Pinning this just to clean up some confusion: Alot of people are commenting "I thought Gollum and/or Jar Jar was the *first* motion captured character?" - And they're absolutely right, but what i'm talking about here is "on set" motion capture. Because for earlier characters like Gollum their mocap was done "off set" in a custom motion capture studio, whereas Davy Jones had a special suit which meant he could be physically present on the set with the rest of the cast. So my point was that Jones was the first "on set" motion capture character, not the first ever to be motion captured :) I hope that helps clean up any confusion!
I feel certain that I watched behind the scenes footage of Andy Serkis performing Gollum on-set, and interacting with the other actors, and the set itself, but maybe I'm just brain damaged. In any event, I agree with your assessment of Davy Jones.
Yea I think Andy Serkis was there in the grey outfit and stuff, but the actual performance they "motion captured" of him was done elsewhere because it needed more specialized equipment. Perhaps , like i mention in the video when talking about motion capture itself, it just ILM "propaganda/marketing" that I've been reading 😅 - but, literally every source I read/watched in preparation for this video said that: "Davy Jones was the first on-set motion captured character"
@@THE-X-Force In Two Towers and Return of the King, he was in a sort of white suit on-set that had to be erased and replaced with the digital version of Gollum in post-production. For the Hobbit trilogy, he was able to wear a mo-cap suit on set.
I also love how they take advantage of the tentacles almost moving on their own to show Davey's emotions. - All wriggling when he's angry - Jumping around to make a point - Quick twitching during his death scene
During this video I noticed a lovely little detail! The siphon on the side of his face puts out a candle when he's threatening the dude he's about to kill! That's an AMAZING little detail!
@@beckstheimpatient4135 He also blows smoke from his pipe out of it. It shows that he's been this way for a _long_ time and, for the most part, has come to adapt to and accept his form.
i love your job too, most underrated part of movie industry. As a kid I would watch behind the scenes of star wars cgi for hours and I always respected them so much
As a regular movie watcher, I appreciate the work you do. VFX is often taken for granted nowadays, but if it wasn't for artists like you, films wouldn't have the entertainment value they hold. So, thank you 🙏🏻
I'll add in my own thanks as someone who has spent thousands of hours cleaning up mocap. I never hear anyone talk about the animators... always voice actors and mocap actors
I also remember when the trailer came out, I was new doing my lecture and requested my professor to play the trailer in my college in Delhi India.... so many years passed, and I miss those days
Unfortunately, you guys always get the blame whenever a movie's VFX doesn't look right, because the execs and decision makers asked you to redo everything in the 11th hour, the budget is spent, release date is in two weeks, and you just have to get something remotely passable rendered and shipped on 2 hours of sleep. Thanks for what you do, you're all genuinely incredible artists.
I've a professor teaching us 3D animation who had worked on the film. He heavily emphasised on the laborious nature of Davy Jones' CGI and, while he's proud of the final outcome, he wasn't fond of how difficult and time-consuming the task was. I don't think there are many studios that would be willing to go this far with CGI ever again.
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that's fair, but I think it lends to the point that like, our computers now are leagues better than 20 years ago, and we have seemingly developed the technology so much, that ideally it should be easier to get a similar outcome than it was back then, but just making those cinematic choices really went a long way in the end. but yeah, i think it takes a lot of love and care to put that much work into something like this and while there's a lot of vfx artists who care, i agree studios don't always want to put in the time and money
@idehenebenezer hey buddy, I appreciate you trying to help people, but I dont think youtube comments are the best place as you haven't made any references to the content of the video. I'd recommend more community outreach like the Mormons. Good luck!
And that is why studios should not be using CGI mixed with wave action. If they’re not going to put the time in to make it, why should they expect us to put the time in to watch it?
@@harcoom Lots of competent people worked on Star Wars. A few overpaid decision makers at the top having no plan and bumbling into everything doesn't erase the people who did the actual work.
I think there was probably one other key factor. Verbinski, coming from an effects background himself, gave the VFX team sufficient time to work on the CGI - something modern movies just don’t do. Verbinski deliberately shot Pirates 2 and 3 back to back and front-loaded a lot of the CGI-heavy shots so that they could be passed to the VFX team ASAP and give them as much time as possible to work on them. That’s what we need more of.
This makes as much sense to me as any 2 other reasons put together. Don't get me wrong, the video lists some very good reasons, but detail and getting things right are always going to take a lot of time.
Yea, it’s not like all the amazing people who work in Hollywood have just become bad. They are just treated so much worse now, being expected to create high quality CGI on impossible timeframes and budgets. These are further worsened by the fact that CGI studious (I think they are called studious) bid to perform movie contracts as fast and cheap as possible. This pretty much forces them to set unrealistic and extremely tight deadlines.
buddy, crunch culture wasn't invented in 2023, it all depends on the leader/boss, and if you don't like them? Fuck it, tell them to go fuck themselves, create a union and strike, then you have the chance to become the leader yourself
Came to the comments to say this-the ridiculously tight timelines and awful working conditions, in addition to offloading even more things that used to be done practically onto VFX teams' already overflowing plates, are a huge parts of why movies keep having their CG look worse. (And often done not because doing them in CG offered substantial advantages, but because most VFX workers weren't unionized like other departments until much more recently.)
The way they used the tentacles to help portray his emotions further lends itself to the "necessary CGI" point. Scenes where Jones is agitated or enraged and his tentacles begin to writhe and wriggle (empty chest scene) were always so memorable to me and really complimented the choices that went into his character design.
Not just Davy Jones but the whole crew. What impressed me so much was how they pulled off the combination of "human-face" to deep sea creatures to the point that you will not have that ick that it was CGI that you're looking to. The performance of the actors especially Bill Nigh made the CGI unnoticeable.
Stole the words right out of my mouth. They didn’t even need to go into that level of detail for the crew mates, and each time I watch a scene again I notice a new feature from a random crew member
This! I'm literally just now realising after all these years and multiple watchings of those films that the crew were CGI THE WHOLE TIME and not practical makeup and prosthetics
I am blown away that his clothes were CGI, I didn't even know. I legit thought that he had mapping on his face, has base layer rubber tentacles, wore full costume hat and all and that they restricted the CGI to his face adding tentacles over the rubber ones. Seeing him just walking around in a gray suit is mind blowing to me.
In most instances it seems to be easier to just do straight CGI than both. Sometimes they will have the actor wear the clothes or parts of the character for reference ex: RDJ would sometimes film with an Iron Man chest plate. But in other instances it seems to be better to just do straight CGI. That way you have full control over how the costume looks and behaves in the world of the film.
@@andrewvasquez7872 Yep, if he wore real clothes, the vfx artists would still basically need to map out the costume in the program anyway so there wouldn't be any weird clipping issues with the tentacles. Which would basically result in the same effect, just way, way harder for the artists.
The effects were so convincing that the Academy Awards almost gave Pirates of the Caribbean 2 with the Best Makeup & Prosthetics award, only to be told that it was CGI.
I remember when i saw the first pirates movie, and the transition of the pirates to the undead skeletons BLEW my mind. All of the movies with davey jones had such good CGI as well.
i grew up with the pirates franchise and as a child never batted an eye to these transitions but I found my lovefor these movies again in the recent years and I remember seeing that scene, specifically when they're fighting for deam mans chest in the cave and there's a scene of one of them reaching into the sun to grab the coin, its so seamless and looks so realistic, my jaw was on the floor.
The fact that Jones’ CGI still holds up as incredibly realistic to this day just shows that the artists loved their work. No rush, they perfected what they knew they could and worked around what they couldn’t.
I think all artists want to make work they love. Ultimately it's usually problems from on high, unrealistic deadlines, constant changes, expectations to do shots that didn't even need to be effects shots, that prevent people from putting time and love into their work.
Incorrect, it's a fairly well known fact that the CGI artists on this movie went through hell, paid little and were set sky high standards with little time to complete their work.
@@thecockycow they literally all say that. No matter who you are or where you are in the world since the beginning of time, some people have it really tough.
It always impresses me how the Pirates franchise perfectly balanced every element of the filming to make something that felt so real. It used CGI in a lot of places, but only when it really benefited the films, like to doing really hard or impossible stuff. That way, the artists could actually make the CGI look good, rather than having to do the jobs of the location scouters, set designers, and cinematographers at the same time. Oh, and thank you for helping me get educated on this thing I love!
The trilogy in my humble opinion is a film masterpiece...not a single thing I would change in them.Just the right amount of comedy and done tastefully, incredibly witty and charming dialogues, characters and action sequences.Color palette, CGI, camera angles, music.....Nothing about it is bad - sadly I can't say the same for the 4th and 5th instalment
For a while there was this wonderful phase that had balance between physical sets and cgi, where the default was to do it physically if you could and fill the rest in with CGI. But it appears to have shifted in the last decade with them only building physical props to the extent they need to. Blockbusters don't look nearly as good as they used to, with some notable exceptions.
