Crash [McCreery] and the director, Gore Verbinski did the initial creature design pass to establish the 15 Flying Dutchman characters. They were all digital except Bootsrap Bill who was accomplished with makeup and prosthetics. From those, I generated photorealistic illustrations, a head study and a full body study, of the 14 digital creatures to interpret what they would look like in a real world environment for the modelers and viewpainters. We wanted a few more creatures so we wouldn’t see the same ones all the time, and I generated concept designs following sketches Gore had done for Wheelback, Ratlin, Old Haddy, and Angler. We ended up with 18 hero guys and 32 variations.
What was the process?
During the look development stage, while Gore was shooting I’d do artwork and he’d do sketches. It was cool. He sketched a lot on the first [Pirates] movie, too. We’d get sketches on a napkin or whatever he had near. We’d call them Goregrams. It’s great when the director can draw. You totally get what he wants. Some of the creatures evolved more than others during the look development process.
For Wheelback, we had to decide what type of wheel is sticking out of his back. For Ratlin who had tarp of sail canvas over his face and rigging rope on top of that, I did an illustration to get buy off from Gore. We had to consider what he looked like in profile, from different angles, how the joint in his hand would work, how his face fused into rope and sailcloth. We’d pass those illustrations to Gore and then to the modelers and viewpainters.
What were the design goals?
The concept is that the longer they’re on Davy Jones’ crew, the more encrusted by sea barnacles they are. We didn’t want it to look like the evolution was a comfortable marriage of sea life and human. We wanted it to be painful infection, a painful distortion. Often in mutations, there’s asymmetry. So, we didn’t have any bilateral symmetry. Geoff Campbell’s [creature supervisor] modeling crew made modular pieces of sea life and they used ZBrush to get hyper detail. Since all these guys would be completely CG, we wanted to give them forms that couldn’t be accomplished with prosthetics. Gore wanted to take them further, to make their sea life more recognizable.
Can you give us an example?
I got a napkin from the Caribbean with a sketch Gore had done of a guy with head in a shell and a picture of a conch shell. So I generated artwork for Hadras from that.
And Maccus, the hammerhead shark guy. The initial concept was that he had one side of his head coming out of his eye but the rest of his head was more human. He had a hat and hair. From far away in silhouette, it didn’t read right away that he’s mutating into a hammerhead; it wasn’t as obvious. When I was generating the photorealistic illustrations, Gore sent a sketch along to make him less human in his head. We flattened the back of his head so it’s obvious you can’t fit a guy into that suit. From profile, he looks like smooth backed hammerhead shark. We also flattened his nose. For that, I looked at reference of rugby players and boxers who had noses smashed in. And, everything sort of points toward his brow ridge like a shark. Also, we made his mouth, muzzle and jaw distend. These are things that couldn’t be accomplished with a guy in suit.
Did you change other characters?
Gore really liked the performance of the actor standing in for Penrod, so he wanted to incorporate more of a human face into the creature.
Another example of incorporating more of the actor because Gore liked what he was doing, was Wyvern, the guy coming out of the wall. The actor playing him [John Boswell] had a beautiful voice and weathered face and he was so commanding in his performance. Also, we tried to work in more negative spaces so that he couldn’t have been accomplished by a guy in a suit.
Penrod originally looked more like a sand flea. John Knoll had the idea we should split one of his legs into two legs so it looked like the lobster aspects were taking over on one side. On his human side leg, we put gaps in his calves that you could see though, so it looked like he was beginning to pull apart. It gave him more of a mutated look than a comfortably evolved look.
At one point, I looked at Maccus’ back when I was looking of photos of a lobster for Penrod. I noticed that the underside of the lobster had segments with legs sprouting out, and it kind of looked like a spine. So I tried an illustration of the underside of a lobster erupting out of Maccus’s back with lobster legs reaching out. It looked so painful and disturbing, it bothered me. I thought, “Oh, that might be kind of neat.”
