Vrahno
BIONICLE walk cycles
updated
In this brief video, you, a white Australian man with dirty fingernails (don't try to deny that's what you are, the proof is on the screen) interrupt Godzilla's favorite private activity that he does in public. And you pay the price for it. My question is why did you do this, dear viewer? Why did you not run like a normal person would have?
I came across this particular bit of Godzilla related weirdness when researching the history of the franchise in Hungary, during which I found an array of both informative and puzzling Godzilla-related facts. This was one of the more bizarre ones.
Anyone interested can see the rest of my findings here: docs.google.com/document/d/1OPLb3izyt6-JFgfi1x27_5V0NRDVfMTT8_gWjEhYzyc/edit
Or if you don't feel like reading 50 pages of rambles, here is a shortened summary: deviantart.com/vrahno/journal/History-of-Godzilla-movies-in-Hungary-756246706
Generally, I have doubts and reservations about each of my animations. Since this one references a very volatile political/historical topic, it is probably one of the most heavily compromised ones I ever made. After weeks of consideration and testing out alternate cuts, I decided to delete a lot of the content and keep the focus of the video mostly on the subject's absurdity and on the characters' antics. Real life names, specific details of events, references to current politics and several shots of already finished animation were removed, meaning I wasted days, if not weeks of work just to keep the video brief and preferably non-controversial, even if this meant making it less informative.
Supposedly, according to articles from the early 2010s, the cow-stick-Godzilla staff was set to be displayed at an exhibit dedicated to the 2006 riots. As I have found no concrete proof or pictures of the exhibit, and I sure as hell wasn't gonna go out to see if it still exists, I left that part out of the video too.
I also would have wanted to use my own photos of the Baby Godzilla finger puppet, but since my order had not yet arrived when this video was made, I had to use images from Google.
So was this a topic that deserved to be made into a video? Probably not but I think it's an interesting and unexpected bit of international Godzilla trivia regardless. Something that makes you go "Hm, that's odd and stupid." Just like my videos.
This is a work-in-progress animation, one that I've wanted to make for several years now. The truth is most of the videos on my channel are mere throwaway ideas I tend to forget about once they're uploaded, not really the kind of content that I could feel proud of, nor the type of content that I actually like to watch. They are meant for others who enjoy them. I hope to make this animation a bit different, though I don't think it'll be finished in the near future.
I didn't plan to share any unfinished previews but this has already taken up so much time that I thought I owed viewers a glimpse into what I've been up to. Just the underwater shots of Godzilla swimming took over two months to animate due to issues related to lighting and water effects (some rendering artifacts are still visible in the clip). There were countless times when I almost scrapped the whole thing. A couple troubling real life problems likewise made it hard to focus on the animation -- this isn't the place to discuss personal matters, I just wanted any curious viewers to be clear about such things.
As is usually the case, I had to abandon doing things the "correct" way and used tricks to fake effects like underwater caustics and light rays, rather than relying on Blender's built-in lighting options. At least this video taught me not to aim too high and stick to animation methods I'm already familiar with.
The Godzilla model is a variation of my 1954 model, with altered facial features, more realistic eyes and most of its costume-like traits removed. There is a lot more to the model and the environment than what's shown here, which I don't want to spoil yet.
To the uninitiated, Voriki, the "Toa of Energy" was a very early example of a fan-made Bionicle character who gained infamy across the fanbase, fooling many young kids who thought he was official, then getting branded as a fraud once the truth came out. And yet, nearly two decades later, Voriki is a celebrated part of the Bionicle fanbase's history. Watch this fan documentary for more insight: youtu.be/m9S1YT5r_Kg
If Voriki's creator is still around and sees this, I hope he likes it.
The animation is also a tribute to the original 2001 Toa Mata animations by LEGO, Advance and Ghost VFX.
The Muaka tiger shows up as well, which I've wanted to animate ever since I made the model back in early 2015. This was especially challenging, as the Muaka toy was definitely not designed with articulation and movement in mind, beyond its extending neck, snapping jaws and the dangly little caterpillar tread it has in place of back legs. Getting it to move without the model crumpling in on itself was a chore. I can hardly even imagine how people making fan games (like "Bionicle: Masks of Power" and "Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui") manage to animate it. It would have been interesting to redesign the Muaka into a more functional creature, similar to how I've made Voriki's model, sadly I didn't have the time for that.
Also included in the animation are the Amana Volo Spheres, orbs of energy that appear when certain Rahi beasts have their infected masks removed, which are probably among the most obscure parts of Bionicle lore, having only appeared in a couple of video games and nowhere else in the story.
Full theme here: youtu.be/Wop-N3NjeTw
I originally made these Bagan models back in March 2021, to be used for a fighting animation, eventually. (I just got too sidetracked making low effort shitpost vids.) They are based on official but unused concept designs, created by artists Yasushi Nirasawa and Shinji Nishikawa.
I tried to follow the original artwork as closely as possible in my simplified modeling style, with the only slight alteration being the wing attachment of Bagan's red-black form. The wings are able to connect to Bagan's arms similarly (but not exactly) to how they are depicted on official concept art, but they've been kept separate for this test animation to make the transformation effect between the two forms simpler and smoother.
