By Colin Ellis
It’s a mask so fascinating viewers can’t take their eyes off it.
Bringing to life Rorschach, the most infamous character in the classic graphic novel Watchmen, was one of the challenges for Zack Snyder when he adapted the novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons into a feature film in 2009.
Dressed like a detective from a film noir, Rorschach is arguably the most dangerous and compelling character in Moore and Gibbons’s book, an uncompromising anti-hero alienated from the rest of society. Part of what makes him so fascinating is his mask – a cloth with a constantly morphing inkblot. The designs they create are ambiguous patterns similar to the character’s namesake, a Rorschach test. They appear to have a mind of their own. They move across his face like liquid and are in some ways a reflection of the character himself: morally ambiguous and deeply mysterious.
- Courtesy Randy Daudlin
Snyder employed the services of Intelligent Creatures, a visual effects company based in Toronto to help with the design of Rorschach’s “face.” To produce such a complex effect, Intelligent Creatures used Houdini 3D animation software for some of the rendering and shading work. They also used Maya software to add lip synch and muscle movement to the character’s face, and completed the final composite rendering using Nuke, a node-based compositing software. The results can only be described as magical, and highlight the evolution and importance of CGI in creating visually complex characters and stories.
Lon Molnar, CEO and senior visual effects supervisor of Intelligent Creatures, says the flexibility of CGI allows filmmakers to envision the written word as it was imagined in the writer’s head. “We’re seeing all these old books that have been around a long time starting to be conceived in film because they can be,” he says. “Look at what it’s done for Marvel. We’re seeing all their comics being turned into movies because you can envision it properly.”
CGI has come a long way since John Lasseter created the first fully computer generated character for the 1985 film Young Sherlock Holmes. Since then, movies like Jurassic Park, The Mask, and Avatar have used it to dazzle movie audiences. But how has this evolution in filmmaking affected more traditional film techniques like makeup and prosthetics? And how have makeup artists adapted to the CGI revolution?
Donald Mowat, a makeup artist on the movie The Fighter, says there was more flexibility in terms of shooting movies with traditional, out-of-kit makeup 20 years ago. But HD can sometimes make these tricks more noticeable, and directors have no choice but to use CGI in order to perfect the scene.
“Now everything’s so true to the eye,” Mowat says. “A lot of the tricks we used you can’t get away with and certainly at least 50 per cent of the prosthetic makeup that you used to see you would not buy anymore.”
Mowat says the use of CGI to enhance makeup on films has sparked a debate among makeup artists over what is and isn’t “pure” makeup. The three films nominated for best makeup at this year’s Academy Awards – The Wolfman, The Way Back and Barney’s Version – were enhanced by CGI. True Grit and The Fighter, which used more traditional, out-of-kit makeup were not.
Rather than go digital for The Fighter, however, Mowat was able to use some of his old makeup tricks to turn Mark Wahlberg’s face into a bloody pulp. “That was just done old school with some surgical gauze in his mouth and really colouring his face properly and creating an illusion,” he says. “I really take pride in being able to create a scar out of paint, latex, scar material and moulding material.”
Cost also factors into the decision to use CGI over makeup. Randy Daudlin, a makeup artist for the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and author of two film makeup books Reel Characters and Hurt ‘Em Reel Good, remembers a cannibal movie he worked on last summer that saw his work get pushed to the side when the producers thought it would be cheaper to go with CGI.
“At the eleventh hour, whoever was doing their visual effects made a deal and took everything and so we got squeezed out,” he says. “It was the first time I ever got replaced by a computer.”
Of course, the results of strictly relying on CGI don’t always work in the director’s favour. Daudlin says the filmmakers of the cannibal movie he was let go from realized they made a mistake when the film ended up looking like a disaster.
“How is a computer artist going to have blood seeping and the wardrobe staining and changing colour? All the details we do as makeup artists and keep track of as part of our continuity they won’t do. They can’t. It would cost so much money,” he says.