@@byucatch22 exacly that and the best example is LOTR trilogy, Pirates trilogy or even Nolan's Batman trilogy. They built sets and practicals if it was possible to do, and if it wasn't they used CGI, and that's how it should be done. Another good example is Mad Max Fury Road, where CGI was only used to enhance the practicals effects. I like to say that CGI is like a "spice". You need to add just a little bit to make Your dish better or enhance it's taste, but if You will add too much of it or - what's even worse - base everything on it.. it's going to be indigestible (modern block buster main issue).
@@lxdead5585 yep. and speaking of spice...Dune is an absolute beautiful example of how to do CGI. The movie had plenty of it yet it blended so well with the practical effects. That movie is stunning to look at.
This is an excellent breakdown! I also think that a factor with Davy Jones is that they were not afraid of making him look ugly, gross, disturbing, etc. They didn't shy away from his CG skin looking... yucky. Being afraid to make a character ugly/gross really takes away from their ability to faithfully represent them.
The real answer. Most bad looking VFX shots look bad because the artists either ran out of time, or weren't given enough time to finish the shot. Or were hampered by directors who aren't experienced with VFX. Bad on set VFX directors (this happens a lot and adds a lot of time). There is so much demand for VFX now and only so many artists and time to go around.
@@jasonjansen9831 One of the reasons why the VFX turn out so good in films by directors like James Cameron and Gareth Edwards is because they both have a background in VFX. It makes a huge difference when the director genuinely cares about those details and knows how to communicate their vision to the whole crew.
I can't really imagine that they had loads of time. There must have been huge pressure to get this sequel out to capitalize on the momentum of the series.
I remember when I was a kid and found out it wasn't makeup and puppetry for the tentacles, my mind was blown. I thought CG was about to change forever. I mean I guess it did, but it hardly ever matched my amazement with Jones.
Davey Jones and the first Jurrassic Park are the only two movies with CGI characters that still amaze me, considering how old these movies are compared to the uncanny cgi we have now.
I still remember being 10 or so years old and completely blown away not just by the Pirates films, but Davy Jones in particular. I could genuinely feel his emotions through the screen and it was one of the reasons I was so fascinated with him- also the creative use of his character design with the tentacles was so much fun to watch! It's sad how over a decade later, the state of CGI characters seems to actually have regressed from this masterpiece of a character.
I loved the way they used agitation in the tentacle beard to portray intense emotion. It somehow emphasized his otherness and his humanity in perfect unison, and it just made the appendages look so much a part of his nature. Loved it.
I hope those VFX artists are proud of their work, I can't even imagine creating something this groundbreaking and ahead of its time for a movie that potentially hundreds of millions of people will see. And not just see, but blown up to a movie theatre screen to highlight any tiny imperfection, and yet they still nailed it so hard that a lot of us believed it could be practical effects.
you forgot the eyes ...A key aspect to Davie Jones that they kept from the actors original performance was his eyes...which is one of the key ingredients to making a creature feel alive...so many CG characters fail at this and have eyes that dont have life behind them.
I actually have been rewatching the PotC movies probably why i got this video but the eyes and how they move are definitely what sells a lot of it for me
Good point, they captured the eyes perfectly. But in case someone gets the wrong idea, the eyes are still CG and not composited from the actor. Davy is 100% CG
The motion capture helped a lot. Some movies do it well, Planet of the Apes for example, but the majority of movies don't, Marvel for example. It's all in the body language and the subtle movements, that's what brings a character alive. Marvel movies are decent CGI but when have you ever seen a CGI face show anything more than shock or anger? Davy Jones perfectly encapsulates sadness and cruelty and Bill Nighy did a phenomenal job bringing that to the screen. Cruelty is one of those hard emotions to show, you enjoy what you are doing for a sadistic reason, you're giving in to your most intense desires and intrusive thoughts, of course you would be enjoying it but happiness doesn't quite describe the emotion. You can give an evil smile but that still doesn't quite cut it. Bill Nighy was able to capture Davy Jones enjoyment of cruelty just in the way he carried himself, it became the embodiment of his character. No one could have done it better.
In the mid-2000s they actually gave the artists time to make their art well. Maybe part of that was because you still needed to do a lot of R&D and/or because studio execs didn't understand it as well as they think they do now, but the industry has, for better or mostly worse, moved from "use CGI to do it better/do the impossible" to "use CGI to do it cheaper/do it faster".
I worked on Pirates 2 & 3 at ILM. It was a bit of an effort to show the company still had it and was done when ILM was still mostly based in SF with artists who had been around for a long time. The company lost a lot of money in overtime as we did and re-did everything until it was as good as it could be. I also felt they never topped the work on Pirates. There was a big focus on lowering costs and not losing millions on projects after these films and a big turnover of talent. A lot of great people were laid off or retired in the few years after these films. ILM today is several times the size of what it used to be with offices all over the world, but many of the outstanding artists and developers who had 20-40yrs with the company are long gone. It's quantity over quality and a much younger global workforce today with an emphasis on volume and getting things done cheap. Also the movies are just so bland themselves for the most part..
This is why Ghost Rider in 2007 looked so good compared to Thor 4 or The Flash. Ghost rider felt like the vfx artists had enough time to create the flaming skeleton and fix the lighting of the Hell cycle. Disney and Wb only spent the money but really didn't pay attention to the power of cgi or just removed the scenes that looked all blocky
@@noobmasterruben5167I mean I wouldn't say Ghost Rider was exactly peak cgi, the skull and bones were definitely still far from looking realistic, but there definitely was more effort in it than Thor and Flash's work, at some point I think they excuse bad cgi out of laziness and so to make it out as a joke
@@kennethsatria6607 I know its not peak CGI but I was still amazed at how well rendered the VFX was. Just shows the audience why budget does not matter at all. Makes me wonder why Disney is just overspending their movies. $200 mil for Wish, Thor 4 and The Marvels. what a sick joke
I hoped that you will mention Gore Verbinski. Some of the VFX guys said they were on a videocall with him a couple times a week and he was very hard to satisfy. Having a VFX background he knew all the tricks they were trying to cut the corners and spotted them right away so they gave up on it. They also mentioned that they loved working with him for the same reason, the guy knew then length they went and the effort it took and was very appreciative of their work. You can tell looking at the results that they did a spectacular job.
@@H3000-i5q Yup, having uncanny lighting (cough the entire hobbit cough), will absolutely ruin scenes. That, and they just did an absolutely horrid job with it. Considering both Pirates, and the original LOTR did better with the CGI, it really says something. Some scenes in LOTR have aged better than others, but things like the Balrog still look amazing.
same as normsl actors without the filtering....you need to think of the filtering not just go for the best render...but this cant happen in movie schedules....
Also I recently rewatched these movies, and they are fantastic. But it is very interesting how much of Davy jones’ scenes are done at night and in low light scenes which utilises the VFX even better. Which is why early Doctor Who in the revival which is around the same time looks good and holds up aswell.
I feel like it’s also sort of why Jurassic Park holds up so well all of these years later. Is the CGI is mixed in with lots of practical effects and puppets and moving set pieces, giving the dinosaurs a weight and believability you wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s that care for the craft that elevates it.
It's insane that Davy Jones looks soo realistic for CGI that is more then 20 years old, while modern movies or TV series with high budgets and better computers and programs can't get it right. The details in Davy Jones' tentacles moving separately when he's talking or something are details that make the character feel more alive than most CGI creatures I've seen in recent movies.
well you see a lot of cg characters nowadays are in projects that have extremely rushed and overworked workers doing them as they are part of big franchises that need to be pushed out consistently
The lighting, the selective use, being given the time. I always look to the example of Jurassic Park in 1993 (which largely still holds up today). The main shots are at night, or diffused and and from a distance. Close-ups use (very good) animatronics... I think that some modern Filmmakers forget that CGI is a tool...it doesn't need to be be used for ALL FX.
@@beans4126 This, mostly, but having a good CG outcome is also not entirely on the CG artists themselves. Not to take away anything from them, that is in terms of respect for their work; rather to take away from their workload. As this video points out, the proper production design, knowing what needed to be shot and how, choosing lighting which helps, casting the right actor whose performance carries a lot; this is all in direction and production design. Because even if the CG team had tons of time, if you just film something that's a royal pain to work with, then it's multiples of the workload, not just a couple days or weeks extra time needed. TL;DR: it's a team effort and it's clear they had a great team.
@@insoporous9978 oh yeah I absolutely agree, but tbh treating the workers poorly is definitely adding quite a bit to the lower quality cg in a lot of projects recently.
I missed “Dead Man’s Chest” in the theater but bought the DVD, and I honestly thought Davey Jones was just a costume and make-up with animatronic tentacles. It wasn’t until I watched the special features that I found out he was CG. Such a great creation.