The energy shooting effect of Bagan's armored form is not satisfactory but it's the best I could come up with for now. Better results could be achieved by combining different effects and carefully chosen camera angles.
Work on my longer animations might be delayed a bit due to sickness. Here is a short, quick gag clip to keep my dear viewers sated until then.
I totally haven't done this joke already some years ago... Or have I? youtu.be/J4UyhrmIwa4
Not EVERY version of Godzilla is shown here, these are just the ones I have 3D models of and could come up with gags for.
The idea for this video was also inspired by the 1966 Hungarian short cartoon Five Minutes Murder, aka Five Minutes Thrill (Öt perc gyilkosság). vimeo.com/304147265
If anyone wants to support me, especially now that my country has plummeted deep into an economic recession, they can do so here: ko-fi.com/vrahno Any support is appreciated, though not expected, as I'm sure others around the world are having a rough time too.
Both videos were running too long and needed trimming.
Technically youtu.be/78eYfQf95ic can also be considered an alternate deleted scene, as it was meant to be part of these videos.
One of the main recurring topics of my videos are the occasional references to paleontology and paleo-imagery. Originally, during Anguirus' review of his dinosaur toy, I also wanted him to reference Anthony Beeson, the scientific consultant of the toy company CollectA who has overseen the design of their prehistoric animal figurines, as Anguirus' toy is also meant to be a nod to CollectA figures. But given the video's vulgar humor and the fact that Anthony was already rather old, I decided to cut the joke as I didn't want to seem disrespectful toward him. On May 11, less than two weeks after I posted Part 2 of the video, it was announced that Anthony had sadly passed away at the age of 72. Thus in retrospect, I feel that removing his reference from this scene was a good decision.
The final scene shown here references Dean Owen and his infamous pornographic novel adaptation of the movie Reptilicus. I decided to cut this reference and redo the dialogue because this version just didn't feel right, it was meandering away from the main topic.
This is more like Part 2.5. This was intended to be the final scene of Part 2 (youtu.be/2TWZCCYa_tE), but I became very conflicted about it during editing. The scene went through many, many changes and I even thought about cutting the whole thing because it's mostly just a pointless detour that's barely tied to the previous parts. Hence why I made it a separate video.
The uncertainties came from the dialogue and the subjects discussed, which I felt were far too negative and detached from the rest of the animation. Certain monsters in my animations represent different viewpoints about to the giant monster film genre and its fandom, and the Danish monster Reptilicus here is meant to be a combined spoof of a stereotypical monster film hater and spiteful, closed-minded European. He embodies a hateful, dismissive and often hypocritical mentality that has been holding back the genre's discourse since the inception of monster films, a mentality especially strong here in Europe where these types of films have a far lesser impact and acceptance than overseas.
I and many other fans have experienced this ourselves, I've read about it in film literature dating back to the 50s, and I have written about it myself. Even the animation I originally wanted to make, before I decided to put that idea aside and make this YouTube Award animation instead, would have been about giant monster films in Europe. It is a subject rarely spoken about by American or Japanese fans who live in their own separate worlds, but many of us Europeans think about it almost daily. In this video though, this topic is touched on in a more shallow manner and comes across as little more than a one-sided rant or an overlong gag.
At first I had a lot more jokes planned, including a reference to the infamous Reptilicus porn novelization, but they all needlessly extended the scene and veered too far away from the animation's focal themes. Even in the video's final form, the whole argument between Reptilicus, Yongary and Agon kind of goes nowhere and is overly repetitive. The editing and timing in the middle part is perhaps noticeably sloppy, as I had to reorder and recut the shots and completely change the original dialogue. I wanted to cut it down by a few more minutes, but removing those shots messed up the scene's flow.
I don't think the video's a total waste though, as at least Bagan gets more of an introduction and I also took the chance to include some fun cameos that a few people will probably find amusing.
If anyone wants to, you can support me here with small donations: ko-fi.com/vrahno
I didn't expect that it would take me over a year to make Part 2 of this animation. Truth be told, this really took me about half a year, as the video I originally had in mind was a lot longer. Due to my inability to pace a single scene, much less an entire lengthy animation, I had to edit, trim and expand it over the course of many months, until I decided to just cut off the last 12 minutes and release this as its own video. Hence why the ending is so abrupt. Plans and ideas changed, and I thought it would be better to just share the part of the animation that's already complete, rather than make people wait longer until I figured out what to do with the final scene.
So the last scene that I cut off from this video will become Part 3 of the animation, which will be uploaded shortly as a separate video. Then the rest after that will be Part 4, and perhaps Part 5, and so on. Amazingly, when I began making this animation, I thought it would all fit into one half hour long video. Yet it's already pushing 50 minutes and I'm not even halfway into the so-called story that's been unfolding here.
If you want, you can support me here: ko-fi.com/vrahno
Remember the "Godzilla Fan Animation Thing" preview clips that I've been uploading in years past? This is another one of those, taking place between youtu.be/I1cS0H29QHI and youtu.be/vkFkHHouKhM I haven't touched the project for nearly two years now, it was interesting to go back and look at it with fresh eyes.
