Introducing The Predator's Emissary Predators!

Started by Corporal Hicks, Oct 01, 2018, 12:00:49 PM

Author
Introducing The Predator's Emissary Predators! (Read 52,522 times)

El Pistolero

It seems they played a bit around with the female predators. And I like it. The face is much smoother and they are a bit skinner than the other predator concepts. I would love to see more about the cultural backround of the predators. It would be cool to see the male ones more as the warriors and the females as scientists. The homeworld should be very technological advanced and the society very prosperous.

Voodoo Magic

I really do love these Yautja societal ideas, but unfortunately they're likely way too lofty for a Shane Black / Fred Dekker film unfortunately.

SiL

I'd say they're as uninspired as anything Black and Dekker did. Cutting Predator roles along racial and gender lines is just...  Kinda lame.

The Kurgan

The Kurgan

#123
Quote from: SiL on Dec 08, 2018, 03:57:11 AM
I'd say they're as uninspired as anything Black and Dekker did. Cutting Predator roles along racial and gender lines is just...  Kinda lame.

I don't think they cut the roles along gender or racial lines. I think it has more to do with  the  genetic modification they introduced in the movie. It makes sense that not only their warriors are modified to play their role better, but their diplomats, scientists etc as well, explaining the different appearance . Still kinda lame though.

SiL

I meant the fan ideas people were coming up with cut the roles along those lines. See 'males are hunters, females are scientists' up above.

Jorma

Jorma

#125
This just really shows that the more you elaborate in a lousy backstory, the more the whole thing loses its appeal. These concepts are so naive.

Xenomrph

Quote from: SiL on Dec 08, 2018, 03:57:11 AM
I'd say they're as uninspired as anything Black and Dekker did. Cutting Predator roles along racial and gender lines is just...  Kinda lame.
It makes them seem a little too "human".
Not even that, it's too "sterile". Even humans (generally) don't cut roles along racial and gender lines, at the risk of seeming, you know, racist or sexist. :P

I mean yeah there's a place in sci-fi for interesting stories about one's role in society and whether one is "born" to be in a certain role, but I don't think "Predator culture" is the place for it.

That said,



re: the design concepts, I dig some of the designs early in the video with the dreadlocks "bundled" up and tied back behind the head, it re-frames the shape of the Predator head in an interesting way without full-on redesigning it (although the particular artwork felt a little "stylized").

The "scale plating" idea at 1:16 reminds me of the armor from 'AvP', especially the bit running down the middle of the chest and abdomen. Putting scale plates on the dreadlocks themselves is a novel idea, though. And the one at 1:21 feels like Berserker's armor from 'Predators', with the straps and cloth bands.
The one at 1:38 feels very "low-tech Prometheus" - the lower-abdomen ribbing and the ridges going up the neck remind me of the Engineer from the end of the movie, but then it's got cloth sleeves and whatnot.

Also while this might have just been because they weren't the focus, I like how the naked Predator body designs don't have anything resembling human genitalia.
I'm serious - I remember an idea tossed around that "male" and "female" Predators would be visually indistinguishable, and that any of the Predators in any of the movies could conceivably be male or female and the audience would have no idea. I always thought that was a neat approach.

I agree with SiL that the face concepts feel a little thin and squished, but I think part of that is the perspective. The faces look too "flat", but almost all of the designs are from straight-on. If they had some accompanying profile or quarter-profile drawings, I might find them more appealing - the designs didn't really start to fall into place for me until the 3D renders at 5:30
On one hand I'm not real big on the large, pronounced ridges going down the center of the top of the head, but on the flip side, shaking up the shape of the head in radical ways goes a pretty long way towards conveying "these are individuals" more than just changing their colors.
And in the BTS clips of filming the Emissary Predators, some of the more pronounced design features from the artwork feel a lot less extreme and it comes together a bit better.

SiL

SiL

#127
I like some of the designs, but most are changing the overall shape too much to be too human. Keep them lumpy and ugly and find more creative ways to differentiate them.

Edit

To that end I think the finished versions were probably the best of the designs presented.

Xenomrph

Quote from: SiL on Dec 08, 2018, 12:25:10 PM
I like some of the designs, but most are changing the overall shape too much to be too human. Keep them lumpy and ugly and find more creative ways to differentiate them.

Edit

To that end I think the finished versions were probably the best of the designs presented.
What do you mean by "too human"? Like, as opposed to the Predator designs from the other movies.

SiL

By shrinking the mandibles down to effectively tumours with teeth on the upper and lower jaw, they're streamlining the face into ever more human forms and proportions. You might be right in that it's because the pictures are front on, but as concept art impression is everything.

Xenomrph

Quote from: SiL on Dec 08, 2018, 12:49:11 PM
By shrinking the mandibles down to effectively tumours with teeth on the upper and lower jaw, they're streamlining the face into ever more human forms and proportions. You might be right in that it's because the pictures are front on, but as concept art impression is everything.
Totally.
I agree, the ones with the small mandibles felt the most "off" to me - although I think there is potential in varying the mandible and tooth sizes as a way of differentiating individuals, just like how different humans and animals have different jaw shapes and facial structures.

I think the eyes and brows felt "Predator" enough across almost all of the designs that it never felt too human to me, but I agree the narrower mouths feel more human and not in a good way.

SiL

5 and 6 in the slideshow that were posted were the worst offenders. Some of them later - around 10 onwards I think - had interesting variations with definite Predator features that I liked, and I think it's weird we've never seen Predators onscreen do anything with their hair. Such a simple addition to make them stand out. Comics do it well.

Xenomrph

Speaking of comics, I think they can get away with "stylizing" Predator designs in ways that live action can't. Like there are a lot of Predator comics that heavily change up how Predator faces look ('Predator: Homeworld' comes to mind) and I can dig it on a "creative interpretation" level even if it's not my cup of tea, but translating some of those designs to live-action would be a disaster. :P I think a bunch of these concept drawings illustrate that pretty well.

Voodoo Magic

Quote from: SiL on Dec 08, 2018, 09:38:36 AM
I meant the fan ideas people were coming up with cut the roles along those lines. See 'males are hunters, females are scientists' up above.

Well of course that would be totally inappropriate.  Recently, going with the premise that Super Predators were practicing dna manipulation as the "Predators" script suggests, someone attempted to make the point that the Assasin Upgrade from "The Predator" could not belong to the same rogue, blasphemous Yautja clan with the Supers, because the Supers were a black subspecies and the Upgrade was not - and therefore, the Upgrade must have come from the honorable clan depicted in Predator, Predator 2 etc.  Hoping this fellow fan just didn't realize what they were saying, just didn't realize how it was sounding, or what inappropriate parallels could be made, I just explained associating ideology with Yautja subspecies or race was problematic and extremely narrow thinking. And that goes with gender too.

MrPeterKeyes666

Fred Dekker has posted an explanation of why the Emissary Predators were cut in the comments on his FB page.

AvPGalaxy: About | Contact | Cookie Policy | Manage Cookie Settings | Privacy Policy | Legal Info
Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Patreon RSS Feed
Contact: General Queries | Submit News