I don’t get it. Not only does it obviously look like CG to me, but it doesn’t really look that different or better than many other CG character faces I’ve seen before. Maybe I’m just too ignorant on the subject of VFX. But then how/why did I immediately know this character was CG, just from seeing the trailer? I’ve never even seen the movie.
@therainman7777 it's definitely cgi but you have to consider that this film came out in the mid-2000s. The fact that the cgi in this still beats a lot of current day cgi is a testament to its quality.
Damn, this is so thought-provoking, the idea that showing less skin can give the chance to add insane effects is not something we can easily realize. Sometimes, less is more, and it's not just for movies, the video games would learn from this too. Thank you for this amazing video, and I have yet to watch any of the Pirates films!
You absolutely HAVE to watch the first 3 pirate movies. I promise you that it is worth it and they still hold up today. I just showed my friend the movies since he had never seen them before and he was blown away it was awesome.
I was gonna say, I feel like I see it in his tentacles? Knowing my luck, it's actually some intermediary step between reflection and actual SSS, designed with the intent of accomplishing a lesser version of the desired thing, until computing such values became realistic for enterprise hardware
i assume that is what cause him to have more detail? because i looked at thanos and she hulk. both of their faces look like someone picked a single color in mspaint and then use the bucket tool. i mean if i took those pictures put them into ms paint the bucket tool would completely change the characters to whatever color you picked while with davy i would have to keep clicking random spots on his face before it was all a single color.
@@sparky-xz1nbyes! A lot of cgi characters lack the sheer dimension of color. Davy Jones has tons of different textures and discolorations which helps the lighting look way more realistic. The dirt and grime also helps blur the details and shadows, or at least put it at the back of your mind.
I think you understated how important lighting was for Davy Jones, lighting is one of the hardest things to get right in a CGI scene, and it can make or break the scene, and what Industrial Light & Magic did with Davy Jones was phenomenal.
I agree, and I'd say the wet reflections on not just his tentacle beard but his entire face is what helps sell it. The hardest thing is creating CGI humans, especially the skin but also the mannerisms and facial movements etc. Our brains are just too hardwired to know what it SHOULD look like, so even if it's 99% there it still looks way significantly "off" to us. But Jones isn't human, he's basically an alien. And our brains don't know what an alien SHOULD look like, or how their skin looks when wet, or how his tentacles should move when he talks or turns around, etc. That lowers the bar of what "realism" has to be. For a CGI human, that bar is literally 100% and anything even a fraction of a decimal off looks fake. But for non-human (alien, robots etc) our brains are satisfied with 75% realism because we have no instinct for what 100% looks like. Something can't look "off" if we don't even know what it SHOULD look like. And as mentioned in the video, it definitely helps to have his skin/tentacles wet all the time to induce reflections. That helps cover up what, as you mention, is usually the biggest weakness of CGI scenes.
@@CMCFLYYY It's just insane how many muscles and subtle gestures real faces can do. It's why in a lot of cartoon/animated movies, and even in CGI they have to do an exaggerated version to convey the same emotions. We have some of the most subtle tics in every face we make that we don't need to greatly exaggerate our faces for our emotions to register to other people. It would be an enormous time dump for them to animate every tiny thing, so what you end up with are these tensor points where a whole web of muscles can be animated (scrunched brows, squinted eyes, deformations of the mouth, etc.) and operate in concert, unlike human faces which do operate in concert, but each muscle has contractions along its whole fiber, so things don't "stretch" and "morph" according to how the facial mesh is being distorted in real life. I think that's where CGI has the most room to improve, because you can see (especially in bad CGI) where they've just grouped together points on the skin texture along these muscle tensors, and if they're poorly spaced you just get a very obvious distortion of the whole skin texture, almost like you can see it stretch, which is noticably fake and uncanny.
I was hoping he'd point out and explain the eye-shadow in some of the BTS footage of Nighy as Jones. You can see him with a variety of eye shadows (green in the daytime scenes, and what looks like red in another), which helps to set a basis for how lighting will play off his skin. Using that footage as a baseline, they have a better point from which to work the lighting in CGI composites.
Also helps that since a lot of the film had practical effects and sets, the vfx artist had more time to perfect Jones and the other supplemental CGI elements instead of... making the entire movie
*Fun Fact* - one of the textures seen on the tentacles was actually a layered snapshot of a *discarded, stained coffee cup* . One of the editors saw his colleague with a stained coffee cup, they uploaded it for imaging, zoomed in & then applied that texture to the tentacles of Davy Jones.🐙
When I was a kid, I thought Jones and his crew were actually done with makeup. It was that convincing and it still is IMO. It's incredible how they were able to bring those characters to life, especially Jones.
If I remember correctly, they actually recieved nominations for best costume, and had to inform the nomination givers that there were no costumes. That's how good the cgi was
I think that there's gotta be like some sort of muppet effect when we see an outlandish character doing normal and predictable things that makes us easier to accept them as they are without thinking about the behind the scenes stuff used to make it appear so. Performers have often said that after a while of working on a muppet set that they'll just focus on the muppet instead of the person operating it. When you get a CGI character like Davy Jones who isn't performing massive feats of strength or cartwheeling through bullet fire it's easier for us to be like "oh he's just a weird looking dude"
I think Davy Jones was just a complete accident of perfection on every level. I saw a Making Of and the guys were talking about creating Davy Jones and how it was just a random assortment of ideas a couple of them had that just accidentally came together to make the tragic character we see on screen. What should Davy Jones' ship be? The Flying Dutchman is a ship isn't it, lets do that. What should Davy's gimmick be? And an artist randomly was making crustacean people one day and they went with that. I don't even remember if they said how they came up with the Calypso storyline. That and all of the CGI coming together to make him, if this movie was made years before or after when it actually was I imagine Davy would look a lot worse then he did. I think he was done at the absolute perfect time.
I could swear I watched some behind the scenes thing on a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD back in the day where they talked about creating the CGI for Davy Jones and they mentioned that they couldn't get the skin texture right until one day someone spilled coffee and they used the coffee spill texture?? Something like that, this was a long time ago so I only vaguely recall lol
They didn't know how to do the kraken until animation director, Hal Hickel, made the crew watch the 1962 film, "King Kong vs. Godzilla" which has a live octopus crawling over miniatures
Honestly, I don't think Davy ever truly registered as CGI in my brain while watching the movie. Looking back though I did wonder if the skin looking wet was part of what made him so realistic so I loved hearing more about that as well as everything else you went through. It all just proves what great results can be had if you hire talented people and give them enough time to do their job properly.
For me it’s literally watching the tentacles. Each one is just brimming with personality from an animation standpoint. To say no corners were cut in that aspect is an understatement. I watched Dead Man’s Chest one time specifically to watch the tentacle animation That sounds weird but you get the idea
Don’t think it ever struck me he’s the most photoreal looking CG character from the films 1-3 which I’ve only seen, from a graphical standpoint. A lot of CG from 20 or so years ago had that putty and slimy kind of look, he still has but he’s way more detailed and it fits obviously with his character. He’s arguably the best human esque CG character done.
Fun fact: the skin texture for Davy Jones was discovered by accident, when one of the VFX artists noticed a coffee-soaked piece of styrofoam in the trash! They photographed it and used it as a template.
As soon as you started talking about the usage of CGI, I thought of all the scenes Jones puts out his smoking pipe with air that come out of that tentacle thingy, it's so satisfying to watch! I always HATE how a lot of alien like characters still act human and don't ever use the things that makes them alien, like, if your character has a tail, why don't they ever use it? Why is it there if it has no purpose? I'm majoring in acting and one of the first things I learned was that every single element in a scene has to have a meaning, if it's pointless it shouldn't be there, and I personally think this applies to characters bodies, specially when it's CGI or animation.
Ahh the young one has learned the vital principle of Chekhov's gun. So many higher ups in this industry don't know it or willfully ignore it. You'll go far, my dude. Rootin for ya!
@@ArieELLE Exactly, life needed billions of years to make humans, and they're telling me that a different species, on a different planet with different gravity and environments, took almost the same evolutionary path as us? Or have the same behaviour as humans even if they have more limbs, different organs, etc? This whole thing reminds me of "capitalist realism", which is a trope in nearly all stories today. It's the cop-out belief that no matter the world, people and culture of a fantasy or sci-fi setting, the economy and society will work like ours, even though everything else is different. When in actuality since the author isn't some real God creating a real world, they could experiment with different ideas even if they wouldn't necessarily hold up irl, since the structure of a story can cover for it and nobody but a bunch of redditors would care to delve deep into freaking economy lore. I think what's happening with non-humans in media is very similar. Writers get so focused on making the characters understandable to a modern human audience, that they forget the characters aren't human!
I'm a lighting artist for VFX. I love how you put this together, especially in a time where director's love claiming "it was all practical". Hat's off to perfectly breaking down the contribution of lighting to Davy Jones' look. Your video made my day. It's a tough and demanding gig, and few people know how many artist contribute to every frame. Thank you.