The advantage of using CGI in makeup is it allows filmmakers to enhance or augment an existing prosthetic as well as fix mistakes that can arise during shooting, says Miguel Sapochnik, director of the sci-fi action film Repo Men. “Certainly in all the CGI work I do we spend as much time as possible to get it as amazingly detailed and clear-looking as possible,” he says. However, in creating suspension of disbelief, Sapochnik says the problem with CGI is how noticeable it can be if used incorrectly or to completely replace makeup or prosthetics. “CGI has many great uses, but the reason you would rather use the real thing is because it is the real thing, and so the way it interacts with light, atmosphere and ultimately the actor is very hard to recreate effectively.”
But the question of what looks more realistic on screen is one that both visual effects and makeup artists grapple with. While the technology has certainly come a long way from Young Sherlock Holmes, some question the realism of CGI compared to makeup and prosthetics. Kalene Dunsmoor, a former digital artist for Lucasfilm in Singapore, says CGI can sometimes turn audiences off.
“There’s actually scientific studies that say puppets can evoke a more positive human reaction versus something close to being a human like a robot or CG double,” she says.
Dunsmoor points to Tron: Legacy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as examples of digital effects being used to create digital human doubles, but says the effect isn’t always convincing.
“I don’t think anyone’s quite perfected the human digital double yet and I don’t think people are going to be accepting of them until we get it dead-on accurate.”
Indiana Allemang, a film and TV makeup artist from Toronto agrees. She says that regardless of the technological advances, the detachment people feel watching a movie with people alongside computer generated humans is still there.
“There are some things you can’t do with CGI,” she says. “You also have to think about it from an acting standpoint, where some people are not believable with their CGI counterparts, like Day After Tomorrow or Armageddon.”
CGI also removes some of the magic of great makeup, says Mowat.
A motion capture suit - Photo by Sarah Horwath
“I think it takes away a lot of the fun and creativity for people like me who came up in the traditional system before we had all this digital,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s always the right thing.”
But for Molnar, it all depends on your perception. “You can talk about it taking away from the movie magic, but look at what it’s done for movie magic,” he says. Without this technology, Molnar says movies like Lord of the Rings and Avatar would not exist. “Makeup artists may not necessarily like the fact that we can do some of that stuff but the fact is we can do it.”
Mike Habjan, a visual effects artist on Saw IV agrees, pointing out that older technology limited directors to using things like miniatures like in Tim Burton’s Batman films, where they used models to create the look of Gotham City. Now, computers are involved in almost every detail of a film’s production.
“For the work of compositors, there’s always touch ups to be done on scenes and little effects to be added. They go into scenes and you don’t even notice it. It just looks natural.”
Habjan notes that while some people criticize CGI for being too noticeable or fake, filmmakers are getting better at making it look as real as possible. “In most Hollywood movies, you’re not going to notice the CG, but it’s in there and that’s the goal.”
Despite the apparent tension between makeup and visual effects artists, there are times when the two work well together. Daudlin says that it all depends on the quality of the people working in both fields to make it look right.
“[Animators] are basing their animation on models that we create for them and that’s what makes it look real… It all depends on their skill sets, our skill sets. The better the actual artist, the better the end product.”
Molnar also says makeup artists are still needed, but that they need to embrace the new technology. “Their techniques and skill sets are integral. They’re the basic principles to what we do in the digital world.”
Ultimately, filmmakers are trying to tell a story, and CGI can help facilitate that in ways unimagineable ten years ago. CGI is part of the toolkit, Sapochnik says, and it can allow artists to run riot with their imaginations. But there’s also something endearing about tangible creations, like the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing, or Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. Both feel inexplicably real and accessible even if there’s something primitive-looking about them.
The goal of CGI seems to be perfection, not only in a films look but in getting the performance of an actor to synch with a director’s vision. But for Sapochnik, what makes film a unique format is its natural imperfections.
“What tends to happen [with CGI] is that it’s so clean and it’s so perfect it basically defies reality, and reality is imperfect.”
Whatever technique is used, story matters most. As Dunsmoor points out, the goal of visual effects should be invisibility. Ironically, both CGI and makeup are doing their best not to be noticed.
