Thanks to the Covid-19 test, it’s normal for someone to get used to the inside of the human nose intimately over the last few years. But when doing research on his new animated film, director Chris Williams goes deeper into the nostrils than most of us have.
“I watched a video of a small camera navigating the nasal passages,” he said. He also examined the sinuses of various animals and chose Google Image Search.
Netflix’s “The Sea Beast” scene was the catalyst for Williams’ nose knowledge gathering. This could be the most ambitious digital animation project the streaming company has ever embarked on. Directed by Williams and written by Williams and Nervenjamin, “The Beast of the Sea” takes place in a fantasy world where the hunter’s crew uses a magnificent wooden ship to fight giant monsters. (Influence includes “Master and Commander: The Other Side of the World,” King Kong, Renaissance era map The drawn monsters appear in the high seas. )
The story continues with Maisie (spoken by Zaris-Angel Hator), the daughter of two fallen Monster Hunters. Maisie escapes from a repressive group home and joins the crew of a legendary ship known as Inevitable. There she meets Jacob (Karl Urban), a windswept blonde-haired head who is inevitably ready to become the next captain.
Their co-stars don’t talk: it’s a majestic monster known as Red Blaster, or Red for short, starting as a target for hunting missions, but forming a bond between Macy and Jacob. increase. At some point, Macy and Jacob noticed that they were in Red’s nostrils.
Let’s see how this filmmaker designed the beast and thought through some of the other visual highlights of the film.
Skin
The priority of Williams and his team was, in Williams’ words, to create a compelling, livable world. “Hopefully, you can cast spells that will make your audience feel a deep history,” he said. That philosophy is reflected in the design of the red face, which has a protruding horn with scratches and scratches.
“She’s been in a lot of fights with hunters, so I wanted her to be beaten,” said Eunyoung Jung, the film’s art director.
Still, they want the texture of red’s skin to be simpler and more mammalian than the texture of some other beast’s skin seen in the movie, so that the audience can form a deeper connection with red. I did. “We are more likely to relate to mammals than insects and fish,” said production designer Matthias Lechner. “So the enemy monster was a harder shell.” One example is a crab-like creature, where you can see realistic hair and bumps that create the uncanny valley effect.
eye
The placement of Red’s eyes, sitting like a lizard on a ridge on the side of his head, was partially determined by the scene where Macy and Jacob each stopped in front of Red and directed where to swim. “There had to be a place for them to stand, and the eyes had to be a certain size,” Lechner said. To help sell the red character arc from the enemy to friends, the team avoided making the iris human and immediately friendly — they are close to the cat’s eyes. “It puts a little emotional barrier between the audience and the creatures,” Williams said, “something they have to overcome.”
size
From the beginning, the concept was to make Red and other sea monsters surprisingly large. However, size is a challenge for animators. “You could go to the Godzilla giant, but at some point it’s no longer relevant to humans,” Lechner said. “So much of this movie came up with the most impressive scale possible, but it’s still relevant.” Size is also a beast, regardless of whether the human character fights or is friendly with the beast. It needed to be manageable enough to fit in the frame when interacting with.
To convey the large size and weight of the animals, the team relied partially on realistically simulated animated seawater. “We know water,” Lechner explained. “It’s very easy to determine distance and scale depending on the water. It’s like a ruler.”
colour
Lechner quoted Studio Ghibli’s 1992 animated film Porco Rosso. Red plane towards the blue sea, As an inspiration for the “Sea Beast” color palette. However, there were practical considerations when choosing a particular shade of red that would be the character’s red. “When I saturated her too much, she looked small. She became like a toy creature,” said art director Jung. “When I lowered saturation, she became too realistic like a live-action creature.” The team was natural, organic, yet lively on the screen: “two different worlds.” I wanted something that “accepts”. They settled on a slightly desaturated red leaning towards magenta. When the character is far away, the tone cools and gives an impression of atmosphere between the camera and the character. This is the same as in real life, distant mountains are often distorted into blue or purple.
As a rule, the creatures and natural environment of the movie are colorful, but the sterile Baroque kingdom where human elements, especially the inevitable set, set sail is relatively dull. “Baroque gardens are all about managing nature,” Lechner said. “It’s very subdued, but wild-colored splashes are out of control and fun.”
As such, he added, “We are siding with nature.”
