[napalm]

Ok, for the rest of you geeks who donated 6 hours of your life to watch the Sci-Fi channel's Dune mini-series (yeah i know you're out there..) What did you think of the visuals? (all plot/story/character handling aside, thats not what we're here for)

I found some parts of it to be wonderful, I enjoyed most of the costumes from royalty on down to the fremen. Many of the sets were simply beautiful, wonderful designs, layouts and textures.. however, the one main problem i had with the overall production values (besides all the damned colored lighting making it feel like an overblown high school theatre production) were the horrible digital (and traditional) visual effects.

First off, having become accustomed to the wonderful skills of Spooge and other artists on the forum I must say that the matte painting in Dune was horrendous. In many cases there was no sense of depth, inacurrate or unmatched lighting, color and perspective all plagued the visuals. Many times I could actually see where a lump of set sand ended and a horribly painted matte or background began.

The space ships, explosions, smoke overlays, effects.. all quite bad. It seems that in some scenes there was no attempt made at all to blend effects and live action to the point that the bad effects just became distracting, taking away from the production on the whole. I realize they didn't have a ton of dough to blow on effects, but come on.. And the stop-motion mouse? eeK. I don't want to ramble too much, I just think it'll make an interesting discussion topic for the rest of you who watched it. Discuss!



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me: http://www.deadzebra.com / my crew: http://www.creators.org my master nick.com

[Anthony J]

itd be cool if some people could throw up some stills from the dune movie that would be used as inspiration...i think what the forum is lacking is SWEET images for all the artists to get some nice ideas and inspiration from...

Dune ones would be perfect...

it would also be plenty SWEET napalm, if you'd be nice enough to take a look at my newest intheworks image...its under the heading Sleek Hair Woman

just trying to get some feedback, but so far my replies are 0

cause ppl are too busy or something

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Digital Painting Gallery http://anthonys.8m.com

"you must feel the force in order to use it Obi-Wan..."



[This message has been edited by Anthony J (edited December 05, 2000).]

[Sergenth]

I know what you are talking about, napalm...

They definitely had their priorities when it came to art direction in the Dune series there.

The worms were obviously top priority and thank god, cause they turned out gorgeous, too the point where I have extreme trouble figuring them to be CG.

They messed up on the animation framerate of the desert mice (muadeeps). Too little frames.

The floating poison dagger wobbled on screen when they panned the camera to Paul. (The movie had it easier... they kept the camera still while looking at the dagger, until it followed the dagger in a rush towards Paul's face). What the mini-series needed was some sort of indexing or registration mark to keep the dagger steady with the rest of the scene.

And those backdrops were a joke, at least every other one. Most of them had orange sand while the lights were making everything blue in the foreground. What they could have used was much more reflective light, so that the backdrops actually gave off more ambient lighting... oh well, electric bills are a pain I guess :P

Oh, and then there was one backdrop in the Fremen home mountains I think... where you could see the background mirrored towards the right!!! That was awful!

Yes, you could easily see the transition line between set and backdrop, the first 5 desert scenes were like that.

Well, that's the end of my complaints. They did a great job adapting it, and the acting is not as bad as the nut-jobs will lead you to believe. The 3rd episode was the best Paul was NOT a Luke Skywalker... jeez.

I like the Worms, the "future" - seen when drinking the water of life, the shield as it covered the emperor's base and the sand effects. Not too shabby.

Man... I really, really want a "Wheel of Time" mini-series with the set design quality of Hercules or Xena... and the production values of 6th and 7th season Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wouldn't that beat all?

[CapnPyro]

i missed the dune series but im sure theyll replay it 97,000 more times. man id kill for a top notch long wheel of time movie/mini-series. thing is what would it be? the first book? 1-3? the story isnt done yet so im not sure where the stopping point would be. im on book 6 btw

lord of the rings and dune are next up to be read

-Capn

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http://home1.gte.net/capnpyro

[burn0ut]

i dont get the sci-fi channel, will this movie be on tape ??