As a makeup artist, I’m so happy you’re giving Azog shit and I totally agree with you - WHY! He looks crappy. The orcs done with SFX makeup look so amazing and made me become a makeup artist myself, there was no need to use CGI for him. Sadly I’ve heard more and more actors say they prefer motion capture over 5 hours makeup time…
I have so much respect for makeup artists as well as actors who have the patience to sit in place for practical makeup effects, but i absolutely cannot blame them for not wanting to do that, it sounds like torture
I remember when I was a little kid and saw Davy Jones, I always thought it was just a VERY complex mask and I had no idea how they did the rest of the cursed crew because I just didn't understand the concept that a computer could create such a character. That's how real I thought he was.
They got everything right! Davy Jones feels so real to me. His eyes, voice, expressions, and affect were mesmerizing. Best villain ever put to the screen.
I think the main thing that is stopping current CGI from reaching this kind of level is the insane time constraints the CGI artists are under now. As well as the overload of work they have to do, with pretty much every film now being very CGI heavy... Whether it actually needs to or not.
It's also just not the same people. Many of the really good artists and developers in VFX left the industry or retired in the 2010s, went to tech, games or other industries. So much work moved to other countries that many US west coast based artists left the field.
As someone who is currently learning to become an animator/vfx artist this was such an interesting watch! You managed to summarize many important things to look out for in such a short amount of time. This got me brainstorming for new animation tests right away. Great video with great explanations! Thank you for making this. I'll definetly keep these tips in mind
I think while talking about the use of CGI and often overuse of CGI/“bad” CGI, we need to talk about the time crunch and the lack of fair compensation of CGI artists. The short documentary Life After Pi goes into this. While the movie Life of Pi won the award for best visual effects, the studio behind it was filing for bankruptcy as they were accepting their award. All that hard work and it wasn’t enough to pay off. VFX studios are paid a certain fixed rate for their work and they have X amount of time to complete it. Now say the film needs reshoots and another several hundred VFX shots. The VFX studio was given that set budget and now they have extra shots that need completing on top of the shots they were working on to begin with under that same time frame. THAT’S when CGI starts to take you out of the movie or you reach the uncanny valley. Big blockbusters are cranked out so quickly, there’s not enough time to really get down to the most minute detail to ensure that the end product looks perfect.
It’s actually kind of infuriating to watch the budgets for these films balloon in inverse proportion to the quality, and direct proportion to the VFX team’s suffering
What's wild about this is that MCU seems to be a common go-to for people complaining about bad CGI (i haven't watched enough of it to know if I agree), and yet with just a quick google, Avengers: Endgame had a significantly longer production time and employed quite a few more VFX studios (with ILM on the list) than Dead Man's Chest, so the rate at which new films get made shouldn't really be an excuse there. Doesn't mean working conditions for VFX artists weren't still bad, but for the film itself, it shouldn't have time crunch as an excuse
@@reaganharder1480 they are not even comparable, the “abuse” of cgi in marvel is crazy . The budget may be way higher, the timeframe longer, and they may have way more teams working on it but the workload is also exponentially higher.
@@reaganharder1480 You really think that having hundreds of studios located all over the world(with different time zones btw), to work on one cut each of the same movie is not an absolute nightmare? Too many cooks spoil the broth. Ah and they are all underpaid and overworked too, with idiot directors that need 3k reshoots to get shit right because they don't know anything about CGI and the people whom should plan this are on a time crunch to shit out 6 series and movies in 2 years.
My dad was the compositor for the scene where Davy Jones was playing piano and falling asleep for the guy to steal the key haha, just gotta do a little brag haha
Even though you can see the limits they had if you look close, it still always works perfectly in the word and your eye is never drawn to something that specifically stands out unlike many cg projects.
Gollum, from The Two Towers is also one of the most realistic cgi characters, and that was 2002. His skin has that transparent aspect you referenced where the light goes through the surface and reflects off of internal tissues. And the frame rate of the animations is so high that he just really looks like he's there in the scene. Subtle facial expressions and skin movements as well, plus he's often wet or slimy looking. I also think Thanos looked great in Infinity War and Endgame, his skin looked real and facial expressions were natural. The eyes make a big difference too.
Endgame was definitely a step down in quality, but top tier in Infinity war. Of course his first couple appearances were more just in case the story went somewhere. And yeah, there are only two scenes I have gripes with in the entirety of LOTRs, one is mount doom where the hobbits are climbing and the feet are hovering off the ground (once you see you won't unsee it, sorry not sorry), and the opening scene as it feels a bit uncanny nowadays. But for a movie series that is like a 9 hours plus long, thats pretty damn good. Well, then there's Galadriel's wtf scene, but we don't talk about that...
This pirates-movies are so good because the cast and crew were people who actually cared and payed attention to detail and got enough time to make it good.
I remember watching Curse of The Black Pearl as a child and seeing the crew walking under the ship in the moonlight, it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.
One character who has evolved beyond Davy Jones is probably Rachel from Blade Runner 2049. She was so realistic in her appearance that a lot of people didn't realise she was CGI until the film makers dropped a breakdown of how they made her. The BTS of them super imposing her over the original actress in Blade Runner is borderline indistinguishable
Part of why she looked so real was because her face didn't move all that much. Our eyes can pick up on facial features so well that I guarantee it would have been a lot easier to pick up on her CGI face the second it started moving a lot. Not trying to diminish how great she looked in BR 2049, but that was the main reason why she looked so good.
This is one thing I think about when I see people complaining about CGI. Most people who do don't realize just how much CGI is in most modern films, even films that claim to shoot practically. As an example, Top Gun: Maverick, while it does have a lot of practical shots to get genuine performances of actors in high-G maneuvers, or realistic movements of fighter jets, a considerable amount of what you actually see in a lot of those shots is still CGI.
@trancosa13 to be fair, it's a CGI model based on a 21 year old woman in a Hollywood film portraying a synthetic human. Sean Young in the original film has very few noticeable imperfections or blemishes in her skin, so that's not really a fault of the model. If the model is trying to replicate a woman with near perfect skin, the skin should be near perfect
one little detail i love about davy jones is when he gets angry or emotional, his tentacles start wriggling around like crazy. it's just such a good way to utilize his features and it always impresses me.
I think another key aspect that kept Jones out of the uncanny valley were the eyes specifically. Many CGI characters have completely recreated eyes that despite somewhat realistic can't really show the nuances of human emotion. However Jones' eyes are actually Bill's eyes and that makes a huuuge difference.
Ahoy! The Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies is my favorite of all time. I’m glad to finally have an explanation for such an immersive experience watching these movies! In fact, it’s about around the time of the year where I binge watch them all over again. Arghhhh! Thanks for the fine video, matey!
something i love is how the character design and the actors performance match up really well. Bill Nighty is very expressive with his lower lip while his upper lip remains very stiff and that works very well with a character like Davy Jones who has that very thick tentacle lip thing going on.
Bill Nighy is an absolutely fantastic actor. Even besides the amazing work that the VFX team did on him, Davy Jones as a character wouldn't have been nearly as iconic without his brilliant performance.
I'd say Infinity War/Endgame's Thanos and the Na'vi/Avatars from Avatar 2 are both very very convincing but those, and Davy Jones are the three peak examples of artists putting a ton of work and taking the time to get the look right.
I just watched Dead Man’s Chest again after many many years….and man. Davy’s intro on the ship was sensational. Intense, evil, and like the Devil himself. The CGI is excellent.
As a former ILM employee I can tell you: It is even more impressive knowing how they actually did it and what software they used :D Also: Thanks for this video! It is nice know that at least SOME people understand and appreciate the work we do. Especially those jerks like Andy Serkis, Taika Waititi, Chris Miller and Phil Lord.... well, don't even get me started
@@TheWartechgaming What can I say? Telling everybody in Interviews that HE did ALL the work and VFX artist only do "cg make up"? Well, you get the idea
@@TheWartechgamingYeah... I remember the contrary in the behind the scenes on the extended editions of the Lord of The Rings movies... They went into great detail about how much work the animation was and Andy Serkis seemed astounded by their abilities and proud to work together with the animators. Also the video forgets that there were movies before Dead Man's Chest... And that GOLLUM, not Davy Jones, was the first character to be made with on-set motion capture technology... That I'm aware of. Honestly mo-cap has been around since the 50s, technically, and used practically since the 80s. I think it would've been too much of a pain to use it on-set though, and I don't know how cumbersome the 80s set-ups were. Point is... I'm already annoyed with people not knowing what they're talking about... And quite suspicious that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about either.
I think you're absolutely right. The CGI is so well done, that instead of sticking out, it takes second place to the performance and story. The tech is amazing. The artistic talent is huge. But the subtle emotional performance is number one.
Davy Jones is one reason why Dead Man’s Chest is my favourite Pirates film, and even after all these years the CGI in the first three Pirates still holds up. Every time I watch this film I’m still impressed at how good the visuals look, especially since there’s so much in the film, but the quality doesn’t drop.
