Behind the Effects: Davy Jones

Complaining about CGI, and reminiscing about the days were puppets and stop motion were used has become kind of an internet cliché.  Yet it’s one that Behind the Effects is usually more then happy to partake in; because CGI is seriously overused.

But even I have to recognized good work when I see it, and CGI artists are constantly coming up with new cool ways to implement their art into the film medium.  As computer animation evolves I will probably have fewer things to complain about; just watch movies like Avatar or any of the modern Super-Hero movies and you’ll see stuff that was unthinkably mind blowing just a few years ago.  I can hate on CGI all I want, but the medium is truly spectacular.

Take for instance the subject of today’s article, Davy Jones.  This animated squid-faced pirate villain is composed of some of the coolest most minds blowing CGI created for film, and the process is more interesting then you probably think it is.  It all started on the set itself.

That picture above might look familiar to anyone who has seen Pirates of the Caribbean 3, but with one essential change:  There’s an older English gentleman in bizarre face paint standing were Davy Jones is supposed to be.

Well that English gentleman is Bill Nighy, the acting talent behind our tentacle faced friend.  Every Davy Jones sequence filmed for “Pirates 2” and “Pirates 3” was filmed with Nighy standing in the place were Jones would eventually be doing his dialogue live on camera and interacting with the other actors.  Here’s a few before and after pictures to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Once the film was done shooting it was ILM’s time to shine.  The weird face paint and clothing that Nighy is wearing in those production photos might make it look like they were setting him up fore motion capture, but that is not the case.  The stuff is there just to make him stand out more so they could use him as an animation example and reference back to his performance when animating Jones’ movements.  If you look you’ll notice that Jones doesn’t even have nighy’s face;  Jones’ face is a unique one created by the artists, using Nighy’s only as a reference for movement.

The actual animation process itself is mind blowing and I don’t pretend to understand any of the actual computer stuff.  here are some stills of the process so you can get a feel for it.

So basically Bill Nighy walked on set every day looking like Jack Skellington, and was transformed into a incredibly realistic squid pirate with a different face in post.  And all without the use of any facial tracking technology, just talented animators.  If that’s not some impressive CGI work, then I don’t know what is!

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