This was my first attempt at a giant monster battle, made back in early 2015. I wanted to share this so bad for years, but the computer I was using at the time could barely render and even animating was a challenge. That is one reason why this looks so rough, but I was still figuring out how to handle basic things. My intent was always to start the project with slower, simpler fights and gradually make the action crazier in later scenes as I got more comfortable with animating and adding effects.
This scene actually looked much worse originally. For this upload, I had to update every shot, fix animation errors, make the movements less stiff, speed them up or slow them down, modify camera motions and angles, and redo some shots entirely. I also re-modeled Ghidorah's body. But there wasn't much I could improve on the fight itself, if you can even call it a fight. It's more of a brief standoff.
Since this is still just a preview, I may or may not do more corrections later, for when (or if) I complete the whole project, which is currently made up of about an hour and 20 minutes of unfinished animation.
I apologize for the fluctuating audio and the unevenly spliced music. YouTube blocked this video multiple times due to copyright issues, so the music had to be changed. That is one thing I cannot improve upon. I still don't know how I'll handle the rest of this project, since so much of it relies on copyrighted music. Back in 2015, this wasn't that big of an issue, but currently it's the biggest roadblock for the project. Even though it's a big parody, that isn't always accepted as an example of fair use.
I also mixed some original roar sounds by combining low-pitched Godzilla roars and a couple of shrill metal creaking noises with alternating pitches. This is actually the sound of my old bed creaking, which I recorded back in 2008 to use it later as a monster screech.
Here's a little trivia. Some speech from my TV was accidentally recorded along with the creaking noise, so whenever Godzilla Earth shows up in my animations and makes metallic sounds, you can very faintly hear the voice of the late and great Hungarian voice actor Gyula Szersén in his movements.
As of now, you can support me here: ko-fi.com/vrahno
Support me here, if you'd like to: ko-fi.com/vrahno
Testing how morphing could be animated between the different forms of the monster Bagan, to be later used in a full length animation. These are just some of Bagan's many alternate forms, I intend to feature more of them in upcoming videos. This is also a test for what roars and other sounds would suit each form.
The designs were originally developed by artists Shinji Nishikawa, Minoru Yoshida and Yasushi Nirasawa.
This is both a preview clip and a deleted scene from an animation I'm working on, the second part of the "Godzilla Gets a YouTube Award" video (youtube.com/watch?v=zX518ieNrXo).
The preview part lasts until 2:05, this segment will be part of the finished animation in some form. The rest of this clip is a scene that I decided to scrap. The dialogue went nowhere and didn't fit into how I wanted the scene and the rest of the conversation to play out. Plus, there was already a lot of dialogue in the animation anyway, it needed some trimming.
I have planned out this bit of banter between Godzilla and Rodan years prior, and it's a bit disappointing not to put it into any major video. The inspiration behind Godzilla's design, a pastiche of American and Czechoslovakian paleoart from the mid 1900s, is one of my favorite subjects in the history of dinosaur and monster-themed media, and I've always wanted to reference it in one of my animations. So at least here it is in a deleted scene.
It's a film that has been on my mind literally every day since I first watched it over four years ago, and I have long wanted to make an animation inspired by its brilliant artistry and symbolism-filled visual design. I was glad to see the movie going through a kind of international renaissance in recent years, which Jankovics thankfully lived to see as well. His unfortunate passing on May 29 was a deep loss not only for the field of animation but for Hungarian culture and cultural preservation as a whole. It is a painful blow to me too, as his views on the artistry and possibilities of animation and his work philosophy have been major inspirations to me. He struggled for years to get this film off the ground, and his final finished movie, 2011's The Tragedy of Man took 23 arduous years to complete (28 if you also count scripting and pre-production), but he never gave up. To pay tribute to my favorite animated film from my favorite animator, I went back to the idea to do it for real this time.
Marcell Jankovics was a staunch devotee and master of hand-drawn 2D animation, and any 3D recreation of his free-form, always shifting art and character designs can only be an inferior copy. He famously said CGI is not "real art" and refused to learn digital techniques. Had he lived to see this video, I sincerely hope he would not have taken it as an insult -- to my knowledge, he liked to see how his works could inspire others.
Rather than try to copy the film's exact art style, I went for a more three-dimensional approach, with simplistic and stylized light and texture effects that (I hope) managed to stay true to the original work's surreal, "psychedelic" world where characters, actions and even shot transitions fulfill some kind of symbolic role. I kept the dragon models simple and loosely constructed, allowing them to change shape and show off different light effects. In the film, their designs are in flux, changing every few seconds. That I couldn't replicate, but I did try to stay true to the basic ideas Jankovics wanted to express with them.
As you can see, the concept of "dragon" has been interpreted rather liberally. They all symbolize backward ideas. The three-headed dragon is a primitive man of stone with the head of Olmec statues and the telltale rock nutsack of a prehistoric fertility idol -- ironically, he is impotent in practice, as he has no penis, only his club that's separate from his body.
His seven-headed brother is living weaponry who can transform his limbs at will, and represents both wartime violence and sexual abuse with his phallic tank turret. He uses it not to create life but to destroy it by shooting bullets and bombs.
