STACK #121 Nov 2015

Bringing the physical out of the digital The CaesarWarrior Collection bust byWetaWorkshop

of performance capture, which broke the methodology of how this is done.The problem is that when you are getting performance capture, the actors are bound by gravity, by the real energy of being in a real space, the real topography.Yet if you start key-frame animating at that transition, they suddenly start looking a bit more likeThe Amazing Spider-Man.They just have that little bit more elasticity because it is very hard to perfectly recreate those things. So in this movie we decided to use stunt people to do all of those tricky stunts, and we hired parkour guys. Now, the guys who can do parkour can do amazing things.They defy gravity; they are incredible. But if we had them just do it exactly the way they do it in real life, it would seem as though the apes knew human parkour, which would look really weird! SoTerry had this training camp where he trained these guys to do parkour as apes. So we had like ape parkour, which was bizarre! But all of these things add to the reality of the film because there is real performance capture for virtually all of what you are seeing. Apparently theApes films were something of an obsession for you growing up? Yes, I was obsessed with Planet of the Apes and I was introduced to it by the television show, which somebody recently told me had only been on air for three months.That surprised me, because my memory of it was that it lasted most of my childhood – it was that important to me! And because of that, a series of dolls came out and I had all the dolls and the tree house and the records. I had all of that merchandise. That became my entry into all of the movies. I saw Planet of the Apes , which is my favourite, but Beneath the Planet of the Apes also really terrified me – when the guys take off their faces and they are praying to the bomb. I thought, ‘this is pretty terrifying stuff’. So I am a huge fan of the franchise. When I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes , I was really excited by it because I thought, ‘Well, they have found a way to re-enter this universe but in a way that is more

On 19 November this year, a very special Blu-ray box set is being released by 20th Century Fox. The Planet of the Apes - Caesar’s Warrior Collection contains all eight films made in the ‘Apes’ universe since the original Planet of the Apes in 1968. All presented in stunning High Definition and packaged inside the base of a limited edition bust of Caesar – leader of the apes and the central character of the new movies. The exclusive bust was created in New Zealand as a collaboration between the Academy Award-winning teams at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, famous for their design, manufacturing and digital visual effects work on The Lord of the Rings , King Kong , Avatar and many other international blockbusters. Weta Digital have received great acclaim for bringing the apes to life in this year’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and received an Oscar nomination for their work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2012. Since 2001, Weta Workshop has created several hundred pieces of high end limited edition collectible sculpture, treasured by many thousands of movie fans and collectors across the world. To ensure absolute authenticity and to safeguard the artistic values of the film, at Weta, it’s always the artists working on the movie who subsequently create the collectibles. The challenge of bringing the bust of Caesar from the digital realm to the physical was therefore presented to current Weta Digital (and formerly Weta Workshop) veteran Gino Acevedo, who started at Weta Workshop to work on make-up and prosthetics for The Lord of the Rings, and has gradually made the transition from physical textures to digital. Gino was hand-picked to bring his extensive knowledge of anatomy and physical make-up effects to Weta Digital. As the digital model of Caesar was already created for the movie, the first step was to transfer this into a physical medium. Gino explains the process: “When a digital 3D model is created, it’s done without any hair, so before the bust was handed over to Weta Workshop, the incredibly talented Weta Digital modeller Florian Fernandez added the hair to the model as well as some of the subtle character of Caesar.” A slightly raised eyebrow, a squint, a twitch in the corner of his mouth.

What would be done by the animators for the movie is the same process used to bring an accurate and neutral digital model to life. “Once we’d sent the files over to Weta Workshop, digital sculptor Lindsey Crummett kept refining the hair in ZBrush,” Gino continues. “It was then printed out by Weta Workshop’s 3D modelling and manufacturing department. Too big to be printed in one piece, several pieces were printed, joined together and cleaned up. “A mould was made and a plasticine copy was cast, ready for sculptor Brigitte Wuest to further add subtle detail to the hairline and make sure Caesar’s hair looked natural and believable. Hair is one of the hardest elements to perfect in any project,” Gino explains. While the sculpture was being refined, Weta Workshop model maker Dave Tremont started work on the base of the bust that contains the drawer where the discs are stored. When all elements had been married up and the concept approved by the studio and filmmakers, the colourless sculpt was entrusted to painting room supervisor Sourisak Chanpaseut to apply colour and war paint. “Weta Digital provided detailed paint schemes and textures of the crackles in the war paint on Caesar’s face to ensure absolute authenticity,” Gino says. The final result is nothing short of stunning. There is no way you can walk past this bust without doing a double-take. It is just about full scale – during our interview we compared a prototype of the bust to an adult male chimpanzee skull in Gino Acevedo’s extensive collection of bone references. Coincidentally, one of the same skulls that were originally used to create the digital model. Movie creatures have come a long way since 1968 and it’s satisfying to the artists of both Weta Workshop and Weta Digital when a collaboration bridges the gap between the digital and the physical, and it can be shared with movie fans and collectors. Gino and the rest of the team hope that these busts will make it into many movie collections, and that the uncannily realistic face of Caesar will scowl at fans of Planet of the Apes from the shelves at JB Hi-Fi.

emotional, from a different point of view.’ Without remaking any of the films, it was a way into that world again, and I thought that was really exciting.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is out on November 19

Photo credit: Steve Unwin. Weta Workshop

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