As someone who's spent many years doing 3D modelling your explanation of how the lightning is like a magic trick is absolutely fantastic. The correct scene lighting influences the quality of your final product more than you can ever imagine.
one thing i want to add that I love about DJ is that he has weight. he has impact not just in the metaphorical sense. his movements creak floorboards, he shambles and stomps. its these little things that add up to give him such good realism.
The last time I watched Dead Man's Chest, I was thinking about how Davy Jones looked like he could step out of the screen at any second and look compeltely believable and real, and wondering why CGI 20 years later looks so much worse. So I am very glad that I found this video, because you do an excellent job of answering that question.
In Logan, the younger Hugh Jackman was achieved by a full CG head replacement on a stunt performer. They used the same technique in a lot of the driving sequences, digitally replacing the stunt driver's head with CG Hugh, and nobody noticed. There have been several photorealistic CG people in film, they just usually go unnoticed.
I think part of the reason why it worked is it was intended to be uncanny in the narrative. It's intentionally eerie for this character to see a younger version of himself. Intention behind these effects goes a long way to making them work or not. Realism isn't always the goal.
A lot of the greatest work in film basically strives to go unnoticed. It will be there and appreciated by the people looking for it. I love seeing the effect of my sound work in a test screening but then nobody really notices why it was better 😂. It makes me happy though.
The artists not being horribly rushed and the good lighting are key. When I watched these, I originally knew Davy Jones was CGI, but a couple minutes after first seeing him, I completely forgot he was CG and continued to forget through the rest of the movies! Also what happened to makeup and practical effects? It’s best to do everything possible practically, then do CGI for anything impossible.
davy jones didnt even use practical effects i always thought they must use practical effects but no none of cursed pirates use it this paired with great writings, really made a great movie it really questions me on what if the thing sequel really made with good CGI rather than shitty CGI on the last boss
practical effects are a layer of complexity on a film set that a lot of production probably don't want to deal with. having it done in post is probably cheaper and easier to do for the main principal photography part of a movie.
For nine whole minutes of this I was gritting my teeth getting worried you weren't going to say the one key thing that seems so obvious to me but I'm glad you got there in the end, him being constantly wet does wonders. It's a shame you didn't really have anything much to say about his eyes, I think it's a real testament to the performance and the rendering that I've seen multiple people talk about Davy Jones and assume that while his face is CGI, it's CGI pasted over the real footage of him so they think those are his _real eyes_ peeking out from underneath.
I'd venture to say that people assume that because, IIRC in the special features for the first Pirates they flat-out say that's how they handled undead Barbossa - they kept Geoffrey Rush's eyes.
You know last time I watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was when I was like 10 or 12, so 8-10 years ago. I'm going to rewatch the series. Thank you.
I'm a VFX Artist with over 25 years experience. Some VFX look worse now because most Studios have MUCH less time/budget than they did back in 2005. Back then there were a few 100 shots now some films have 1000s, but a much shorter deadline. Thanks for the video!
Things have gotten really bad for CGI post-covid, and I imagine it's the massive layoffs they did, movies not making as much money as before... etc. It sucks that movies from the 2000s and 2010s have better effects than the 2020s, you would think it'd be the opposite.
The shaders are actually a bit dated if you watch the movie again. But it helps that the character is stylized, with skin that has a lot more wetness and shininess than real human skin, which helps stay clear of the uncanny valley.
Yeah. The age of the technology can be seen better with the crew of flying Dutchman. Not to say they looked bad, but there were moments where the light and the surfaces didnt look right. Most notably seen in Williams first encounter with them.
Like the first Jurassic Park, its now a waiting game with how old this movie gets before the CGI becomes noticeable despite the tricks to hide it. I mean, Jurassic Park has gone 30 years and its still holding on tight with only a few parts of the movie showing some age. So since this movie is nearly 20 years old now, will it take 40-50 to become noticeable in a few scenes?
I like how where there would be a nose, his skin is flabby as opposed to a human rigid nose, so it reacts to the pulls of his lips movements. That leaves the whole cheekbones and everything in between to be more expressive.
Davy Jones DID have sub-surface scattering, both Mental ray and Renderman at the time had very appealing skin shaders and ILM built their own on top. It was the enormous amount of attention to detail from everyone, including the director + the great render-time displacements and small bits of dynamic hanging fabric and constant moisture on the character coupled with great design and cinematography that made this work. And its not true that skin is harder to do that complex layer cloth, these days if they want to re-create Dave the cloth will take more time than the skin. but even if you put real skin on CG these days, the characters would still look off because there is no thought or artistry put behind them. It's Jurassic park theory all over again when today's dinosaurs are less believable than the first film's. But I agree Davy Jones still stands as the best CG character ever created.
Yeah I was gonna say this. The renderers reached basically peak for almost 20 years now, all thats changed is that there is ALOT more processing power available so naturally they are going to be able to cram much more detail now and still render the thing in reasonable time. I remember watching those vfx guys youtube video of them trying to recreate the liquid terminator scene from Terminator 2 where he goes through the jail bars... Despite so so so much more tech available to them they still didnt match the original because they were time constrained. The conclusion was that time and talent is still paramount. Things dont automatically look good unless you put the work in.
Wow this is actually genius now that you point out all the techniques they were taking advantage of. I've never really thought about it before but you're so right.
@@groxiverde The main difference is I was 13 when Pirates came out, so I didn't notice about the script :) Also, I'm super annoyed the fantastic tech invented for Avatar is wasted every 15 years because of high school level scripts.
I love how Dave’s Jones, when he dives his ship underwater, you can see his tentacles hold onto his hat so it doesn’t fly off from the submersion. Brilliant attention to detail.
To me it comes down to this: - True to the very theatrical yet nuanced performance (so the animation feels natural) - Tentacle animation that enhances the performance - Dramatic coloured lighting - Incredible work on secondary and tertiary forms - Incredible work on organic feel (especially SSS and speculars from the wetness) - Technical mastery from ILM + Renderman Let's see what the video says Edit: Alright yep that's pretty much it
Steve Walton's work on the textures and shading was just out of this world. First time we had believable SSS working on a character in a major motion picture. Absolutely seminal!
Reminds me of the prawns in District 9, honestly. Blomkampf had a very similar focus with emotion & character driven CGI. Very simple, close up shots of emotes do such a good job of bringing them to life and making them feel unbelievably real and relatable. Honestly, I feel like he took the near perfection of how Davy Jones was done, and took it to a whole nother level -the prawns are portrayed full-body many times and don't fall prey to the same pitfalls you present as failures of CGI character representation. He even pays attention to highly detailed emotes in the rest of their bodies - like the tiny chest mandibles (for lack of a better term) which move and twitch according to their feelings and actions in real-time.
You forgot one simple yet really important point.. the EYES... As human beings we perceive the whole world through them and we look for them/ at them when we interact with other people.. so the fact that his eyes are a key part on the interactions he has with other characters and whenever he is expressing something his eyes looks really expressive, is really clever from the director wich you said its a VFX artist himself.. he knew where we would look whenever the characater presents himself, and he knew that if he wanted the audience to think something was "ALIVE"and real, the eyes would be the key
💯!!! Neill Blomkamp has some fantastic VFX characters. District 9, the droids in Elysium (the few shots of them there are), and the photorealism of Chappie was pretty great too.
Incredible actor but also there's a focus on him looking as grimy as all the other pirates. Helps him blend into the scenes and look right. The lighting is really important and he matches the lighting which is everything I think.
As a special effects makeup artist, I had a hard time clicking on this video since I (and many of my peers) are worried cgi will take over our jobs someday. However I’m actually really glad I did watch it, I have a new appreciation for amazing vfx work and the artists that create it, and I love how you mentioned that this is a perfect example of cgi in part because it was used where necessary. Sfx makeuo is amazing and can do a lot, but we couldn’t have created apasperfect of a moving tenctacle face as cgi can. I also appreciate how you called out that some cgi characters look way better when done practically. Thanks for this video, it’s so cool to see the work that went into Davy jones.
As someone mentioned before here, they did use subsurf scattering. I remember when I saw it in the cinema, I was blown away by the realism. And the animators did an insane job overall, but they did have a bonus: It was in the "nature" of Davy Jones to allow and display a lot of this subsurf effect as a somewhat translucent aquatic glibbery-glob and this MASSIVELY bumped up the realism from a rendering perspective. You can try this yourself: spend 2 seconds modeling a blob in blender and slap a subsurf shaders on it, select two ridiculous colors like pink and purple and bump up the strength and when you render it, it already looks like its about to come "alive", pretty cool effect. Still the artists did a god-tier job, this is not supposed to critique in any way, but just add another nugget of background.