The twelve-headed monster is a living metropolis, a symbol of the deceptiveness of urbanization. He reflects a clear but fake image of the world with his glass faces, while he obfuscates and suffocates the world with the polluting smog he wears as his clothing. His main head also carries the stolen holy halo of the Rain King, the benevolent god of the Upper World. These dragons are ancient, depraved and immoral evils disguised as symbols of technological progress (a notion Jankovics was well familiar with, given his experience with Hungary's socialist/communist regime).
All three also showcase symbols of the planet Saturn. According to Jankovics, Eurasian steppe myths (to which the movie pays homage to) re-imagined the ancient Roman god Saturn as the symbol of death and divide, and the forefather of dragons.
I also included the giant evil snake made up of 77 small chain link dragons. In the background are the three spinning apple castles the dragons have invaded and stolen from the World Tree, flipping them upside down and placing them on the tree's underground roots.
As a bonus, the one-eyed Rain King of the Upper World also appears at the end in his weakened state, keeping watch over the dragons under the guise of a cloud, waiting for Son of the White Mare to arrive, slay the dragons and restore his lost kingdom's old order. His presence serves as a little hopeful message, a nod to Jankovics's own beliefs that we should not forget the morals of our traditions amidst modernity's uncertainties.
This video is a mere tribute to a film that means a lot to me and an artist whose works I respect and whom I dearly miss despite never having met him. It is no more than fan work and a pale imitation of the original. To truly respect Marcell Jankovics's devotion to his craft, I will go back and continue working on the animations I had began making years ago, no matter how long they might take.
To those who are disappointed because they expected new content, I also made a short but stupid animation just for this purpose: youtu.be/BpwyBEIBND8
A few seconds of music used in my "Godzilla Gets a YouTube Award" video were hit with a copyright claim (though the music identified by YouTube's content ID system is not actually the one I had used, and it also flagged sound effects that were not part of the music track), which means the audio from part of the scene might have to be erased. So just to preserve the full scene with complete audio, I am uploading it separately, with different music.
If anyone is confused by this scene, watching the full video gives (some) context.
And to anyone interested, they can support me with small donations on this service: ko-fi.com/vrahno
Support me here: ko-fi.com/vrahno
These cuts include badly done shots and flat gags that didn't fit the flow of the scenes or crossed a line by being overly silly, random, or out-of-character. One of my main intents with these comedic animations has always been to catch people off-guard and make them go "What the heck was that???" before making them chuckle or at least smirk. But that doesn't mean that absolutely anything can go.
Both animation and humor involve experimentation and improvising, and these also lead to a lot of regrets or second thoughts. I usually only find less than half of the jokes in my animations to be at least somewhat amusing. If possible, I try to redo the ones I don't like by either making them even crazier or by attempting to come up with better gags. But there's times when this can't be easily done without reanimating entire scenes, so the weaker gags are often kept in, with the hope that somebody out there might find them funny. The strict changes in YouTube's content guidelines also mean that many scenarios or lines of dialogue I come up with have to be toned down.
However, some jokes or badly done animations are easier to cut out rather than waste more time on them. I realize there's plenty other similarly dumb scenes or lines in the rest of the animation, but I have to ask for your patience until Part 2 is done. It will provide some payoff to Part 1's setups.
The shots at the end are from a different, unfinished video, the "Godzilla Fan Animation Thing" that I've spent the better part of the past 6 years working on. That one is also full of sloppy humor and bizarre scenes, and it also causes me a lot of headache because there's so much stuff in there that I will probably cut out.
This particular scene, where Godzilla turns his head into a variety of "cute" Godzilla designs during an argument with another character, is one of these. I can't give away the scene's context yet, but I've spent many months on this one 3-4 minute long sequence alone, rewriting and reanimating it at least 3-4 times. All I can say is, this scene is teaching me valuable lessons in animation-making. Some scenes are best left out or reconfigured, no matter how hard you've worked on them. Even scenes featuring Godzilla.
Now onto what this video is. There's times I need to take some time off from the bigger or more complex animations I've been making behind the scenes for the past few years and keep this channel going with new content. So low effort side-projects like this will crop up from time to time.
Out of the approximately half a dozen animation ideas I had, I narrowed my choice down to two that I could feasibly make in a reasonably timeframe. One of those ideas was far better developed, with a clearer theme related to a relevant subject in the Godzilla franchise, it had a better structured story, and a more "divisive" type of satirical humor... That is not the idea that I made into a video, because I thought its subject matter and jokes wouldn't mesh too well with the sensitive state of things going in the world these days.
The second option was what became this video here, basically a dumping ground of various second and third-rate gags and other types of silliness I couldn't fit into other animations, loosely connected and playing out like some unstructured string of consciousness that never really gets to the point. The decision to split it into two parts (hopefully it won't be more) came about because it was already way too long and listening to all the monster talk can get grating after a while.
Part 2 will have more monster action and it'll be even more ridiculous.
About the donation option, I haven't set up any before because and I'm still unsure of how reliable or useful these services would be to a channel like mine. Regardless, to the people who've said they'd like to support me in the past (there's got to be at least four of you), I set up the link at the top.
I don't expect much from it, but in lieu of a Patreon account, this is what I have. If this Ko-fi thing works out in any way, then I give my preemptive gratitude to anyone who helps me out. If it doesn't, I'll just remove the link and forget about it.
