The 'Davy Jones' appreciation thread (Now with Photos!)

#181

I guess, if you wanna be all ‘accurate’ about it.

#182

Dittoes on the above. It’s seriously inspiring to have you guys swing by in person, and very big of you to be so forthcoming with details. I haven’t seen this much professional interest in a project in quite a while, and with good reason.

#183

Great work guys! Again, amazing. I was completely fooled.

For any ILM’ers out there, is Ken Wesley still lurking about? If so could you tell him to email DJ?
dj@synagen.com.au

Anyway, I think this year we should have a SPECIAL “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” and every CG employee or enthusiast should mandatorily have to dress and talk like a pirate!
http://www.talklikeapirateday.com/

The best news is, I’ll be in San Fran for it this year! Goodbye Sydney, hello San Fran!

-DJ

#184

Hey well done ILMers. Im off to see it tonight but it sounds like you done good.

May your phone message lights never flash early on a friday morning…phil

#185

Thanks for all the info guys, this is a very enlightening thread! Please keep us updated on the time for the siggraph presentation :slight_smile:

I have a couple more questions regarding rendering, specifically DJ’s eyes: did you use raytraced refraction for the cornea, or some other method? If you used refraction at all, how did you deal with the apparent difference in eye-line between what the animators see and what’s rendered? Did you try and simulate the caustic effects of the cornea at all?

#186

Thanks for replying anotherhong

Really appreicate you taking the time to answer my question, its really fascinating :thumbsup:

#187

Hey everyone…

Jason:

yeah I’m really glad that Disney didn’t publicize the effects work on Pirates before the opening (though I hope they will now). It’s better for the audience to see Davy Jones with no preparation, than to have seen a bunch of “making of” stuff beforehand telling them it’s “great CG”. That’s the last thing I want them thinking about.

rblitz7:

Characters that (arguably) could have been makeup:
Clanker, Jimmylegs, Ogilvey.

That leaves: Davy, Crash, Greenbeard, Hadras, Maccus, Koleniko, Palifico, Penrod,
Quittance, The Twins, and Wyvern all having to be CG because of the way they were designed.

Even for the 3 I mentioned, it’s questionable as to whether they would have been as effective as prosthetics. Certainly Bootstrap is a terrific character, but I don’t really see why he serves the script and the film, but the CG characters don’t. Davy was going to have a crew one way or the other, making them CG rather than prosthetics is only a detriment to the film if the CG didn’t work, but I think it did work.

I think what your dad may have been reacting to is the fact that the crewmembers were intentionally designed in a way that could NOT be “guys in suits”. So, just from a conceptual standpoint, you have to know there’s some trickery there. Some folks think that’s imaginative and fun, others would rather see their movies more grounded in reality and they quickly lose patience with a lot of that fantastical craziness. My dad was that way.

It’s not a fault of CG (if it’s a fault at all), but rather one persons reaction to this film having a heavy element of fantasy (rather more than Pirates 1 did), instead of being a more straight forward period seafaring adventure. But that’s a lot of speculation on my part.

Thanks for the interesting questions.

#188

I’m beginning to get on the nerves of my co-workers because all I’ve been talking about since I saw DMC is Davy. Just wanted to thank all the crew of ILM for stopping by and giving an insight as to how you brought Mr. Jones to life. I still can’t get over those eyes. I agree with everyone…when you’re watching him…he’s not cg…he’s some freak who’s got an octopus on his shoulders. One of my fav scenes was the moment when Davy looked into the chest and saw that his heart was missing. The look of rage, horror, despair etc all came washing over his face and I could really feel that he was about to explode. Awesome job!

#189

Absolutely agree! This was one of the most memorable moments. So many emotions captured flawlessly.

~t

#190

This character is truly amazing :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: ,and the whole movie is gr8

#191

That’s no even right… all CG. I saw his eyes in his first scene and I didn’t even question that the actor was in makeup. I wish I’d read this thread before today. Now I have to go see the movie a third time :slight_smile: and stay through the full credits too. It will help me in building a strong unhealthy obsession with the movie.

Thank you everyone who worked on it at ILM and for answering questions here. Since you’re this skilled at doing realism, I’d like to request that you don’t replace all humanity with robots till, say sometime next year.

#192

I first heard about Davey Jones being completely CG here at CGTalk. Whilst watching the film I kept forgetting that this dude wasn’t ‘real’ but golly gosh was this character amazing!! Unbelievably convincing.

I can’t wait for the DVD to come out!

Thanks to the creative team who worked on this film, I can’t wait for the 3rd film!! :smiley:

#193

I know it’s pretty redundant after all this thread has gone by, and I haven’t posted here in ages, but just wanted to add to the kudos.

I had done as I usually try and do and avoided reading or seeing anything about the movie as much as possible beforehand (increasingly difficult in these times), so I went in not knowing how Davy was accomplished, and I really was guessing all the way through…I figured at most it was a full head replacement, with probably the eyes and mouth being real, and some limb replacements or something, the rest of him being a costume…I like many others was smacked upon learning the truth. Really along with the phenomenal skin and eye work, the rest of him was so solid it never even occurred to me he could be ENTIRELY cg. Never broke at any point.

