"False Maria" robot from 1927 silent film "Metropolis"

hellnbak

@jql said:

Will you build the whole city beneath her too? Please do! I think you should give her some ground to step down!

She never existed in the city, only in the lab, and only until she was transformed into the False Maria.

JQL

@hellnbak said:

She never existed in the city, only in the lab, and only until she was transformed into the False Maria.

Faithful to the original as possible... nice!

Bryan K

dale

A really stunning piece of work. My total respect.

hellnbak

Although I referred to her as "False Maria" in the title of this post, I shouldn't have. I did so only because a majority of people, for whatever reason, refer to her that way. I do not feel it is an accurate description of the robot.

The way I look at it, until the "essence" of Maria is copied to the robot, it is just a robot. It's only after the essence is copied, and she takes on the physical form of Maria, that she becomes the False Maria.

To me, it's sort of like calling an empty glass a glass of milk before the milk is poured in.

It just bothers me.

Actually, the robot was never supposed to become the False Maria. Rotwang built her with the intention of somehow infusing her with the spirit of his long-dead love Hel, but Joh Frederson, fearful of the real Maria's efforts to instill an uprising among the workers, convinces him to turn the robot into a False Maria to undo all her efforts.

Now, if someone can explain to me why I bothered explaining all that, I would really appreciate it

Yesterday I finally received my copy of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a very large and thick hardcover book that is supposedly the definitive resource for all things Metropolis. Well, I'll never know, it's all written in German. Sadly, it's going back

JQL

@hellnbak said:

Now, if someone can explain to me why I bothered explaining all that, I would really appreciate it

Couldn't explain it, but can understand...

Daniel

Rotwang, the robot's inventor, refers to it a maschinenmensch, which translates to "machine-human." A lot of people (myself included) probably find "Maria" easier to remember and pronounce. It's been ages since I saw the film is school - you make me want to see it again.

Are you going to texture it?

dtrarch

Hellnback

MY copy of the film has music (later version re-created and patched)
An amazing vocal by Pat Benatar.
PM me for source if you want.
Any chance for your super model to be available.?
I will beg.

dtr

hellnbak

Sorry, I've been super busy, will post some more as soon as possible.

omiKron

Fascinating. I really like the designs of that age... 1920's to 1940's. It's been a big impact to the people of that times, such a concept, never seen before. Thus, some parts of those concepts are surrounding us atm.

amazing modeling, looks a bit b/w clay model.

Richard

Wow! TOTALLY impressed. Weirdly enough I recently did a logo for a company who used the movie title as part of their company name!

hellnbak

Thanks, Richard.

I've done some more work on her since my last post, been meaning to post some photos.

Nice logo

ken28875

Awesome model, Steve!

Cheers!

_KN

ric323

@hellnbak said:

...
Was going to include a bunch of background stuff but that seems to bore some people. I might include some stuff later on, as the model progresses.

+1 for more background!

hellnbak

Much appreciated, Ken.

@ric323 said:

@hellnbak said:

...
Was going to include a bunch of background stuff but that seems to bore some people. I might include some stuff later on, as the model progresses.

+1 for more background!

Thanks Richard. Yeah, I will include some background stuff eventually. Lots of good info to pass along.

You're really using a pre-6 version of SU? Just curious as to why.

Anyhow, been playing around with this, thought I would post a few photos.

First, the robot on her "chair".

Difficult in the respect that few shots show it, and of those that do the vast majority of them are from a distance and show very little useable detail.
An interesting fact -- The seat of the chair was set at angle because the "suit" did not allow Ms Helm to sit all the way down. But even with that an apparatus had to be rigged so that someone pulling on a lever behind the chair slowly tilted the seat forward until she could stand on her own.

Also took a stab at Maria on the lab table, just prior to her 'essence' being transferred to the robot

Still a lot to do, about 600 miles of cable and wiring to add, a lot of electronic doo-dads, this, that and 'tother. Gonna try to make the face look like Brigitte Helm, now that should be fun.

Both of these scenes proved very frustraing because of SU's inability to work realistically with 'glass' or transparent surfaces. Go below a certain amount of transparency and no shadows are cast or received, along with other problems. Drove me nuts, finally just gave up.

So much to do, so little time.