submarine of the more recent movie: "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". I was shocked by the artwork design applied to exterior of that ship. I am referring to the artistic (decorative) designs, which serve no functional purpose.

The same could be said of the fish-shaped submarine from George Pal's Atlantis, the Lost Continent. All that bumpy surface decoration would surely create unnecessary drag. Of course, the Atlanteans could have deliberately designed their subs to resemble sea monsters, just to scare off any sailors who dared to venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Khan Noonien Singh was also Sikh.

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 26, 2021 6:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Khan Noonien Singh was also Sikh.

In Star Trek TOS, the only evidence of Khan's ethnicity is an offhand remark by Lt. Marla McGivers. When she sees Khan in his cryosleep chamber, she says: "From the northern India area, I'd guess. Probably a Sikh. They were the most fantastic warriors."

How would she know he was a Sikh from one brief look? Heck, he didn't even wear a turban! (Of course, it's possible that in Star Trek's alternate timeline, Sikh men stopped wearing turbans in the 1990s.)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 11:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
The same could be said of the fish-shaped submarine from George Pal's Atlantis, the Lost Continent. All that bumpy surface decoration would surely create unnecessary drag. Of course, the Atlanteans could have deliberately designed their subs to resemble sea monsters, just to scare off any sailors who dared to venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules.


Scot, the movie does in fact support your contention that the Atlanteans deliberately made their sub look like a sea serpent to frighten any sailors who spotted it. The young hero even throws a harpoon at it when he first spots it while sailing towards Atlantis.

___________ Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961


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