I still can’t get over how you really captured Bill Nighy’s Bill-Nighy-ness so perfectly, it’s fantastic. You can really see how nuanced his (and the animators’) performance is in each scene. Especially his eyes, those Nighy-eyes are such a signature element. I’d love to see outtakes of him saying “Shaauun…” :smiley:

The crew was definitely awesome and had some stellar moments of their own, but he WAS the show. I’d have to give runner up to the mentioned Wyvern as well, beautifully expressive and I think the best of the most extreme designs, that was a really cool moment in the movie.

I think maybe the monstrousness or “pushed” nature of some of the other character designs was what allowed you as a viewer or especially as a CG geek to sit back and say “ah yeah, CG”, since they had blatantly non-human things about them, especially the ones with exagerrated mouths etc…but that aspect added a ton of character to them I felt, and they were still amazing IMO and very much “there” in extremely difficult scenes. But then there were so few scenes that didn’t seem difficult, so much complicated staging going on and water, water, everywhere. I really liked a lot of the bizarre secondary things that were going on on the crew as well, little spines opening up or whatnot, gave it a lot of flavor.

Anyway, just wanted to rant and ramble a bit on it since I’m still fresh from the viewing last night. I really hope ILM gets the oscar this time, after missing out for WOTW (another insane schedule and underappreciated seamless work) and many other stellar showings recently. While there’s been some extremely good work done by others this year, unless some movie comes out of left field, nothing even comes close. And if they can essentially award an oscar to a vfx character tour-de-force (like the deserving Kong), Jones and the supporting cast of POTC should take it by a landslide.

#194

I had a friend who was a realist, so the beard threw him off completely (‘simply can’t be real’). However, one I mentioned Davey’s eyes were CG as well, he quite did a “What the?!”, which was splendid!

I didn’t like the movie much, if at all, but the CG on Davey was amazing. The whole tentacle-thing-in-the-water I didn’t find realistic in the moving shots, felt things were blurred, or somehow unclear the way ‘real’ elements weren’t. Hard to say what puts me off, but it must be hell to plan such scenes anyway. At any rate, Davey - amazing. He’s up there with Gollum, only being kept at the same level because Gollum had a lot of interesting and moving emotional involvement, and Davey was relatively kept flat. I’m sure that if Davey could play many more great things, being as good as he was.

#195

Many hats off to the ILM crew for their absolutely amazing work on Davy! And here I thought things went awol when I didn’t see Spaz Williams in ILM credits anymore. Anyone know if there’s going to be an “Art of” or “Making of” book for Dead Man’s Chest?

Cheers!

#196

Wow! thanks a lot! that was a great response.

#197

There are alot of posts here, so I hope this hasn’t been posted before… but VFXWorld just posted an article about the effects in Pirates.

http://www.vfxworld.com/

Front page, first article…

If this has been posted, sorry… but it wasn’t there a couple hours ago.

#198

:bowdown: :bowdown: ILM:bowdown: :bowdown:

Wow Davey Jones is a real living being. He is the sea. I can’t imagine what ILM will be able to do in 5 years. Loved the movie too by the way.

Edit: Those gifs below had me pacing around my office. My mind is completly blown.
That is art beyond art, the evolution of art. The best this world has ever seen.

#199

I love these .gifs!:thumbsup:

#200

I have to add that aside from the all the great artists already mentioned who contributed to the amazing look of Davy (Jung-Seung, Damian, Steve, Karin, James, Tim Naylor for rigging and Scott Jones wrangling all those darn assets), I wanted to give a big thank you to the animators on the show who brought him to life:

In no short order, Steve Nichols (who also led a number of sequences), Lee Fulton, Jakub Pistecky, Maia Kayser, Samati Boonchitsitsak, Andy Wong, Greg Towner, Sylvia Wong, Sean Curran, Mark Powers, Sean Kelly, Michael Easton, Peter Kelly, Izzy Acar, Cameron Folds, Paul Kavanagh, Makato Koyama, Dave Sidley, Stephen Wong, Johnathan Lyons, Kevin Martel, Michael Berenstein, Keith Johnson, Chi-Chung Tse, Rick O’Conner, Delio Tramontozzi, Steve Aplin, Jean-Denis Haas, Thai Nyugen, Tim Waddy and Tim Heath. Hats off! If you see a name you recognize, give them a pat on the back because they deserve it after enduring the scrutiny of shot reviews. :wink:

On a side note, I have to hand it to all the other animators on the show who brought the Kraken attacks and the Dutchmen crew to life, itself no small feat. Kudos to Peter Daulton and Roland Yepez who brought several jungle, beach and shipwreck Dutchmen shots to life all with keyframe animation. The end result will have people thinking it’s just some guys in suits running around or “on set mocap” ala Davy. Nope, hand keyframe animation, great job and some of my favorite shots in the flick. And, of course, all the TDs and compositors who did an amazing job integrating all the characters into some extremely difficult shots.

Of course, how could you go wrong with Hal and John leading this massive team effort? It was a daunting undertaking but the results on film, the audience response and peer praise from the CG community speaks for itself. :thumbsup: