![]() ![]() Having a digital render that comes off as shiny perfectly compliments that sea creature look. The tentacled face of Davy Jones is wet and slimy to the point where it is always glistening. That shininess also is enormously beneficial for someone who is mostly a sea creature. This is partly why Pixar decided their first movie should be Toy Story, because that plastic look would be perfect for a collection of characters who are toys. Digital people, a lot of the time, just looked shiny or like plastic. If it can be real, just make it real.Īnother problem so many digital artists face, particularly back when this film was made, was the ability to recreate skin, whether it be how it absorbs light or how it stretches. They get to completely avoid the number one pitfall that plagues character animators and effects artists. However, those windows to the soul are all his, and being able to look into those eyes to see what is happening inside this squid man's head is invaluable to connecting with him. He is wearing a motion capture suit, and everything else around him is animated. ![]() Pirates of the Caribbean gets around this with Davy Jones by actually using Bill Nighy's eyes for the character. The digital dead eyes all those characters have are, at best, distancing and, at worst, horrifying. Think back to all of Robert Zemeckis' entirely motion capture films or young Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy. Eyes are one of the most difficult things to believably recreate in a computer and are often the major roadblock in audiences buying into seeing these digital creations as actual flesh and blood. They connect us to the people on screen because we can see their thoughts. Not to be too hacky about it, but the eyes are the windows to the soul. When you think of the worst digitally created characters in film, the thing that sends it straight into the uncanny valley are the eyes. RELATED: Exclusive: Gore Verbinski Reflects on His ‘Pirates’ Trilogy and the Intense Production of the Sequels: “It Was Survival Mode” It's a design that leans into the limitations of computer graphics, but interacts with the environment. Davy Jones stands out from the crowd due to his ability to utilize a key element from Nighy's performance - his eyes. The design and integration into the in-camera material blends together so beautifully that you forget that what you are seeing isn't real. This brings us back to the remarkable creation of Davy Jones, as he is the only one where the seams of digital origins really are not apparent. Expertly made in a computer, but a computer nonetheless. Paddington is a perfect creation and one of my best friends, but he clearly looks like something made in a computer. While many of these characters are beloved and serve their films wonderfully, very rarely do they actually convince you that the thing you are looking at is real. Even the Paddington films, everyone's favorite duology about a nice bear, are centered on a digital character. Digital characters even have their own mascot with Andy Serkis, who not only portrayed Gollum but also Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, Captain Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin, and the titular King Kong in Peter Jackson's remake. ![]() The highest grossing film of all time, Avatar, is mostly a cast of digital characters, and Marvel, the biggest cinematic franchise of the moment, spent years building to an epic confrontation with a giant digital creation in Thanos ( Josh Brolin). Due to the character's popularity, seemingly every big franchise now has to include some sort of digital character. Before Davy Jones, there was the pioneering work done with Gollum on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Digital character animation and motion capture have been popular techniques for a lot of blockbusters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |