Alright, so I was just fiddling around the other day, you know how it is, and the ET movie popped into my head. Specifically, that bike scene. The one across the moon. Iconic, right? I suddenly got this itch, like, I gotta try and recreate that somehow. Not for any big project, just for kicks, a bit of a personal challenge to see if I could capture that magic.
Getting Started – Or So I Thought
First off, I thought, “Easy peasy, just a bike, a kid, an alien, and a big ol’ moon.” Ha! Famous last words. I started by just trying to sketch it out on my tablet. My first few attempts? Absolutely terrible. Looked more like a wobbly stick figure falling off a cliff than anything remotely E.T. The bike was a disaster, wheels looking like squashed eggs.
I went back to basics. I pulled up the actual scene, watched it a good ten times. Paused it, squinted at the screen. The silhouette is key, obviously. But it’s not just a black shape. There’s a certain feel to it, a kind of wonder. My initial sketches were just too flat, too dead.
The Nitty-Gritty of Flying Bikes
Okay, so sketching wasn’t quite cutting it for the vibe I wanted. I figured I’d try a super simple digital approach. Nothing fancy, mind you, I’m not one of those super techy graphics guys. I just have some basic software I mess with.
My main struggles were:
- The Bike Itself: Getting the angle of the bike, so it looked like it was actually soaring, not just stuck on the screen. That took ages. I must have redrawn that handlebar position a dozen times.
- Elliott and E.T.: Keeping them as simple silhouettes but still recognizable. E.T. in the basket, especially. He couldn’t just be a lump; he needed that characteristic head shape, even in shadow. And Elliott’s posture, leaning forward.
- The Moon: This sounds silly, but just a plain circle wasn’t enough. It needed to feel like THE moon from the movie. Big, glowing, kind of ethereal. I played around with a soft glow effect for what felt like forever.
There was this one point where I almost just gave up. My cat jumped on my keyboard, deleted half an hour’s work, and I just stared at the screen thinking, “Why am I even doing this? I could be watching TV.” But then, I remembered that feeling from the movie, that sense of pure childhood adventure. That’s what I was chasing.
Having a Bit of a Breakthrough
The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to make it perfect and just focused on the feeling. I realized the background didn’t need to be a super detailed forest. A few jagged tree-line silhouettes at the bottom were enough to ground it, to give the moon something to rise above. Simple, but effective.
Then, for the characters on the bike, I stopped fussing over tiny details no one would see in a silhouette. I just focused on the main shapes. Is the angle of Elliott’s leg right? Does E.T.’s head poke out enough? Basic stuff, really.
I also tinkered with the colors a bit. Not just black and white for the moon. I added a very subtle blueish tint to the “sky” around the moon, and a warmer yellow for the moon itself. It sounds like a small thing, but it made a huge difference to the atmosphere.
The Final Look (Well, My Final Look)
So, after a fair bit of fiddling, deleting, and starting over, I got something I was pretty chuffed with. It’s not Disney-level animation, not by a long shot. It’s just a still image, really. But when I look at it, I get a little flicker of that movie magic. The bike looks like it’s flying, the moon looks big and mysterious, and you can just about feel that sense of wonder.
It’s definitely not a professional piece, and I wouldn’t be submitting it to any art contests, haha. But for a personal project, just messing around trying to recapture a bit of nostalgia, I’m happy. It’s a good reminder that sometimes the simplest scenes are the most powerful, and trying to recreate them, even imperfectly, can be a lot of fun. It just took a bit of persistence and not being afraid to make something that looked like a squashed egg to begin with.
