Why are there so little Bio-luminescence in Sci Fi?


EnemyDesign's avatar
I'm always fascinated by those deep sea glowing creatures and I bet many also feel the same, yet there is so little of that done in film. So far, the only movies I know that is mainly or has bio-luminescence a big part is The Abyss and James Cameron's movie Avatar. Is there any other film I missed?
Comments34
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
CloneTrooperTwelve's avatar
It's been done in Star Wars a few times before.
TreatedAsThis's avatar
Ah someone beat me to Europa Report... Is Attack the Block scifi? I still haven't seen it but I LOVE the monsters in it

33.media.tumblr.com/541c6405aa…
Mr-Pink-Rose's avatar
I think it's because the movie industry is trying to save money on their budgets.
phoenixleo's avatar
Even movies like Maleficent has some of it.
Though, there's some of it in Europa Report.

It would be definitely be nice to see some. And if it was like Avatar, woo! :iconsuperw00tplz:
Chromattix's avatar
Bio-luminescence is something that has always captivated me, as someone who is fascinated by nature, and pretty-coloured lights - seeing the two overlap is quite magical :omg: But indeed it's rare to find in sci-fi for all the reasons stated here already. Sci-fi movies often deal with societies, cities and machines which often distances the movie plot away from nature, this doesn't bother me with sci-fi movies based on a future earth, since earth's nature won't evolve or change much even in 1000 years from now (unless we did something drastic to it) but on alien planets I feel it's kinda wasted potential when one can get so creative with the nature of said alien worlds - both plants and animals (and maybe the intelligent aliens themselves).

To me, the most interesting thing about an alien world in a film would be the stuff that was there before humans arrived and started colonizing it, terraforming it, mining it etc (unless said world was just a Tattooine-esque desert) even when it does show you the nature, if it looks too much like an ordinary earth forest I feel kinda disappointed. Some scenes in Avatar did resemble this, but only by day, and even then - signature plants found in almost every scene (often background elements) clearly stood out as alien with their weird colours or forms even during the daytime scenes. In fact, I read that in the concept stages of Avatar's world-building, they were almost going go for cyan/aqua for the primary vegetation colour instead of green to make Pandora even more alien (aqua is one the most rarely-seen colour in earth's flowers and plants even in spite of it being so close to green) - I wish they did go for cyan :omg: But they were concerned this vegetation colour wouldn't have been as pleasant to the viewer as the familiar green hues we affiliate with healthy forests, and limited such colours only to the night time bio-luminescence of plants, specific creatures and the Na'vi themselves (which would have blended into their surroundings too much if this vegetation colour was chosen too).

It's also a matter of finding the right artists too. An overwhelming majority of sci-fi artists prefer to focus on machines, cities, aliens, robots, etc. There's a relatively small community of those who prefer thinking about the organisms of an alien world rather than the technology to get there. These artists fall under the category of Xenobiology or Speculative biology artists and decent ones are hard to find. But man, I love looking at some of what they come up with, but often they'll end up designing monsters and environments for games instead. But until these artists can take centre stage in the sci-fi movie industry which is still infatuated with mechs and dystopian hell-hole cities instead, we probably won't be getting anything on par with Avatar again until... Avatar 2 :doh:
EnemyDesign's avatar
I actually want to do something like that as an artist, focus mainly on nature in science fiction, although I don't know how rare that job is.
Chromattix's avatar
I think artists in this genre can come up with some of the most interesting concepts. I've spent hours browsing xenobiology-related art. It really brings up mixed emotions too, ranging from "Ugh that creature is disgusting, I'm glad they don't exist" to "Wow, that thing is so pretty!":omg: Often though I end up somewhere in between - fascinated, but intimidated :giggle: A quick browse around dA led me to some of these cool examples, and this is just choosing one-per artist too. There's way more:

Jungleman II by ahaas Greater Lightsail by Abiogenisis Alien World 2 by ortheza Pods in the Canyon by JasperHolland

Frilo by daitengu Beneath by MichaelBeaudry Scatterbrain by rpowell77

It's sad how underrepresented this sort of stuff is in the sci-fi movie industry. Today's CG is good enough to get it done right i think, but indeed a very big budget is needed to pull it off. Perhaps there's no shortage of artists who can do it well - just a shortage of big-budget projects they can offer their work to.

I've tried my hand at it myself, but I focus mainly on alien plants (even less-represented than alien animals)
Life on other planets by priteeboy Megahorn Mesa by priteeboy Desert Storm by priteeboy Life on Kepler 186f by priteeboy
JasperHolland's avatar
Thanks for including my artwork!:) (Smile) 
EnemyDesign's avatar
Sry for the late reply but thank you for those examples. :) Although I'm a creature guy, I really like your environment piece, especially the megahorn one. I don't have much sci fi work up because I am never completely sure about the thinking process behind sci fi. (like how real and functional things have to be, and how much fantasy is in it).

