1953 George Pal Martian
Maybe not the most clever of titles, but it should make searching for it a bit easier.
A few years ago, I offered a model based upon Albert Nozaki's manta ray inspired Martian war machines from George Pal's 1953 movie adaptation of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds". Winchel D. Chung Jr. modeled it in Blender and granted me permission to convert it to a Poser friendly format and diistribute it with the 3D community. Later, Thalek rigged the model, giving the cobra headed heat ray "EasyPose" parameters.
Now, I present the pilot of that vehicle, the Martian itself as envisioned by Charles Gemora, known throughout the 1940s as the "King of the apes suits". If you have ever watched a film from the 40s that had a performer in a gorilla costume, odds are it was a suit Gemora built and was himself wearing. By the 50s, gorillas as "monsters" were losing their appeal and Gemora started branching into other creatures. Arguably his crowning achievement was the Martian that threatened Gene Barry and and Ann Robinson within the ruins of a farmhouse for the 1953 film. Admittedly very different from the cephalopodic creatures wells described in his novel, the capped mushroom silhouette became one of the most iconic images of cinematic science fiction, still holding its own after 64 years.
According to his daughter who assisted him during the production, Gemora was still working upon the costume/puppet the night before it was to be filmed, the rubber still curing while on set. Gemora's daughter queezed bladder that pumped air into "veins" of the costume, making them pulsate on camera. To have the Martian flee the premises after Gene Barry struck it, Gemora balanced upon a dolly wearing the suit. When the crew pulled a cable, making the dolly roll across the set, the forecwas so great as to make Gemora topple backwards! Alas, the costume did not survive the production, so all that's left are images, footage from the movie itself and a few "behind the scenes" snapshots.
SsSandu_C is the talented fellow who made the model I now offer, sculpting it originally in ZBrush and converting the multi-million polygon mesh into a frugal .OBJ format, the detail preserved as various texture and bump maps. I then presented a tweaked version of this mesh to Jim "Xaa" Farris who deftly rigged it for use in Poser giving it some "extended remore control" morphs to bend and sway the "trunk" as well as to bend the digits with a single dial. He also supplied a collection of "starter" poses. I created a displacement map to extrude the veins ans the lenses of the tri faceted eye.
You're probably wondering why there are no lower appendages. When SsSandu_C accepted the modeling challenge, I provided a few resources, noting probably the best was a vinyl model kit released a few years ago by "Pegasus Models". The makers of that kit had a dilemma. The movie only revealed part of a central torso and the unusual shoulder structure with the 3 lens eye. the fact was, there was no "bottom". What we saw in the movie was just a fraction less than what Gemora sculpted. Since then, fans have envisioned all sorts of lower extremeties, everything from 2 conventional, but spindly, legs, to 3 legs, to a mass of writhing tentacles. Rather than playing favorites and thus frustrating a sizeable percentage of fans, the kit designers took a cue from Gemora's efforts and gave the Martian nothing more than the "trunk" we saw in the movie, merely flairing it at the base, suggesting something akin to the "foot" of a snail or a slug. Now, I can't imagine such a locomotibe addendage could have allowed it to race from the room as fast as depicted in the movie, but it was a "neutral" and safe choice by the kit designers. SsSandu_C decided to take that approach. JimFarris was kind enough to add control points to the for points of the base so they can be twisted and shifted. In theory, one might animate these points to have the Martian "slither" and undulate across a scene.
Silly me, I nearly forgot; you can find the model upon ShareCG.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/87706/gallery/11/Poser/Pal-Martian-1953-Design
Yes, both SsSandu_C and Jim Farris have granted me permission to share this model with the 3D community.
I's like to see what one does with this famous monster of filmland.
Sincerely,
Bill
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Comments
Amazing! The Pal version of WotW was one of the three favorite movies of my childhood, the other two being "Forbidden Planet" and the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
I remember being galvanized at the sight of this hideous thing. While the Tom Cruise remake had high production values (who wouldn't want to have a tripod that looked like it had been designed by Lexus?) and their take on the Martians was interesting, the alien design didn't hold a candle to this version for sheer visceral horror.
Thanks for making this available!
Thank you so much for this model! The George Pal version of the story (just like the Orson Welles radioplay), took HG Wells' novel in totally different and frightening directions. The real strength of the Pal version are the special effects and this critter is a fine example of that. I can't wait to try him out later this week!
Wow, thanks so much for sharing, not just the model, but the interesting backstory as well!
Every time I see 'Martian' I can instantly hear the sound of the Martian weapons from that movie. Man.
DSDT, this is what makes me smile. Sure, it's nice to see the download numbers climb, but it doesn't mean much unless someone actually uses the items. So, thanks for posting!
I gather you've employed DAZ Studio. if so, what, if any, problems did you have with the figure? If it (hopefully) did not give you much trouble, I'll note on the download page that DAZ users can have fun with it as well.
Sincerely,
Bill
Hey Bill, yes DS 4.8 using iray.
When it loads as default in Daz Studio, it comes out like this. Only the Diffuse Color maps load:
So I saw that you had a few other maps included in the runtime, I manually selected "NM_martian.jpg" for the "Normal Map", and "Veins-Dsp-J-1.jpg" for the Displacement Strength map, which I set to 200%. I also increases the Maximum Displacement to 1.38.Of course as you can see, once I get the veins to "pop out", it also introduces some jagged edges. I'm not sure how to fix that, someone with more experience in DS may be able to do a better job.
Also for the diffuse color, I changed it to a light gray instead of white, as it seemed like the skin was a little too orange.
And thanks again for sharing this awesome model with us!
