In my rather feeble series of attempts to trying new things, this one was done mostly without effects layers. It’s no surprise to any of your that I over-use the multiply and overlay types of layers to do my shading. Yeah, that seems to be a big no-no for illustrators, and apparently not the correct way of shading. I’ve always believed there’s no real way to do things wrong when it comes to artwork (unless one is trying to achieve a sense of hyper-realism). I however decided to go for a different thing, and shaded using (almost only) normal layers on this piece, using the Pegasus logo of Tri-Star pictures to develop the colour palette. I’m fairly pleased with the painterly look of the final piece, especially for something that I did almost within a day and without actual planing. In the end I put a layer of soft light above some areas to draw the eye towards Godzilla’s about-to-fire-radiation mouth.
 
Goji isn’t very happy about the way Tri-Star treated his franchise. And on that note…
 
“Godzilla ‘98” isn’t very good. I know, this isn’t news for you as it is one of the most infamous cases of westernized remakes that botch the original model, but it also came with butchering its whole mythology. What else am I going to say? Well, I will say this. It’s not a very good movie, but holyshit if it isn’t a big guilty pleasure of mine. It’s not Godzilla, and it’s not good, and I agree with everyone who says that the movie is bad for this endless list of shortcomings. But I will give the movie credit that it brought Godzilla to my attention. I wasn’t the smartest kid when growing up, I will go as far as saying I still am not smart at all, so my focus was elsewhere. Oddly enough it was on Power Rangers, which you may consider Godzilla light. This remake made me realize that Spain was barely getting any Godzilla movie in theatres, maybe due to distribution problems, which turned out to be the case for most of the western world.
 
So love it or hate it, there’s no denying that “Godzilla ’98” opened the door of the kaiju genre for many people back in the late nineties, and for that I give it credit. You don’t need me to tell you about the shortcomings of plot, characters, writing or design, especially when everyone on the internet has done it already. Instead I’d recommend you to check Matt McMuscles’ video on the subject, as he covered all the issues the movie had from its inception.
 
Now, as for “Final Wars”, I will keep it short, not wanting to take away from the actual focus of the piece. “Final Wars” was perhaps more of a thrashing attempt from ToHo to revitalize the franchise and throw a jab at not just the American Godzilla but older Godzilla movies and other monsters. It tries to make the characters likeable but giving them no traits other than “She’s the pilot” or “He’s the jock” or “He’s the nerd”, and so on. It’s got nothing going for it other than some rather impressive action scenes and sequences of destruction, so if that’s enough to carry the movie for you that’s worth the investment of time and money.