One of the reasons Davy looks so good is also because there's a lot of dynamic lighting in a lot of scenes he's in which is gonna make anyone look pretty badass
It's mad to think this movie came out in 2006 and how a lot of CGI nowadays, while obviously impressive technically, just haven't quite captured that same sense of presence that Jones had. Just the perfect combination of Nighy's stellar performance actually being captured properly and complimented by the unique design of Jones himself with the technology at the time. I think another factor worth mentioning is Pirates was a franchise that still used a lot of practical effects for the actual shooting locations and set design. CGI was still used at times but it wasn't like most of the movie was shot seemingly infront of a big green screen for every single action sequence. I think some CGI characters are a bit harder to get invested in if EVERYTHING around them is also CG. I know it can be used to help make them look less "video gamey" but I think a mix of practical with CG does wonders like with Pirates or the original Jurassic Park (more a compliment about the practical effects for that one but still.
This kind of comment irritates me. I think it’s wrong to mention practical effects in this context. Davy Jones is entirely a CG render, he looks real in any shots whether there are other ‘practical’ effects present or not. He feels authentic in closeups that are just of him and a blurred background. Ultimately there are plenty of other films that blend practical effects with CGI characters, and the CGI character looks terrible. If anything, bad CGI will stick out more when other aspects of the film look real. There is no getting around that if you want your CG character to look good, you have to make it look good.
@@btn237 Yes and no. You can have the most technically impressive looking CG in the world like in the Avatar movies but it's never enough to still convince you the actors are actually interacting with it beyond essentially a tennis ball on a stick in a big green void.
@@caldw615 This is correct. You can nail the CG closeups, sure. That's all on CG team. But it's just as important for the CG to look good when it's worked into the background and not only the primary focus. It ALL needs to look good, which means the whole team needs to be on their game.
Pinning this just to clean up some confusion: Alot of people are commenting "I thought Gollum and/or Jar Jar was the *first* motion captured character?" - And they're absolutely right, but what i'm talking about here is "on set" motion capture.
Because for earlier characters like Gollum their mocap was done "off set" in a custom motion capture studio, whereas Davy Jones had a special suit which meant he could be physically present on the set with the rest of the cast.
So my point was that Jones was the first "on set" motion capture character, not the first ever to be motion captured :)
I hope that helps clean up any confusion!
I feel certain that I watched behind the scenes footage of Andy Serkis performing Gollum on-set, and interacting with the other actors, and the set itself, but maybe I'm just brain damaged. In any event, I agree with your assessment of Davy Jones.
Yea I think Andy Serkis was there in the grey outfit and stuff, but the actual performance they "motion captured" of him was done elsewhere because it needed more specialized equipment.
Perhaps , like i mention in the video when talking about motion capture itself, it just ILM "propaganda/marketing" that I've been reading 😅 - but, literally every source I read/watched in preparation for this video said that: "Davy Jones was the first on-set motion captured character"
@@THE-X-Force In Two Towers and Return of the King, he was in a sort of white suit on-set that had to be erased and replaced with the digital version of Gollum in post-production. For the Hobbit trilogy, he was able to wear a mo-cap suit on set.
In the first 2 films they did all the mocap on a stage seperately however later on in the production of RotK they switched to on set mocap.
I'd like to see a video on why Jar Jar is even worse than people think. Cheers!
I also love how they take advantage of the tentacles almost moving on their own to show Davey's emotions.
- All wriggling when he's angry
- Jumping around to make a point
- Quick twitching during his death scene
They also held his hat when the ship went underwater
And the occasional wiggle of a tentacle or two when he's asleep was a nice touch
Hell he even killed with them, imagine trying to strangle someone to death WITHOUT that beard lol
During this video I noticed a lovely little detail! The siphon on the side of his face puts out a candle when he's threatening the dude he's about to kill! That's an AMAZING little detail!
@@beckstheimpatient4135 He also blows smoke from his pipe out of it. It shows that he's been this way for a _long_ time and, for the most part, has come to adapt to and accept his form.
I'm a VFX artist. I had a rough day. I came here, watched your video and remembered again, why I actually love my job, besides everything
i love your job too, most underrated part of movie industry. As a kid I would watch behind the scenes of star wars cgi for hours and I always respected them so much
As a regular movie watcher, I appreciate the work you do. VFX is often taken for granted nowadays, but if it wasn't for artists like you, films wouldn't have the entertainment value they hold. So, thank you 🙏🏻
I'll add in my own thanks as someone who has spent thousands of hours cleaning up mocap. I never hear anyone talk about the animators... always voice actors and mocap actors
I also remember when the trailer came out, I was new doing my lecture and requested my professor to play the trailer in my college in Delhi India.... so many years passed, and I miss those days
Unfortunately, you guys always get the blame whenever a movie's VFX doesn't look right, because the execs and decision makers asked you to redo everything in the 11th hour, the budget is spent, release date is in two weeks, and you just have to get something remotely passable rendered and shipped on 2 hours of sleep. Thanks for what you do, you're all genuinely incredible artists.
I've a professor teaching us 3D animation who had worked on the film. He heavily emphasised on the laborious nature of Davy Jones' CGI and, while he's proud of the final outcome, he wasn't fond of how difficult and time-consuming the task was. I don't think there are many studios that would be willing to go this far with CGI ever again.
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless.
Revelation 22:12-14
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
that's fair, but I think it lends to the point that like, our computers now are leagues better than 20 years ago, and we have seemingly developed the technology so much, that ideally it should be easier to get a similar outcome than it was back then, but just making those cinematic choices really went a long way in the end. but yeah, i think it takes a lot of love and care to put that much work into something like this and while there's a lot of vfx artists who care, i agree studios don't always want to put in the time and money
@idehenebenezer hey buddy, I appreciate you trying to help people, but I dont think youtube comments are the best place as you haven't made any references to the content of the video. I'd recommend more community outreach like the Mormons. Good luck!
@@aaronvadnai Most polite way of saying: "Begone, bot!"
And that is why studios should not be using CGI mixed with wave action. If they’re not going to put the time in to make it, why should they expect us to put the time in to watch it?
I remember watching and not even questioning Davy Jones appearing
"crazy how they hired an actual cursed pirate for this movie"
"Damn people in the Caribbean are fucking ugly"
Ngl he was truly terrifying yet mystical
When you got Disney money...
@@kylegonewild and yet they couldn’t hire competent people to do Star Wars
@@harcoom Lots of competent people worked on Star Wars. A few overpaid decision makers at the top having no plan and bumbling into everything doesn't erase the people who did the actual work.
I think there was probably one other key factor. Verbinski, coming from an effects background himself, gave the VFX team sufficient time to work on the CGI - something modern movies just don’t do. Verbinski deliberately shot Pirates 2 and 3 back to back and front-loaded a lot of the CGI-heavy shots so that they could be passed to the VFX team ASAP and give them as much time as possible to work on them. That’s what we need more of.
This makes as much sense to me as any 2 other reasons put together. Don't get me wrong, the video lists some very good reasons, but detail and getting things right are always going to take a lot of time.
Yea, it’s not like all the amazing people who work in Hollywood have just become bad. They are just treated so much worse now, being expected to create high quality CGI on impossible timeframes and budgets. These are further worsened by the fact that CGI studious (I think they are called studious) bid to perform movie contracts as fast and cheap as possible. This pretty much forces them to set unrealistic and extremely tight deadlines.
buddy, crunch culture wasn't invented in 2023, it all depends on the leader/boss, and if you don't like them? Fuck it, tell them to go fuck themselves, create a union and strike, then you have the chance to become the leader yourself
Came to the comments to say this-the ridiculously tight timelines and awful working conditions, in addition to offloading even more things that used to be done practically onto VFX teams' already overflowing plates, are a huge parts of why movies keep having their CG look worse. (And often done not because doing them in CG offered substantial advantages, but because most VFX workers weren't unionized like other departments until much more recently.)
Lightstorm has been giving their CGI artists quite some time to make the Avatar movies. Wish more studios did the same.
The way they used the tentacles to help portray his emotions further lends itself to the "necessary CGI" point. Scenes where Jones is agitated or enraged and his tentacles begin to writhe and wriggle (empty chest scene) were always so memorable to me and really complimented the choices that went into his character design.
The best part of this scene is that we can see that he wants to cry out of anger, my heart always wright about it.
Not just Davy Jones but the whole crew. What impressed me so much was how they pulled off the combination of "human-face" to deep sea creatures to the point that you will not have that ick that it was CGI that you're looking to. The performance of the actors especially Bill Nigh made the CGI unnoticeable.
I used to think they were in really well made costumes with CGI over it to make the costume more alive.
Stole the words right out of my mouth. They didn’t even need to go into that level of detail for the crew mates, and each time I watch a scene again I notice a new feature from a random crew member
It was so good we still miring even to this day 20 years later
This! I'm literally just now realising after all these years and multiple watchings of those films that the crew were CGI THE WHOLE TIME and not practical makeup and prosthetics
The crew looks so great, I thought it was all practical make up.
