The Battle Room in Detail- Part 1

When Summit and company finally dropped the first official movie poster for the Ender's Game movie we finally to get a more in depth peek into Ender's world, more specifically the Battle Room.

 

In a phone  interview with Yahoo Movies , the film's director Gavin Hood gives more specifics about the Battle Room. Equipped with that information and using some of my 3D modeling skills in Trimble Sketchup I am able to give you a more complete understanding of how I think the Battle Room will look in the movie.  

In case you live under a rock the Battle Room in the movie will be drastically different than what you read about in the book. If you want to see and in depth book designed Battle School check out this presentation by "The First Battle School Engineer," Steve Sywak here .

First difference is there is only one Battle Room, not nine. Also, another major difference highlighted in the Yahoo interview

        "is that in the original text the Battle Room is described as being a giant hollow cube. But Hood felt that to really convey the size and dimensionality of the space, it should be spherical. Hood said he then proposed, “What if we could see through? What if we could see out of the space, and we’re moving around the Earth and turning at the same time?” He said he felt that would create “a really strange, disorienting experience,” that would better capture the notion in the book that in space there really is no up or down."

So with that explanation in mind, plus information I gleaned from the poster, and other information I gleaned from a not meant to be seen picture that popped up on the internet, I am able to develop a general model of what the Battle Room in movie could look like. (click the picture for an expanded view)

 "So how big is the interior of the Battle Room? Hood said, “This is the high school football field, only it’s in three dimensions. It’s the size of a football field in all directions: up, down, left, right. And the idea is teams jump out from opposite ends of this amazing space and play this amazing game of 3D paintball, almost.”

 Football Field Image from Ducksters.com

From Steve Sywak's analysis of the Battle Room from the story and his further detailed explanation in the Authorized Ender's Game Companion being a cube of 75 m (246 ft), it looks the Movie Battle Room will be much larger and with views of Earth and Space providing backdrops to the battles.

I have provided a couple of point of view snap shots of what it would be like to be in the Battle Room during daylight and night time hours.

Of course the structural elements  that you see in my model are just guestimations about their arrangements from the poster, but as we get more visuals I can refine it to match. That's all for this post. In my next post I will talk about Stars and Flash suits!

For now I will leave you with some screen captures of my model of the Battle Room in Google Earth:

 Aww Snap! A Battle just erupted!! Which way is the Enemy's Gate???!!!!

Army in flight!

 From Opposite Gate POV

Ender's Game Movie Countdown Calendar- Free to Download

The Ender's Game movie is set to release in one year! To commemorate this event and give the fandom a cool way to countdown to the occasion, I have put together a Countdown Calendar featuring my fan art. You can download it for free right by clicking right here: (.pdf file about 4 MB)

These are a couple images conatined in the calendar

In addition to my artwork, it features the birthdays of most of the important cast members and producers, as well as links to popular sites related to Ender's Game. Enjoy, and give me some feedback! Thanks!

Last Ender's Game Trailer - Direction

My last fan made trailer for the upcoming Ender's Game Movie entitled "Direction". Featuring the song "Ansible" by Stephon Jones http://soundcloud.com/sovarozum. There a few images I, Darian Robbins http://artofdarian.blogspot.com. created specifically the logos of the Battle School and the armies. There is a shot of the Battle Room created by Stephen Sywak twitter.com/boothby171. There are alot of production stills I took from the Ender's Game Production Blog http://endersgameblog.tumblr.com/. I used picture of Asa Butterfield taken by Suraj Partha twitter.com/surajpartha.  The Flash suit is taken from a picture of a TRON 2.0 costume made by Quantum Creation FX http://www.quantumcreationfx.com. Other imagery I pulled off the web and will update them accordingly as I find them.

Ender's Game Movie Battle School Exterior Up Close!

Recently our friends over at Ender's Ansible published an image of a framed storyboard that was a gift to Jimmy Pinchak (Peter Wiggin) from the movie's director, Gavin Hood.

Picture taken down at request from Summit PR

The storyboard appears to show the exterior of the Battle School. I've known for sometime that the look was not going to reflect the design outlined by Steve Sywak in the Authorized Ender's Game Companion, so it is interesting to see what the Movie Art Department cooked up.

Here is a close up:

Picture taken down at request from Summit PR

From that image I was able to create a 3D model to help clarify the design. Take a look:

It looks to me that there is one Battle Room in the center, not nine as they outline in the book Ender's Game. Aside from that there appears to be three other major parts to this design. I used the image below and some color coding in a couple sections to show you how I interpreted the design.

Picture taken down at request from Summit PR

1. Habitation Ring (Not Colored)

The doughnut to the left of the picture where all those arrows are going around. I assume that this is a rotating structure.

2. Power Plant or Propulsion Section: (Not Colored)

The rectangular structure on the far right end. I am speculating that this where they might put the power source to run the Battle School or house the propulsion system that would move this thing around in orbit. 

3. Equatorial Ring: (Red)

 The large structure in red that I estimate that see that it connects the Doughnut to the Powerplant Section. I have no idea if it rotates or not, but I don't believe it connects to the Battle Room directly.  I do believe this ring connects at two endpoints to a ring that is connected to the Battle Room.

4. The Battle Room Ring (Green)

The green structure that wraps around the circumference of a equator of the Battle Room. It has a common point at each end that connects to the Equatorial Ring at a circular hub that the Habitation ring rotates about. This hub is the access way to transfer between rings.

Picture taken down at request from Summit PR

In the image below you can see how the sections correspond to my model. Click the image to enlarge it.

 You will also notice that I have attached some dimensions to this model. Since I had no clue as to what size the designer was making this version of the Battle School. I scaled the model to reflect the long side length of the Battle School outlined in the Authorized Companion which was approximately 550m (1,804 ft) This meant that the Habitation Section is approximately 474 ft in diameter and the Battle Room is approximatel 578 ft in diameter.

I also sized the "Movie" Battle School model to reflect dimensions my friend and "First Battle School Engineer", Steve Sywak was able to deduce given his great knowledge and experience in physics, and engineering science calculations. I refer you back to comments at Ender's Ansible to understand what real world forces and calculations would make this version of teh Battle School to work in reality.

Doing a side by side comparison of the two Battle Schools.

 

Now let's look at the Battle Room. 

 The Battle Room Ring in green is the place where armies would travel through to get to their respective gates. I hope they have some motorized transport, this room is huge, and I would hate to be the army that would have to travel to the far gate for a battle. If you look in the room I have place 2  40 person armies. Each of those person's in that rectangular formation are at least 5 ft in height. So you can see how vast that room would be in relation to an individual.

Well, that's an overview of my model. Give me some feed back what do you think of the proposed designs for the upcoming Movie. How do you think it will work?

Until then, since this is my blog...enjoy my Battle School Art!

 

Full Metal Ender's Game

On Earth, kids play games for fun. In space, they play them for survival