Iconic work analysis (Avatar)

A work that has visually inspired me is the movie avatar by James Cameron (2009). (Imdb, 2015) The movie illustrates an alien world Pandora where most of the planet's land is covered in jungle. What makes this jungle unique is that while the environment may imitate a jungle here on earth the movie also brings in elements of alien plants and animals of there own design. Fascinating thing about this movie is that it managed to avoid the uncanny valley even though the movie was rendered photoreal and tried to depict allot of fictional plants. To achieve the atmosphere of the film there was a lot of study that went into botany and animals to achieve both a good aesthetic and authentic design. While the environment may look appealing it also needs believability for immersion.
A good example is how the direhorse breaths. (Wikiacom, 2015) The movie revelas a shot of the direhorse breathing through its neck when Jake Sully is learning how to ride the horse.

A lot of the functionality was considered to evade the uncanny valley. When animating that shot they had to consider the muscle deformation of the neck to make it look like the holes swallowed and exhaled air. Instead of quadrupeds a lot of the ground animals contain 6 legs instead of 4 making these creatures more alien but they still had to consider muscle anatomy when animating They even had to construct their own muscles for the rig.

This movie was also a milestone in vfx technology. (Discovery, 2010) infact james cameron used this movie as a project to drive and advance the technology in computer graphics. In 1995 James earlier brought this to the vfx studios and the film was too demanding but in 2005 he saw how technology was developing to achieve specific goals in film such as Titanic and Terminator so he decided to use this project as a drive to further develop vfx.

There is a special plant in the movie called the heicoradium spirale. (Pandorapedia, 2015) This plant will retract and coil up once touched. The reference explains that it is to avoid being eaten by herbivores but the movie doesn’t describe why it retracts. This shot only tells us there are foreign plants in that world. A botanist who did research for the film Jodie Holt (Holt, 2015) says that ‘there is a lot of real science that accompanies this movie.’ A lot of the research she provided was used by the artists.

The movie also referenced a Neolithic culture for the aliens both in design and character. Similar to the aboriginal and torres strait islander culture the designs of the aliens tools, weapons and clothing are an adaptation of their traditional assets.

As a 3D artist myself I aim to go photoreal with the art pieces I create. whether it be fictional or nonfictional my goal is to make my art believable. Looking at this movie it takes a lot of study and research to develop a believable imagination and for me that is part of the joy of creating photoreal assets. Combining research from different areas to create something beautiful and believable.


Imdb. (2015). IMDb. Retrieved 18 December, 2015, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/



Wikiacom. (2015). Avatar Wiki. Retrieved 18 December, 2015, from http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Operculum



Pandorapedia. (2015). Pandorapediacom. Retrieved 18 December, 2015, from https://www.pandorapedia.com/flora/herbaceous/helicoradium_spirale
Discovery. (2010). Youtube. Retrieved 20 December, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt-XCDjyDNs



Holt, J.H. (2015). YouTube. Retrieved 19 December, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-l9fuumJ8w