For a very kooky animation that's currently in the works.
youtu.be/9q4aVLiw3eM
youtu.be/YdRY7cIfEi8
youtu.be/kGej_mzyeOo
youtu.be/Y97gvwaTPpA
youtu.be/0e3qJA9_SWY
Antroz: As his toy only had small wings that looked like they were in a folded position, I gave him giant, articulated wings with an extendable rod system that greatly increase their surface area. Rather than having normal hands, his blades are part of his hands and function more as claws.
Chirox: His toy always made me wonder what the designers were going for, with his stupendously long arms with too many joints but only a single pair of measly little wings placed around his elbows. When not flying, his appendages fold up neatly into massive shoulder pads and stumpy yet twiglike "arm remnants", which is the motif I mostly tried to keep.
This left little room for articulated wings, so he only got a small set of bat wings in the middle of his limbs. I thought of incorporating his blades into the wing, but they'd have had to be redesigned for that and any configuration I tried resulted in the membrane folding in on itself. I prioritized Chirox's role as a scientist more so than a flyer, so his hands needed to be free and separate from his wing membrane. Thus, I modeled him with 5-fingered hands (two thumbs on each) and attached his blades to his wrist, so they'd be at the ready at all times.
Vamprah: Straightforward reinterpretation of his toy, with more unified wings that still keep the set's smooth and basic look. The hardest part to make was his claw. To be in any way functional, it needed massive gaps to allow room for its piston to move. It's strange to see such a classic piece redesigned like this but it was necessary if I wanted to articulate it. It was either this, or removing the piston.
Gorast: Tidied up the messy torso design, added back armor and moved the wings from her arms to her back for easier animation.
Krika: Basically a copy of the toy, only with more articulation and a redesigned third arm.
Bitil: His set looks like a feeble, insignificant bug built by a beginner MOCist. But it's not like he's a crucial or even that memorable of a character, so I didn't spend too much time on him.
He got more red spikes to even out his color scheme and actual beetle-like wings under his back armor to allow him to fly more convincingly. Their look was based on the wing pieces from the Lego Insectoids sets of the late '90s. Aside from that, his only unique aspect is his lack of hands.
Mutran: Also a faithful adaptation of his toy, only with hinged fingers, thumbs and more articulate wings. I kept said wings comically small to fit his canon description. To make his mask different from that of Chirox, I accentuated the uneven pattern on its side and back, which also brings to mind the messy, spiky hair of a mad scientist.
Icarax: Never liked how half-done his set looked, as if the designers had given up above waist level. I packed him full of armor, gave him symmetrical arms and a right hand (styled after the two-thumbed design of Teridax's hands from the Miramax films), but kept his left hand fused to his talon-like weapon. Unlike movie-Makuta, I kept the toy design of his mask, not even giving him a mouth-slit.
He mainly needed more bulk and "presence", while being lithe enough to stay true to his warrior persona. The wings are the most obvious change from his toy, their jagged look is meant to reflect his violent, sorta edgy nature.
Lewa: Just his toy in 3D form. The little propellers inside his mask spin like in the official promo videos and his blade received an electric charge effect.
Kopaka: I had a tough time deciding whether to "correct" his mask to have the scope on the right side like every other Kopaka design, or keep it on the left side, which is more of a Nuju trait. Once I mirrored the mask, after a while I didn't even realize it's been changed, my mind accepted it as Kopaka Phantoka's true look. I thought of giving him Nuva shoulder armor but those would have intersected with his wings.
Pohatu: Changed his feet to the Mantax foot design, though slimmed down. These have a vaguely similar design to his classic Mata/Nuva foot extensions.
Tahu: More armor, referring back to his Nuva design.
Gali: Switched torso design with Onua. She's back to her taller self, with a far less ugly mask with some extra features like a retracting scope. The "butt flap" (based on a prototype design) gives her a more unique silhouette and a more balanced color scheme.
Onua: Got his hunch back from Gali. He became stocky but robust. I tentatively gave his mask a "mouth recess" to look less like a monstrous Makuta mask.
Also changed the Toa's eye colors to match the originals from 2001-02.
Immense thanks for all my dedicated viewers who have helped me reach 100,000 subscribers. After a long wait, YouTube even sent me one of those Silver Play Button awards. This achievement still seemed so far off just a few months ago. Of course I should also give my gratitude to all the niche media franchises and their loyal fan followings that I have piggybacked on -- Lego Bionicle, the Godzilla brand, Transformers (to a degree) and even my old videos about prehistoric documentary series (which I still like despite not having made anything new about them for a decade or so).
Though practically all of the content I upload here amounts to derivative fan work rather than fully original material, I do hope that they offer some entertainment or bring back fond memories to viewers who are interested in the subjects I have listed. I realize that my Bionicle-inspired videos are not the ones that get the most attention, so it might seem odd to have this be my "100 k sub special", but it just so happened that I received the YT award as I was finishing this clip.
And yes I used my real name on the plate (I don't think I've ever kept it a secret, I just didn't really ever bring it up) since I never liked my YT channel name and never use it in real life. I won't change it though, since it's the name most people know me by online.