How about the "bending"? Jim Farris created controls that would make the digits curl from dials listed within the hand without having to bend each joint. He also created dials listed under the bottom body segment that can make the trunk bend, twist or even "S" curve without having to adjust each segment. Do these function within DAZ Studio?
Sincerely,
Bill
Yes the easy pose dials work very well, no problem there! It should be fun to animate it.
So, just some oddities with the materials, but the rigging works. I honestly didn't know if the EasyPose controls would "translate".
Uh, before I make any grand announcements, what version of DS are you running? It's possible it might not work in some release levels.
Sincerely,
Bill
I'm running Daz Studio ver 4.8.0.59 (Win 64-bit).
I'm rendering a quick 5 second animation test clip for you so you can see it in motion.
Here you go... its a mess, I was gonna have him run through a corn field, but that didn't work out, so then I threw the same animation in the house, and didn't take into account the width ot the door. But at least you can see the potential to do a cool animation with him.
Thanks for the animation demo! One can see it start more or less upright and then bend his "trunk" while his "head" remains facing forward, demonstrating the "S" curve bending control.
I'm glad to know both programs can use it!
Sincerely,
Bill
Just in case anyone is not aware, I also offer what I consider a rather "screen accurate" version of the "war machine" as design ed by Albert Nozaki for "George Pal's 1953 release.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/56552/gallery/5/3D-Model/Martian-War-Machine-Poser-Rigged
Winchel D. Chung Jr. modeled it in Blender and granted me permission to share a Poser/DAZ friendly version with the 3D community. Thalek rigged the iconic cobra headed heat ray to use "EasyPose" controls.
Contrary to understandable confusion, these things were never meant to be 'flying" craft. In the film itself Clayton Forrester speculates the machines use "magnetic legs" to keep them aloft. In one shot, when the first machine rises from the pit, the audience can faintly see "sparkling" columns, supposedly achieved through a "Jacob's ladder" technique. Alas, this proved too much an electrocution hazard, so the effect was dropped for the rest of the miniature sequences. So, even in the 1953 movies, they were still, technically, "tripods".
I achieved the magnetic legs and heat ray effect "in render" using a free "welding arc" prop Anthony Appleyard offers at Rendo'.
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/shower-of-sparks-e-g-from-blowtorch-or-grinder-/7570
Sincerely,
Bill
Heh! I bet that girl is now trying to learn how to phase through objects now that the martian showed her how XD
Looking f'ing SWEET, Bill! That's a gogeous render! Loved that movie when the martians wingtip torpedos used the same sound FX that were used for Start Trek's photon torpedos (of course, I'm right at the age where I actually saw Trek before I watching WotW, so to me, I'll always refere to the sound FX as the "Trek Torpedo" rather than the WotW's
). And I thought I had heard the cobra periscope's heat ray sound FX used on another show, too. But I can't remember where.....
LOL, indeed. Actually, by this time, I'm pretty sure she's actually on a mothership being used in some horrible experiment by now...
Love it Bill, thanks for mentioning this. I didn't even look at your other shared items on sharecg, something I meant to do last week, and then got distracted with other things.
The "wingtip blaster/photon torpedo" sound effect predates even "War of the Worlds". I watched a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis" comedy that dated from 1952, maybe even '51 in which the pair "bed down" for the night in a passenger train's "sleeper acr". At one point, Lewis strikes his head against the underside of the upper bunk and..."Kah-Thwooong!" Needless to say, I pulled a rather Lewis-like double take!
The "levitation" sound for the '53 war machines (as they rose from their work pits) would also wind up in Trek. The Cicada-like trilling buzz became the various phaser blasts. The lower pitched warbles were usually used as the ship's main banks while the higher pitched shrills were usually applied the hand weapons.
I can't personally recall any instances when the "pinging" scan of the heat ray, the guitar-like thrumming of its "charge", or its actual "blast" were used in other productions. I mean, I suspect they were recycled, but no examples come to mind.
Sincerely,
Bill
Interesting, did the CG model maker for the Martian alien look at the way these beasties were portrayed in the "War of the Worlds" TV series from the 80s? It was meant as a decades-later sequel to the classic movie. Pretty sure they showed the entire alien body in the pilot movie episode at least.
SsSandu's primary reference was the Pegasus Hobbies model kit...
http://pegasushobbies.net/catalog/images/9008-2-lg.jpg
...which in turn was closely based upon the costume Charles Gemora created for the 1953 movie...
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4044/4391832944_06b6cab7c9_b.jpg
The 1988 syndicated series by Greg Strangis took a lot of liberties with Gemora's concept, bulking up the limbs and digits, all but losing the the bold spectrum of the tri-lens eye, even going so far as to slap on a third arm!
Sincerely,
Bill
Redfern,
Only one thing to say about this:
BWAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! AWESOME!!
DSDT,
Looks like we found out just what the experiment was....
I will never, ever be able to get this image out of my mind. Well played.
Thank you, both!
I was inspired by one of the later MGM "Droopy" cartoon shorts (dating from the mid to late 50s as the art was stylized and "flat"). Droopy is sheep herder who crosses paths with a rancher. (Ranchers often believed that sheep ate the grass too low, damaging it from properly regrowing and resulting in less yield for cattle.) The rancher, played by Wendel Wolf (voiced by Daws Butler, speaking with a stressed Southern drawl) sees Droopy's flock as a threat and soon the fighting starts.
It finally excalates to gunfire and Wendel Wolf ducks behind a rock. Droopy's shots chisel the stone into a replica of the famous Venus De Milo. a final shot breaks off the head and Wendel cranes his head, aligning it with the "statue". He glances down to see the feminine form and in classic Tex Avery form, hikes the skirt to run, revealing a pair of pin-up proportioned legs...in heels.
This render is a "tribute" to that visual gag.
Sincerely,
Bill