[EVA] EVA LIVE ACTION CONCEPT ART!

[Noah Ramon]

>I must say I'm slightly .. let down I suppose... Look at that 
>picture of Asuka.. Older looking and extremely filled out.. Granted 
>this is a concept photo and the person playing Asuka is going to be 
>a real life human - if they turn her into some sort of sex icon type 
>deal... Ugh -_-

Well, two things - first off, it's not even a photo. It's JUST a 
painting. What we're seeing here is no more than what we saw after 
the fact looking through the Star Wars Sketchbook back in 1978. It's 
just that concept art is able to be much more complex with less 
effort for the production staff.

Secondly, "if they turn her into some sort of sex icon type deal..."? 
This _IS_ Gainax we're talking about here. There is no "if" here. And 
that's part of the concept from the beginning - the creepy 
fetishization of the female pilots (both in-story and out-of-story) 
is part of what's going on.

The first of my main two gripes are that everything appears to be 
going for a Tim Burton-esque vibe in the atmosphere. Way too dark, 
dark storm clouds, lightning crackling threateningly overhead - 
Tokyo-3 isn't like that. When it rains, it's not "dark", it's just 
grey. (Standard summer rain, in other words.) The sketch of Tokyo-3 
reminds me too much of a shot of the eastern U.S. seaboard from the 
one concept drawing I saw from the aborted Snow Crash a few years 
ago. The other problem is that NERV looks way too busy and 
Tomorrowland-ish - it looks like EPCOT instead of NASA. In the 
series, the Eva hangars reminded me of the buildings where NASA 
stores the orbiters between missions - utilitarian. In this shot, it 
looks like some future lab where the devices that will SAVE THE WORLD 
are maintained.

But then again, this is all concept artwork. (And it does look 
pretty.) Only Eris knows in what direction the final designs are 
going to head.

-- 
		Noah Ramon - bibulb at earthlink.net
Birds are songs that once took wing - We make more birds whenever we sing
Music is the sound of light - Let's make some more birds tonight!
	--Beans Barton
	  http://www.beansbarton.com/