I've wanted to redo Gali for years, which is hardly a novel idea on my part, since her Mistika form hasn't been too warmly received by fans. Not only cause it doesn't look one bit like either of her previous forms, it is ugly too. This is unsurprising, as the Mistika toys were not designed with specific characters in mind, and the toy that became Gali was originally meant for the red Toa, while the Tahu Mistika figure was originally blue.
I resisted the urge to completely redesign her, but the unsightly backward Piraka torso had to go and she needed some chest armor. The cow-plow chin is no more, but the eye cover and airplane ears were too integral parts of the design to get rid of. Instead, I made the eye-scope thing optional so that she'd look less like a freak in her normal state.
She's no longer a hunchbacked abomination either. Like with Tahu, I thickened out the thighs and shortened the arms because I really hated her monkey limbs. One of Gali's many prototypes also had an armored skirt of sorts (as seen on the 2008 Toy Fair photos), which I decided to reintroduce as a butt flap to give her a more unique body silhouette and to put more blue on her because the silverpuke was overwhelming.
Gorast was a rather mediocre set, her four arms were a fun idea but the build was nothing impressive. This isn't really the set's fault, it has to do with a more fundamental problem I have with the 2008 set line. I just don't like that Lego made canister-sized sets out of the Makuta at all, and with this animation I unwittingly highlighted just how small and insignificant the Mistika Makuta looked compared to the Toa.
The goal here wasn't to re-imagine the 2008 line though, but to make my own versions of the toys we got. Gorast received a unified torso piece made by fusing two Inika torsos together, and some extra armor. I moved her wings from the upper upper arms to her back because otherwise they'd just get in the way. I kept the inconsistent designs of her claws. Some arthropods have different types of appendages on their limbs, so it wasn't necessary to make them all look the same. It was also interesting to see how I can make articulated claws out of pieces that weren't designed with hinges. Thankfully stylized cartoons don't have to adhere to real life physics when it comes to expressiveness.
Krika changed the least, he mainly just received more joints to his limbs to do more expressive movements. Since the original toy's back leg spikes are molded in a bent shape, I tested how they'd look if they could bend as he moves, but maybe locking them in a more fixed position would be better.
The only thing I really changed on him is his back-arm, which uses a rejected piece I originally made for his neck.
Music is from the unreleased Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui PC game.
Modeled, textured and animated in Blender 2.74.
Edited in Sony Vegas Pro 14.0
(You may notice the lighting and shadows keep randomly changing across the video. I don't know what's causing that. The whole thing was re-rendered at least 4 or 5 times and the glitch kept randomly happening even when I used the exact same lighting settings. There's a few other modeling and texturing errors but I just wanted to be done with this, cause for a "test" it was taking absurdly long.)
It's much less stressful to tinker with than the actual toy, that's for sure.
The two monster models seen in youtube.com/watch?v=ICZCSQ7PB9I
Downloadable versions of their .blend files available here: dropbox.com/s/mwwkyubcn86fegu/Axor.Model.blend?dl=0
dropbox.com/s/w580e24eiflavpi/FW.Godzilla.Model.blend?dl=0
A note about their use: the models were created and textured in Blender 2.74's Internal render engine and have not been optimized for use in more advanced Blender versions or other software. Porting them to other animation programs might result in reduced quality because these models use subsurf modifiers for their "smoothness". The modifiers can be applied to the models permanently to keep their details, but that requires the deletion of all the morph keys controlling their facial movements. I also advise checking out the FW Godzilla model created by MMDCharizard and JJJ if anyone has trouble using mine: deviantart.com/mmdcharizard/art/MMD-Godzilla-Godzilla-2004-DL-831163150
Final Wars Godzilla was modeled using reference photos of the filming suit and movie screencaps. The exact shape of the head, which fans have alternately compared to a cat, a meerkat and a rat, was hard to nail down, but I think I got close enough. The model even has a bonus "neck crinkle" option to mimic the official suit's deformation around its head.
For Axor, I decided not to update the original cartoon design too much because I enjoy its oldschool charm and he already has a look that stands out just fine. I'm not much of a proponent of attempts to redesign old kaiju as "realistic" or "cool", so I only added minimal extra details, like a forked tongue, more teeth and a "sleeker" head because his head had an inconsistent design in the cartoon. One aspect of him that I'm not too keen on are the twig legs, but I kept them anyway for the sake of staying faithful to his design.
The 1978 Hanna-Barbera cartoon show was what introduced me to Godzilla. Most of the monsters in the series were forgettable, but Axor from the episode "The Beast of Storm Island" always stood out as one of the more imaginative ones. I always remembered him as "that big, curvy black monster with a thing on his head". His design, powers, personality and his connection to a mystical source of power protected by his personal temple make him unique among all of the franchise's monsters, and I think he is one obscure kaiju that deserve to be revisited.
This isn't my proudest work because meaningless monster brawls aren't usually my thing (which is why I added the ending gag), there is little sense of a coherent choreography (the fight lacks rhythm, it's just a long back-and-forth until one of them gets an arbitrary power-up and wins), the editing at the end could be tighter and my music options were limited. But I needed to take some time off from other animation projects to make something smaller and self-contained. I also need to keep this channel alive with new content from time to time. And it was nice to experiment with trying to add a stronger sense of weight and heft to my animations and to test out all kinds of effects and compositing filters.