[AliasMoze]

The movie is supposed to go to video, including DVD.

First, "Dune" is one of my favorite books. So my expectations are high.

Having said that, the miniseries sucks on multiple levels IMO. The acting is like a bad high school play. The directing sucked. For example, they plow through important dialogue, even crucial plot points. They seem to be trying to stay close to the book, but I'd rather them cut more and emphasize the right things. The photography was in the classic style of Beverly Hills 90210. Sheesh, break out the 1K's every once in a while!

I didn't care for the overall art direction or the effects. But the show was made for TV. I could've forgiven that stuff if the show had been better. And what's up with the casting? William Hurt as Leto? Pllleeeeease.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but the miniseries makes me appreciate the work of David Lynch.

Thanks. You've been a great crowd.

[Plop]

It all feels like its been filmed in someone's garage. The worms were great though.

[CyberArtist]

Costume and "real" set design was top notch.

Painted backdrops were sub par. In many scenes, not only where the lines between visible, but the lighting was different on the foreground elements vs. the background elements. In one scene where Paul and his mother are tredging through the desert (before the meet the fremen) the lighting on the desert backdrop is the exact OPPOSITE of the lighting on the foreground.

The mouse's animation was pretty bad as well.

Any time when the camera moved through a computer created scene with live action elements, the two moved differently. The scene when Paul is having the vision of the 3 worms and then the land turns to "grass" and then the camera pans around him... Paul appears to be sunk into the ground as the "center" of the spin is some distance behind him, while he sits at the very bottom of the screen.

And speaking of the grass ... anyone else think it was weird green water for a while?

The pit with the young worm in it (from which the water of life is gotten) ... the bulge that moves around in the sand looks more like a plastic bowl moving around than the sand. And the lighting looked to be coming from a weird angle. Just looked wrong, though for the time that it was on screen, I guess it was ok.

Worms looked excellent ... but again, worms and people moving together when works were digital and people live action ... didn't work.

The worms moving through the sand at some times seemed a little unrealistic though. I personally think the worms from the original movie (and them moving through the sand, minus the scenes with little model people on them) were far more realistic. Possibly some of the best special effects work done around that time.

I too saw the mirroring on the mountains in the fremen seige. It's wasn't actually a mirroring in the background, it was because the backdrops were computer renderings on plates behind the actors. Someone did a bad job of texturing that wall. Now, why they didn't use blue screens or green screens for the backgrounds (as they WERE cg originally) is beyond me ... though I'm sure this method cost a whole lot less. The other scenes where they tried to put cg and live action together might be another hint (since they SUCKED).

Fremen eyes. Contacts and black lights, or some sort of material that made them glow in certain lighting. Cool idea, except in many scenes the lighting wouldn't be right, and the glow would disappear, or non-fremens' eyes would glow with the same intensity as the low glow of the fremens'. Again, the original movie did it better with painted eyes, but I'm guessing this method was, again, cheaper, and in some cases probably look better (especially since they'd proven several times through the movie that they had no concept of keeping added cg elements live action moving together.)

Speaking of CG elements ... is it just me, or was the scene when the scout was shot down (when you saw inside the cockpit and the two pilots got shot) all cg? The movement of the pilots seemed oddly stiff.

Anyone else notice that they used the hanger set about 20 times? All the outposts had the same damn hanger with one of those fly-like flying crafts in the middle.


Basically, I think we all agree that the major problem with mini-series visuals was the blending between cg and live action.


As for a WoT mini-series? That'd kick ass... only they'd dumb down the story for all those "viewers" and have a hard time keeping the orignal story as good as it is while at the same time keeping the shows down to a good size (because, sir, quite frankly, 3 two hour shows ain't gunna get you through more than maybe the first book, and even that's gunna require a lot of cutting). Well, if they do make a WoT series, at least people can be assured that there'll always be more of the story for them to makes shows for. Book 9 having just come out, and the rumor being that there are plans for as many as 12 books total before this saga is done.