I am blown away that his clothes were CGI, I didn't even know. I legit thought that he had mapping on his face, has base layer rubber tentacles, wore full costume hat and all and that they restricted the CGI to his face adding tentacles over the rubber ones. Seeing him just walking around in a gray suit is mind blowing to me.
You know, that is an exceptionally good point. Damn you're so right
In most instances it seems to be easier to just do straight CGI than both. Sometimes they will have the actor wear the clothes or parts of the character for reference ex: RDJ would sometimes film with an Iron Man chest plate. But in other instances it seems to be better to just do straight CGI. That way you have full control over how the costume looks and behaves in the world of the film.
@@andrewvasquez7872 Yep, if he wore real clothes, the vfx artists would still basically need to map out the costume in the program anyway so there wouldn't be any weird clipping issues with the tentacles. Which would basically result in the same effect, just way, way harder for the artists.
The effects were so convincing that the Academy Awards almost gave Pirates of the Caribbean 2 with the Best Makeup & Prosthetics award, only to be told that it was CGI.
Sadly Bill Nihgy didn't like it so much. He felt ridiculous in the suit.
I remember when i saw the first pirates movie, and the transition of the pirates to the undead skeletons BLEW my mind. All of the movies with davey jones had such good CGI as well.
i grew up with the pirates franchise and as a child never batted an eye to these transitions but I found my lovefor these movies again in the recent years and I remember seeing that scene, specifically when they're fighting for deam mans chest in the cave and there's a scene of one of them reaching into the sun to grab the coin, its so seamless and looks so realistic, my jaw was on the floor.
The fact that Jones’ CGI still holds up as incredibly realistic to this day just shows that the artists loved their work. No rush, they perfected what they knew they could and worked around what they couldn’t.
I think all artists want to make work they love. Ultimately it's usually problems from on high, unrealistic deadlines, constant changes, expectations to do shots that didn't even need to be effects shots, that prevent people from putting time and love into their work.
A good example in video games could be Battlefield 1, which came out back in 2016 and it still beats modern games today graphics wise and aesthetic.
Incorrect, it's a fairly well known fact that the CGI artists on this movie went through hell, paid little and were set sky high standards with little time to complete their work.
@@thecockycowstill did a better job than any Disney Star Wars or Disney marvel movie for CGI effects.
@@thecockycow they literally all say that. No matter who you are or where you are in the world since the beginning of time, some people have it really tough.
It always impresses me how the Pirates franchise perfectly balanced every element of the filming to make something that felt so real. It used CGI in a lot of places, but only when it really benefited the films, like to doing really hard or impossible stuff. That way, the artists could actually make the CGI look good, rather than having to do the jobs of the location scouters, set designers, and cinematographers at the same time.
Oh, and thank you for helping me get educated on this thing I love!
Well said. I swear Hollywood has gotten so lazy. they dump everything onto the VFX people.
The trilogy in my humble opinion is a film masterpiece...not a single thing I would change in them.Just the right amount of comedy and done tastefully, incredibly witty and charming dialogues, characters and action sequences.Color palette, CGI, camera angles, music.....Nothing about it is bad - sadly I can't say the same for the 4th and 5th instalment
For a while there was this wonderful phase that had balance between physical sets and cgi, where the default was to do it physically if you could and fill the rest in with CGI. But it appears to have shifted in the last decade with them only building physical props to the extent they need to. Blockbusters don't look nearly as good as they used to, with some notable exceptions.
@@byucatch22 exacly that and the best example is LOTR trilogy, Pirates trilogy or even Nolan's Batman trilogy. They built sets and practicals if it was possible to do, and if it wasn't they used CGI, and that's how it should be done. Another good example is Mad Max Fury Road, where CGI was only used to enhance the practicals effects. I like to say that CGI is like a "spice". You need to add just a little bit to make Your dish better or enhance it's taste, but if You will add too much of it or - what's even worse - base everything on it.. it's going to be indigestible (modern block buster main issue).
@@lxdead5585 yep. and speaking of spice...Dune is an absolute beautiful example of how to do CGI. The movie had plenty of it yet it blended so well with the practical effects. That movie is stunning to look at.
This is an excellent breakdown! I also think that a factor with Davy Jones is that they were not afraid of making him look ugly, gross, disturbing, etc. They didn't shy away from his CG skin looking... yucky. Being afraid to make a character ugly/gross really takes away from their ability to faithfully represent them.
Because the VFX artists were given enough time to complete their work. It is an art after all, and quality can't be rushed.
Not without a "bit" of crunch time
The real answer. Most bad looking VFX shots look bad because the artists either ran out of time, or weren't given enough time to finish the shot. Or were hampered by directors who aren't experienced with VFX. Bad on set VFX directors (this happens a lot and adds a lot of time).
There is so much demand for VFX now and only so many artists and time to go around.
right.. its very simple and not that hard to understand
@@jasonjansen9831 One of the reasons why the VFX turn out so good in films by directors like James Cameron and Gareth Edwards is because they both have a background in VFX. It makes a huge difference when the director genuinely cares about those details and knows how to communicate their vision to the whole crew.
I can't really imagine that they had loads of time. There must have been huge pressure to get this sequel out to capitalize on the momentum of the series.
I do find it absolutely astonishing how amazing his CGI was. Literally lifelike in every scene he’s in!
I remember when I was a kid and found out it wasn't makeup and puppetry for the tentacles, my mind was blown. I thought CG was about to change forever. I mean I guess it did, but it hardly ever matched my amazement with Jones.
And now you get disgusting VFX like in She Hulk 💀
@@danielkelsosmithshe isn’t worthy of good CGI lol.
@@danielkelsosmith While I agree it's bad, can we REALLY be expected to hold TV-level CGI up to Movie-level CGI?
Davey Jones and the first Jurrassic Park are the only two movies with CGI characters that still amaze me, considering how old these movies are compared to the uncanny cgi we have now.
I still remember being 10 or so years old and completely blown away not just by the Pirates films, but Davy Jones in particular. I could genuinely feel his emotions through the screen and it was one of the reasons I was so fascinated with him- also the creative use of his character design with the tentacles was so much fun to watch! It's sad how over a decade later, the state of CGI characters seems to actually have regressed from this masterpiece of a character.
I loved the way they used agitation in the tentacle beard to portray intense emotion. It somehow emphasized his otherness and his humanity in perfect unison, and it just made the appendages look so much a part of his nature. Loved it.
I hope those VFX artists are proud of their work, I can't even imagine creating something this groundbreaking and ahead of its time for a movie that potentially hundreds of millions of people will see. And not just see, but blown up to a movie theatre screen to highlight any tiny imperfection, and yet they still nailed it so hard that a lot of us believed it could be practical effects.
yes, and I imagine they used references of actual octopi or squids, as it may be an actual biological response when they're stressed.
you forgot the eyes ...A key aspect to Davie Jones that they kept from the actors original performance was his eyes...which is one of the key ingredients to making a creature feel alive...so many CG characters fail at this and have eyes that dont have life behind them.
I actually have been rewatching the PotC movies probably why i got this video but the eyes and how they move are definitely what sells a lot of it for me
Good point, they captured the eyes perfectly. But in case someone gets the wrong idea, the eyes are still CG and not composited from the actor. Davy is 100% CG
That's soo true! Also why in the Harry Potter movies they decided to let go of the red eyes Voldmort has in the books.
This is why Grievous in ROTS works so well too :)
The motion capture helped a lot. Some movies do it well, Planet of the Apes for example, but the majority of movies don't, Marvel for example. It's all in the body language and the subtle movements, that's what brings a character alive. Marvel movies are decent CGI but when have you ever seen a CGI face show anything more than shock or anger? Davy Jones perfectly encapsulates sadness and cruelty and Bill Nighy did a phenomenal job bringing that to the screen. Cruelty is one of those hard emotions to show, you enjoy what you are doing for a sadistic reason, you're giving in to your most intense desires and intrusive thoughts, of course you would be enjoying it but happiness doesn't quite describe the emotion. You can give an evil smile but that still doesn't quite cut it. Bill Nighy was able to capture Davy Jones enjoyment of cruelty just in the way he carried himself, it became the embodiment of his character. No one could have done it better.
I loved how the tentacle actually swings a bit when bill moves his head, or make a face.. just simply brilliant
In the mid-2000s they actually gave the artists time to make their art well. Maybe part of that was because you still needed to do a lot of R&D and/or because studio execs didn't understand it as well as they think they do now, but the industry has, for better or mostly worse, moved from "use CGI to do it better/do the impossible" to "use CGI to do it cheaper/do it faster".