Characters belong to Toho Co., Ltd. and (probably) Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros.
Animated in Blender 2.74, edited in Sony Vegas Pro 14.0. The video took about 5 months to make, including modeling the characters and environments.
I don't remember if these guys ever actually met in canon, but they certainly didn't fight. Not that this clip was meant to be canon -- as far as I know Karda Nui didn't have orange sunset skies (maybe the Great Spirit Robot is just having a heartburn?), and I outfitted Takanuva with a jetpack he didn't have in the story, since I thought him just flying without any visible propulsion would look dumb. I also left Icarax's condition of squeezed innards and crushed flesh out of his model.
2019, colorized.
Also, the title of this video makes no sense since I just explained the context.
Colors of light emitting elements like eyes, heartlight and jets are also subject to change.
I'll probably re-render this scene for the actual full project itself, cause it still has a couple mistakes and inconsistencies I didn't catch at first.
Characters and most of the concepts seen here belong to Toho Co., Ltd.
I attempted to rectify those with this model, and make him look closer to his original 2003 self. Technically I could have just made a 2003 Takanuva and enlarged him, but that would look ridiculous. So instead, he received a bulkier chest with his armor turned the other way around for a more heroic stature. Modified Nuva shoulder pads on his arms instead of freaky fish skulls and bulkier shin-guards to better imitate his original leg armor. I also filled out his gaps, relocated the piston on his legs, gave him 2001-2003 style torso pistons along with sleeker hip armor. His eyes are also back to their original yellow instead of the boring uniform lime green used for every good guy in 2008.
As for the jet pack, that's a personal embellishment, cause I want to showcase his flight ability without having to reference the alternate-dimension Makuta magic pixie dust that made him fly in the online serials. Because, well, screw the serials.
Bagan
Meant to appear in:
- Resurrection of Godzilla (1980 and 1983)
- Mothra vs. Bagan (1990)
- untitled 3rd Heisei Godzilla film (~1990)
- Mothra vs. Godzilla (1990)
- Godzilla vs. Bagan (1991 and 1995)
- Rebirth of Mothra Trilogy (1996-1998)
- Yamato Takeru II (1997)
Bagan did feature in the 1993 Super Nintendo game "Super Godzilla" and the 1998 interactive computer game "Godzilla Movie Studio Tour", but no movie. He had tons of drastically different proposed designs, but this model was based on the one from the Studio Tour, a variant of a design originally envisioned by Minoru Yoshida.
Deutalios, land and swimming forms
Meant to appear in: Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
This model is an amalgamation of a couple different concept designs for the fish-rat.
Giant Archaeopteryx/Prototype Rodan (unofficial names)
Meant to appear in:
- Bride of Godzilla? (1956)
- Rodan (1956)
It's unknown whether this giant "urvogel" in specific was recycled into Rodan, but this seems like a possibility, as early concept artwork presented Rodan more as a bird than a pterosaur. The model was based on those sketches, while the coloring was inspired by the stereotypical outdated blue-green-yellow color scheme seen on Archaeopteryx illustrations throughout the 20th century, possibly originating from the paintings and scientific ideas of Danish artist Gerhard Heilmann.
The Gryphon (and hydra tongue)
Meant to appear in: TriStar's original Godzilla (1994)
The shape-shifting Gryphon also had multiple designs, this particular one is the famous Stan Winston puppet. The tongue was based on hand-drawn concept art.
"Queen Bitch" (preliminary name used in official material)
Meant to appear in: TriStar's Godzilla 2 (~1999-2000)
With only a very brief description to go on, which claims this monster would have been similar to a termite queen, this is the model I put the least effort into.
The ugly, alien-looking head and spikes are nods to the elaborate creature designs of Patrick Tatopoulos and Fil Barlow (designers of the 1998 film and its spin-off cartoon, respectively), but otherwise I kept it simple, as it was only to be used for brief cameos.
Erabus and Hafun
Meant to appear in: Godzilla vs. Redmoon (1971)
It's long been thought that this film would have recycled the suits used in 1971's "Daigoro vs. Goliath", but artist and performer Hariken 'Hurricane' Ryu actually created original concept designs for both (plus Redmoon itself).
I based the model of the female kaiju Erabus on his black & white drawing, but colored it similar to Daigoro's mother as a nod to the aforementioned misconception. Hurricane's picture omits the legs, so it's unknown how he imagined the beast below her waist, or if she was meant to have legs at all. But her head kinda looks like that of a horse, so I gave her her horse-like hooves because that's the extent of my creativity.
Hafun was also based on Hurricane's drawing, but colored red as a reference to his father.
Ghost Godzilla
Meant to appear in: Godzilla vs. Ghost Godzilla (1995)
There's at least two interpretations of this creation too. A "standard" ghost-like Godzilla, as well as the possessed form of Godzilla Junior with wide cracks on his skin caused by his transformation into adult form. I combined both again just to make it look more than merely a see-through Godzilla. Even though a ghost with split skin makes no sense.
Robot Bride (unofficial name)
Meant to appear in: Bride of Godzilla? (1956)
For added comedy, and to take the edge off this highly risque idea, I made it look like a malfunctioning, dilapidated mechanoid that's been in a state of disrepair since the fifties.