But I do  wish they have more things like this on the big screen in the future.
Chromattix's avatar
That's OK. And that's one of the reasons why I avoid creature design myself - anything with anatomy is a weak point of mine, real or not :doh: So I tend to focus on environments which I'm generally a lot happier doing. I do admire creature designers though, but I wish to see some more uniquely alien scenes in future sci-fi films too :fingerscrossed:
ortheza's avatar
thank you for choosing :) interesting collection by the way
AJGlass's avatar
Things in nature that really exist I think can be very difficult to reproduce using CGI because it's very easy for the audience to tell if they're fake - since they've actually been seen in real life. So the CGI has to be spot-on or it comes off as cheesy and/or unrealistic. Hence why most CGI depicts things (like machines or aliens) that we've never actually seen, so the audience can't compare them. Even creatures that we've never seen before (like dinosaurs) can easily look 'unreal' as CGI because our brains are very good at picking up even the most subtle of errors when it comes to looking at animals and animal movements.
pyrohmstr's avatar
The critters in Edge of Tomorrow were luminescent iirc
HerbalDrink's avatar
Science Fiction tends to deal with the machines and the societies that it affects usually. 
ScottaHemi's avatar
maybe because a lot of scifi deal with technology more so then nature?

Avatar does deal with nature so you get to see their bioluminesant critters and plants which help give it's nature a truely alien look.
c-t-supahfly's avatar
Oh and the new Godzilla has some as well.
c-t-supahfly's avatar
I would watch Pacific Rim, you may like that, those creatures all have bioluminescence
EnemyDesign's avatar
Oh yes, forgot about that one. Ty
Zoltor's avatar
Probally because the lighting effect, and such need to be all the more perfect in such, and most people who use CG mainly, are using CG as a means to avoid putting a lot of effort into their movies, not actually adding to them.

Avatar is a masterpiece of masterpieces, insane amounts of efforts on levels never before seen in "movie" making, went into detailing everything, to get it all to look perfect, so sadly you can't expect to be seeing this kind of stuff again, anytime soon(except perhaps Avatar 2 lol=case, and point)
Chromattix's avatar
I'm glad someone still considers Avatar a masterpiece - even if just visually. People have their knickers in a knot about how unoriginal the storyline is that they seem to be forgetting the creative mastery that went into building a completely alien world with its own ecosystem, climate, plant life, etc. Never before have I seen so much attention paid to the nature of an alien planet without it looking "lazy" (by which I mean - as if it was just shot in the forests of the the northwest US and filled with familiar looking trees and creatures). That's not to say the nature of Avatar wasn't inspired by existing species, but many of them aren't carbon-copies of something you'd find for real on earth and the absolute best CG technology and artists available were pooled together for this film. It's no surprise it was being referred to as the Star Wars of our time, since I believe Star Wars had top-tier visual effects for its time too and it took forever before it started to look dated. I bet the same can be said for Avatar - CG or not, it looks damn realistic to me and will probably continue to do for years to come. I'm eager to see Avatar 2 out of hopes they'll push even harder to jump over the already high visual effects bar set by the first :eager:
Zoltor's avatar
People are fucking morons, that why people hate on it.

Originality doesn't matter one bit, what matter is how It's executed, and Avatar is executed far better then any other movies with similar stories.

Yay so much detail went into the ecology of that world, if feels like a actual living, and breathing world. The fact that so many life forms share things in common with one another farther makes things feel like they belong to the same world, instead of just sloppily thrown together.

Yea definitely, Avatar is the only CG made to date, where it actually seems real, the human eye doesn't perceive such as CG/fake, so yea It's a amazing feat to say the least :)

Omg yea, I'm dying to see Avatat 2 as well, while probally wont be as epic as the 1st movie, I really want to learn even more about the world, and how the other tribes live.

If you don't have it yet, I suggest you pick up a book called "Avatar: An Activist Survival Guide"

It's a companion book to Avatar, and omg It's great. It has info about everything in it, and then some, it even includes a Na'vi-English dictionary.
Chromattix's avatar
I agree. I care more about execution than originality. I mean, most of the artists I follow on here draw stuff that others have drawn before but the make it look really cool and put their own spin on it :D The movie industry is saturated with recycled stories, character types and plot tropes anyway, there's barley much originality left since most of the tings people actually would pay to go and see have been done already. I'm fine with remakes too - younger generations don't have that nostalgic attachment to older films, music and games that we do, all they'll notice are the many flaws in their outdated visuals, acting, stories, references, etc. I can't speak for everyone, but even I rarely am interested in watching movies older than myself since I spot all the flaws in them too easily. This is why recycled stories and plots, along with remakes are necessary in the film industry anyway - these classic stories need a fresh coat of paint every generation to ensure people are still interested in it. No-one would know or care what Godzilla is anymore if the first movie based off it was also the last :p So yeah, maybe Avatar was just Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves/Fern Gully in space - but damn it was presented in a so much better way, giving this kind of story much more mass-appeal to modern audiences.

Indeed normally CG humanoid characters stand out like a sore thumb in a movie, but when watching the Na'vi in this film I often forget they're CG because they're so well done, I can even empathize with them which was clearly of critical importance when making this film :nod:

I've heard of that book. I was hoping they're release a bundle with the movie and the book together but they didn't. I did read a lot of stuff about the concept work that went into building the world and its animals/plants on a blog - which I'm guessing sourced their information from said book though :D
Zoltor's avatar
Actually the book treats the stuff in it as real, if you read stuff involving the creation of the movie, it was most surely taken from the extras on the Extended collectors edition DvDs. It came with a lot of movies going in great detail about what went into making the movie.
Chromattix's avatar
I'll let you be the judge, here's the site (specifically I bookmarked the part about the plant life since that was my favourite element of the film's ecosystem) omatikaya.blogspot.com.au/2010…
View all replies