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-CyberA(rtist) aka Ben Golus

Cyber...

[Irulann]

I agree the costumes were my favorite--some of the ones Irulan wore were laughable, but she seemed younger in this movie version, so it was understandable. The only casting choice I liked was the woman who played Jessica.

Some of the desert backdrops were horrid--especially the ones looking from inside a darkened building into the light-there was just a line where the darkness became light-too obvious

I agree the worms were great, though I missed the lightning that accoompanied wormsign in the first movie *shrugs*

Overall the visuals in the movie were ok, much of the dialogue/plot were off from both movie AND book, but it was acceptable, considering I suppose

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All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
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I Imagined an Image
My Image Imagined Me
and I became It's puppet
just a Child of It's Imagery

[napalm]

I think the main reason the two short shots of the muadeep (desert mouse thingy) were so bad was because it was stop-motion animation. Now i'm all for stop-motion, i've done some myself, i love it but i think it has its place.. here it was mixed in with all these bad digital effects and lighting over a horribly fake setting. I think in this case even a hastily done digital mouse would have "fit in" more at least, it may not have looked much better but come on, how hard is that? We've all seen convincing digital rodents signing, dancing, etc.. I wonder why they decided to go for a stop-motion mouse in this show. Maybe the director's younger brother got some modeling clay for his birthday..

[Wyatt Turner]

I think I saw mickey mouse. Those fat round ears. eeeks :-/

I think everyone saw the same as me. Glad I'm not the only art critic

It was fun to pick apart and laugh at. But there was some cool stuf sprinkled here and there. They should have spent a little more time on it.

I felt the story was never that great. Just some cool worms.

But no Jar-Jar Binks.
be glad for that.

later chumps
y@

[spooge demon]

I hope they do re-run this, I would like to see it, being a big Dune Fan. I know they shot it in Prague, or close by.

I was going to do the mattes, but schedules did not work out. Bummer. The materials I got while the job was still active looked very interesting, almost like they were not trying to make it alien. Kinda like updating Shakespeare by doing it in contemporary clothes, thus underlining the timelessness of the story

But it sounds like this was not done.

[TurboYVR]

I'm one of those who have never been exposed to Dune, to my consternation. God knows I've heard enough about it. Could someone please please post as soon as they hear when it is re-run? Help give me at least a little culturee

[CapnPyro]

i missed it also but wanted to see it, after a little digging around, I found

"SCI FI will air all six hours again on Dec. 10, starting at 1 p.m. ET/PT. Dune will not air again on SCI FI until the second quarter of 2001."

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http://home1.gte.net/capnpyro

[Ben Barker]

Heh, I guess I'm the only one that really enjoyed the visual effects. Remember, we're talking about television here.
I thought the worms were excellent. Much better than the movie. They looked like big penises (penii?) in the movie. The "pit of Sarlac" teeth look was better, and I got a sense of the worms being bigger, faster, and more dangerous. I did like the old, static electricity worm sign better though.
The floating baron was pulled off well. The glowing eyes were much more subtle (and better) than the eyes in the movie, which frequently were "colored outside of the lines". Those little ships they flew in were done very well, as was the Spacing Guild's navigator. The weirding way, matrix movement effect ruled, as it always does.
The sets and especially the costumes were exceptional. Paul's fremen costume should win some kind of award.
Now, try to sqeeze a 2000 page book into a 6 hour series, well, and you get ass in the editing room. But since this is just the visuals, I highly approved.
Again, this isn't the big screen. It wasn't even a big network, or HBO. I think, for television, Dune was excellent.

[Emmanuel]

Hi,

let's wait and see how Westwoods "Emperor of Dune" cutscenes will look like
What I have seen looks very good so far...


Later,
E.

[B]

i, another Dune fanatic was disapointed in the tv series for i don't believe it captured the mood of the movie as well as it could have.

i would prefer to see the original movie

b