Despite colloquially known by fans as "Robot Daughter", I think that's a further misconception. Strangely, when Japanese texts about the film are put through online translators, they inconsistently turn the same expressions into "daughter", "foster daughter", "foster child", "foster parent" and "former lover". The film's proposed plot does involve an inventor with an ex-lover, while I found no mention of him raising a child. Some English plot summaries even say he had a "robot foster daughter"... but if it's a robot, why would it specifically be called a *foster* daughter? John LeMay in his "The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: The Lost Films" also came to the conclusion that the robot was based on a former lover rather than a daughter, so that's the interpretation I went with too.
Unnamed Multi-Legged Monster
Meant to appear in: nowhere, only used as a filler monster for the 2014 Godzilla's teaser trailer
I only modeled what I saw in the teaser. No head, no real back, no tailtip.
Deathla
Meant to appear in: Godzilla 3-D (2008)
Yoshimitsu Banno said the monster would have had a skull for a head. I thought a simple human skull would look too drab, so I made the whole thing resemble a mix of a human and Hedorah.
Information and a better view of the unmade monster characters here: youtube.com/watch?v=hNR6gSU67Jw
Dinobot had one of the most cheatsy and blatantly unfeasible transformations in Beast Wars, and I wanted to see if it can be updated, along with modernizing his old-ass Jurassic Park-inspired dinosaur mode. It turned out to way too tricky, and I left this model unfinished for about 4 years, but now I thought I'd try my hand at it again.
The feathers were the first major hurdle. I can't do hair simulation, and the feathers kept clipping through each other if I modeled them separately, so I just used the old-fashioned method of painting feather textures on the body and doing the rest via planes and feather textures with transparent outlines. The end effect isn't too realistic, but at least it's functional.
The transformation is of course still full of cheats, but at least now all the dinosaur parts have somewhere to go. The beast mode is its own model with its own armature, and the robot mode is controlled by three other rigs within a separate armature (segmented beast, segmented robot, full robot), containing a total of 422 animation bones, plus there's an extra armature performing other functions that didn't fit into the others, bringing up the total number of bones to 537.
The robot mode is barely workable and only looks decent from a few angles. Structurally, it's hollow, frail and parts of it are just floating attached to nothing. It's messy, fiddly and trying to animate it makes your head turn inside out as well, which is why I guess none of the actual Transformers shows use models like this for their animation. But at least I can say I did it, sort of.
Transformers, Beast Wars and Dinobot belong to Hasbro.
Voice samples, featuring the almighty Scott McNeil, music and some sound effects were taken from the show and its DVD extras.
The raptor's proportions were based on skeletal drawings by Scott Hartman (at least I think, it was a long time ago), and tweaked to accommodate the inner robot bits.
It was originally created at the request of Chris Cuypers aka GojiFan1993 for the 2nd season of his collaborative project, "Kaiju Fantasy Battles! Reignited", set to release in mid 2019. Unfortunately, the project had to be cancelled due to unforeseen events taking place in Chris' personal life. Since I have already finished the animation by that point, he was thankfully gracious enough to let me share it on my YouTube account, as a way of giving something for his fans. I give credit to Chris for conceptualizing this idea, and even if it did not come to full fruition, he hopes you'll at least enjoy this animation.
I decided to wait until August 27 before publishing the video. That date marked the release of the 1998 American Godzilla movie in my country, which makes this an appropriate nod to the film's 20th anniversary. (I know YouTube says it was uploaded on the 26th, but it's already the 27th here, so whatever.) There's a couple references to other Godzilla movies too, see if you can recognize them.
The animation was created under fairly loose guidelines, hence why the two monsters are scaled to be approximately equal in size, rather than adhering to any official size stats given by Toho or Sony-TriStar (which were never consistent anyway). It's all meant to be fun, so don't be too nitpicky about such details. I tried to keep this one more serious than most of the related videos I upload, but there's still a few comedic touches.
It took about 6 months and an uncountable number of renders and re-renders to complete this thing. Unavoidably, there are some minor mistakes I didn't have time or patience to fix -- some buildings and trees disappear between shots, and there are a few oddities in the rendering and the physics I couldn't do anything about.
Original KFBR concept developed by Chris Cuypers.
Modeling, animation and editing by me, using Blender and Sony Vegas Pro 12.0.
Zilla and Gorosaurus owned by Toho Co., Ltd.
Music comes from the Godzilla PS3/PS4 video game.
Since YouTube compressed the video quite a bit, here's a better quality download: dropbox.com/s/vco6kth23s5d5u3/Zilla%20vs%20Gorosaurus.mp4?dl=0
Interesting thing to note, this model is about twice as complex as my old adult Zilla model, and a tad more screen accurate. Another thing to note, I've no idea how all those leg joints are supposed to work.
This animation is 3 years old by now, it's stiff, kinda slow at parts, and looking back, the humor really doesn't hold up. I've gotten better at animating since then (see: my more recent stuff), so hopefully the later parts will turn out better once I get to complete them. Can't give any guarantees about the humor, though.
Animated in Blender, edited in Sony Vegas Pro 12.0.


