As a boy, I loved dinosaurs--as most boys tend to. What's not to love? Huge creatures. Terribly scary. Ancient. Extinct. Plus, all we have is bones (and a few rock impressions of bodies) to tell us what these things looked like. So, it gave me free reign to create dinosaurs my own way. I made them gigantic. The only trouble was, it's difficult to really imagine the scale of such animals. Sure, it's simple to think of a great building and picture that. But, when was the last time you saw a building walk?
A couple of recent movies depicted enormous creatures--Godzilla and Pacific Rim. But, it's like looking at pictures in a book. There's so little sense of true scale. A favorite game of mine (EVE Online) has ships so huge they'd make the Death Star look puny. In the game, players progress from tiny vessels with a single occupant into ships with millions. Yet, regardless of the increasing scale, the size visually is the same (a game design decision, otherwise how could you possibly see what's going on if the ship is your entire world?). This is one area that 3-D visualization is well suited to illustrate. Without a sense of depth, it's just an image.
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Kong: Skull Island
an upcoming movie about a really big ape |
There are times when the scale really comes into focus. There's a game, Shadow of the Colossus, where you fight monsters so huge that you climb on them (and the final boss is practically city-sized). Maybe it's because you interact closely with these colossi, but the scale feels incredibly real. When the magic of perspective is fully revealed, it grants breathtaking vision. And, when you witness giant monsters wandering around, there's a special joy that isn't matched by anything smaller.
- M
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