Oh fuck, oh god. I'm scraping Iron Lung again looking for details. I haven't even named or added these files to the master reference yet, I just had to throw this down immediately.
The millisecond Simon believes for sure that he's going to die, his eyes go straight down to his Eden pendant. Not to the side; not to the monster; not to the burning hull.
The pendant.
Simon's last thought, what Simon believed would be his last thought, was
of home.
Fuck you, Markiplier. I'm sending an invoice for emotional damages to your manager. /j
Deciding that I'd like to not draw for one day and rest (also due to incredibly bad toothache ;( ), I want to share my opinion on Mr.Lordi design in a way that will be a little more coherent than usual. My head is full, and it's not always easy to get my thoughts out, so this might take me a hot second.
Important to note, everything that is written below is only my opinion. It's just a bunch of things I have observed as an artist who spent hours drawing and looking at Mr. Lordi across different eras. My opinion isn't the "right" one or the most important. If you have a completely different opinion, then that's super cool! Feel free to share it with me!
I've had very strong feelings towards Mr. Lordi as a character and as a frontman. I think most people would agree that one of his strongest looks was the one from Arockalypse, and that's not because this one won Eurovision.
Arockalypse was one of the most crucial eras to get Mr.Lordi's look right, even if the band was as young as 9 years old (including Bend Over), and that is because it feels like the point where Mr. Lordi fully understood that the frontman design functions strongest when built around symmetry.
Everything was mostly evenly distributed on each side, which is why his silhouette might be so pleasing to look at. It's something that wasn't this prominent in Get Heavy, with one shoulder being off and the arm pieces different on each arm. Not only that, because despite Mr.Lordi being a complicated character, he is one who, after years, has gained the meaning of "sometimes less is more".
In Arockalypse, he is the only monster that is wearing entirely black/gray (depending on the lighting), which draws your attention to him the most, because while everyone else has certain details, such as Ox having a black leather jacket, or Kita having red shoulder pads that are supposed to make his face pop. He IS the center of the stage, and you're supposed to look at him most of the time, even if he isn't holding props or when his wings aren't open.
Even though most people think that Lordi's makeup isn't the best, no matter the era, it's mostly about the overall design of what you see while standing from afar, it's important to distinguish Mr.Lordi from just his shadow, and that's where the shoulder pads come into play, because just like his hair, they're supposed to frame his face, and make him distinguishable due to the spikes he's wearing on each side. In other words, he's supposed to look the biggest out of all five.
Sometimes Mr.Lordi can't look good on his own; sometimes his costume structure is carried by the other band members, such as in Killection, where all of them carry grey colors, or in Screem Writers Guild, where everyone has a certain theme, so Lordi doesn't look like he's odd. I could argue that he looks weird when he's standing by himself.
The symmetry or attempts at cohesiveness fall flat the moment Lordi started to play with it, such as in Monstereophonic or Scare Force One. All the nice symmetry is suddenly gone, replaced by odd patches of what we can only assume is skin all over L's armor. The pieces are spread across his shoulder, hand, knee, and foot; his face feels secondary, as everything else draws attention away from it, even if the makeup design itself is just as strong as in other eras.
As for Scare Force One, I wish I had something smart to say. I have looked from many angles, tried so hard to understand and like their looks, especially after I fell in love with the album itself. While I understand what the style was going for, I don't think that it was in Mr.Lordi's intention to make his own character look like a hedgehog with mismatched kneecaps. I'm a firm believer that the costumes can completely change under bright lights during their performances. In many cases, I have seen them do absolute wonders, changing their shapes, making them appear clearer, in some cases, making them look much more menacing, yet the only era that failed was the SFO. It is probably the only case where it's bad that Mr.Lordi stands out the most, like a sore thumb.
The "Less is more" definitely appears, once again, in Lordiversity, Sexorcism, and Limited Deadition, because he's usually entirely covered in just one shape or object. Let it be spikes, studs, shards, or anything of this sort. It doesn't clutter his look, because everything on him is of the same standard and shape, it doesn't make you want to cross your eyes.
Going back to what I was saying mostly about Mr.Lordi, we're going to stray from the entire album topic.
Once I got much more into studying Lordi, I realized that while all monsters have unique designs to make them stand out, the thing that's always different about the vocalist is that he never changes at his core. The things that never change are that he has black hair, a beard, six horns, and he's always entirely covered in armor. It makes his image immediately go across as "monster", "demon", and as simple as it is, that's all it takes, because people who don't listen to Lordi usually remember his face the most. Those are aspects that are important to get right when drawing him as well. The scars don't always matter that much, but his face, eye, and nose shape are what's always important.
And don't forget the eyes.
His physical traits are what's most important when he's fronting, but please never forget that under the costume, there's an actual person! Of course, most of the heavy lifting is done by the actual Mr.Lordi and his behavior on and off stage. But I feel like everyone knows that.
In general, I would say that Lordi is a good example of what a good group character design is, and especially how to visually execute the leader of said group, because the entire point isn't "I like Mr.Lordi because he looks cool/badass" or whatever, because he does, but there's layers, substance and thought put into what he will look like on stage and when his appearence be the strongest, in real life or fiction.
One could as well ask me, "Well, if you're complaining so much, what would you change?" and I have to say that while most of the appearances I would change, such as making Monsterophonic actually half skeleton, with his flesh being split nearly perfectly in the middle, with a fully visible skull, ribs, and so on, so you can really see the split theme they were originally aiming for, but I understand that my designs usually wouldn't fly when considering comfort, budget or even mobility, there are those like Scare Force One or To Beast Or Not To Beast in which I wouldn't change anything, because I believe I can be Mr.Lordi's fan and not like his work, but also not want to change anything in it. What this man is doing is already a miracle; I wouldn't come up with, let alone DO, even half of what he's done.
blue sunset on Mars is a real phenomenon caused by the way Martian dust scatters sunlight.
Unlike Earth, where sunsets are red and orange due to the scattering of shorter blue wavelengths by our atmosphere, Mars has an extremely fine dust that scatters blue light more efficiently near the Sun.
So during sunset on Mars, the sky turns reddish-brown while the area around the Sun glows a soft blue. It’s the opposite of what we experience on Earth.
one thing i really appreciate in Iron Lung is that they filmed it entirely chronologically.
big productions have to wrangle time schedules, renting dates for locations, weather, etc, so a lot of the times you can't record stuff linearly. but Iron Lung HAD to be.
you can see that the map is exactly the same one because the grease pencil writing is the same everytime. they had to keep very close track of the makeup and item placements of everything to maintain continuity. AND they only had one set, which they slowly wore down by blood and moisture and grotesque murations.
which i think really helped to develop Simon as a character, with Mark going through his plot beats chronologically, as the wear of the entire voyage compounds on him. it makes his more reserved acting earlier in the movie matter, so we can watch the escalation of his reaction, and especially because. if he overdoes it too early, then the impact of the later scenes won't hit as much.
idk it's just very finetuned and there were no take-backsies and very late reshoots, what you got is what you get takes wise. Mark and the teams did amazing!
Such good points! The gentle way he asks if they are just ignoring him when the speaker is quiet at the beginning of the movie versus the way he screams, "How many people were on the bridge??!!??" at the end when he is at his limit--excellent stuff all around in this movie. Simon goes through such a change.
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