I worked on Pirates 2 & 3 at ILM. It was a bit of an effort to show the company still had it and was done when ILM was still mostly based in SF with artists who had been around for a long time. The company lost a lot of money in overtime as we did and re-did everything until it was as good as it could be. I also felt they never topped the work on Pirates. There was a big focus on lowering costs and not losing millions on projects after these films and a big turnover of talent. A lot of great people were laid off or retired in the few years after these films. ILM today is several times the size of what it used to be with offices all over the world, but many of the outstanding artists and developers who had 20-40yrs with the company are long gone. It's quantity over quality and a much younger global workforce today with an emphasis on volume and getting things done cheap. Also the movies are just so bland themselves for the most part..
@@macabowow! Great job on the movies. How many people were on your team?
This is why Ghost Rider in 2007 looked so good compared to Thor 4 or The Flash. Ghost rider felt like the vfx artists had enough time to create the flaming skeleton and fix the lighting of the Hell cycle. Disney and Wb only spent the money but really didn't pay attention to the power of cgi or just removed the scenes that looked all blocky
@@noobmasterruben5167I mean I wouldn't say Ghost Rider was exactly peak cgi, the skull and bones were definitely still far from looking realistic, but there definitely was more effort in it than Thor and Flash's work, at some point I think they excuse bad cgi out of laziness and so to make it out as a joke
@@kennethsatria6607 I know its not peak CGI but I was still amazed at how well rendered the VFX was. Just shows the audience why budget does not matter at all. Makes me wonder why Disney is just overspending their movies. $200 mil for Wish, Thor 4 and The Marvels. what a sick joke
The fact that the CGI still looks good just shows how much effort was put into him
From what I’m getting, Davy Jones is basically what CGI is supposed to be used, “Do the necessary impossible”
To everyone in this chat, Jesus is calling you today. Come to him, repent from your sins, bear his cross and live the victorious life
@@JesusPlsSaveMe nah pagan gods are a cooler fantasy
@@lucaskp16Degenerate.
I hoped that you will mention Gore Verbinski. Some of the VFX guys said they were on a videocall with him a couple times a week and he was very hard to satisfy. Having a VFX background he knew all the tricks they were trying to cut the corners and spotted them right away so they gave up on it. They also mentioned that they loved working with him for the same reason, the guy knew then length they went and the effort it took and was very appreciative of their work. You can tell looking at the results that they did a spectacular job.
Bro your profile picture made me think I have hair on my screen
@@theodornechita7875 works as intended mate, trying to get people to use the dark theme lol
@@theodornechita7875am I the only one who’s never fallen for the hair thing?
Good on him. The pirates trilogy films are the gold standard in blending practical and digital effects work. Absolute feasts for the eyes
Some of us like a bright and cheery interface!@@neutchain7838
The lighting and colour matching is still pure perfection and that something that people dont realise has a big effect on realism.
Definitely. I was watch LOTR thinking some of the CGI doesn’t look half bad and I think that’s entirely down to the lighting of the scene.
@@H3000-i5q Yup, having uncanny lighting (cough the entire hobbit cough), will absolutely ruin scenes. That, and they just did an absolutely horrid job with it. Considering both Pirates, and the original LOTR did better with the CGI, it really says something. Some scenes in LOTR have aged better than others, but things like the Balrog still look amazing.
same as normsl actors without the filtering....you need to think of the filtering not just go for the best render...but this cant happen in movie schedules....
Exactly
Also I recently rewatched these movies, and they are fantastic. But it is very interesting how much of Davy jones’ scenes are done at night and in low light scenes which utilises the VFX even better. Which is why early Doctor Who in the revival which is around the same time looks good and holds up aswell.
I feel like it’s also sort of why Jurassic Park holds up so well all of these years later. Is the CGI is mixed in with lots of practical effects and puppets and moving set pieces, giving the dinosaurs a weight and believability you wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s that care for the craft that elevates it.
It's insane that Davy Jones looks soo realistic for CGI that is more then 20 years old, while modern movies or TV series with high budgets and better computers and programs can't get it right. The details in Davy Jones' tentacles moving separately when he's talking or something are details that make the character feel more alive than most CGI creatures I've seen in recent movies.
well you see a lot of cg characters nowadays are in projects that have extremely rushed and overworked workers doing them as they are part of big franchises that need to be pushed out consistently
The lighting, the selective use, being given the time. I always look to the example of Jurassic Park in 1993 (which largely still holds up today).
The main shots are at night, or diffused and and from a distance. Close-ups use (very good) animatronics...
I think that some modern Filmmakers forget that CGI is a tool...it doesn't need to be be used for ALL FX.
It’s not exactly 20 years old it’s 17 but still close haha.
@@beans4126
This, mostly, but having a good CG outcome is also not entirely on the CG artists themselves. Not to take away anything from them, that is in terms of respect for their work; rather to take away from their workload. As this video points out, the proper production design, knowing what needed to be shot and how, choosing lighting which helps, casting the right actor whose performance carries a lot; this is all in direction and production design. Because even if the CG team had tons of time, if you just film something that's a royal pain to work with, then it's multiples of the workload, not just a couple days or weeks extra time needed.
TL;DR: it's a team effort and it's clear they had a great team.
@@insoporous9978 oh yeah I absolutely agree, but tbh treating the workers poorly is definitely adding quite a bit to the lower quality cg in a lot of projects recently.
I missed “Dead Man’s Chest” in the theater but bought the DVD, and I honestly thought Davey Jones was just a costume and make-up with animatronic tentacles. It wasn’t until I watched the special features that I found out he was CG. Such a great creation.
absolutly the same for me
Same for me, it was just so realistic my brain never doubted it. It has not crossed my mind even once when watching it.
Yall smoking crack
I don’t get it. Not only does it obviously look like CG to me, but it doesn’t really look that different or better than many other CG character faces I’ve seen before. Maybe I’m just too ignorant on the subject of VFX. But then how/why did I immediately know this character was CG, just from seeing the trailer? I’ve never even seen the movie.
@therainman7777 it's definitely cgi but you have to consider that this film came out in the mid-2000s. The fact that the cgi in this still beats a lot of current day cgi is a testament to its quality.
Damn, this is so thought-provoking, the idea that showing less skin can give the chance to add insane effects is not something we can easily realize. Sometimes, less is more, and it's not just for movies, the video games would learn from this too. Thank you for this amazing video, and I have yet to watch any of the Pirates films!
You absolutely HAVE to watch the first 3 pirate movies. I promise you that it is worth it and they still hold up today. I just showed my friend the movies since he had never seen them before and he was blown away it was awesome.
They DID have quite groundbreaking Subsurface Scattering in this movie though. It's not only because it was hidden by reflectivity.
I was gonna say, I feel like I see it in his tentacles?
Knowing my luck, it's actually some intermediary step between reflection and actual SSS, designed with the intent of accomplishing a lesser version of the desired thing, until computing such values became realistic for enterprise hardware
@@Soniti1324 If you google for the paper "An Advanced Path Tracing Architecture for Movie Rendering", you'll find a section about it in section 2.4
i assume that is what cause him to have more detail? because i looked at thanos and she hulk. both of their faces look like someone picked a single color in mspaint and then use the bucket tool. i mean if i took those pictures put them into ms paint the bucket tool would completely change the characters to whatever color you picked while with davy i would have to keep clicking random spots on his face before it was all a single color.
@@sparky-xz1nbyes! A lot of cgi characters lack the sheer dimension of color. Davy Jones has tons of different textures and discolorations which helps the lighting look way more realistic. The dirt and grime also helps blur the details and shadows, or at least put it at the back of your mind.
This comment section reminds me of uno. Orange s, grey s, then grey a, and now another grey s.
I think you understated how important lighting was for Davy Jones, lighting is one of the hardest things to get right in a CGI scene, and it can make or break the scene, and what Industrial Light & Magic did with Davy Jones was phenomenal.
I agree, and I'd say the wet reflections on not just his tentacle beard but his entire face is what helps sell it. The hardest thing is creating CGI humans, especially the skin but also the mannerisms and facial movements etc. Our brains are just too hardwired to know what it SHOULD look like, so even if it's 99% there it still looks way significantly "off" to us.
But Jones isn't human, he's basically an alien. And our brains don't know what an alien SHOULD look like, or how their skin looks when wet, or how his tentacles should move when he talks or turns around, etc. That lowers the bar of what "realism" has to be. For a CGI human, that bar is literally 100% and anything even a fraction of a decimal off looks fake. But for non-human (alien, robots etc) our brains are satisfied with 75% realism because we have no instinct for what 100% looks like. Something can't look "off" if we don't even know what it SHOULD look like.
And as mentioned in the video, it definitely helps to have his skin/tentacles wet all the time to induce reflections. That helps cover up what, as you mention, is usually the biggest weakness of CGI scenes.
@@CMCFLYYY like Gladiator... you know something is wrong... but unless you know before seeing that scene... you still know something is wrong
? wdym? it's the longest part of the video starting at 9:00 it's even called lighting
@@CMCFLYYY It's just insane how many muscles and subtle gestures real faces can do. It's why in a lot of cartoon/animated movies, and even in CGI they have to do an exaggerated version to convey the same emotions. We have some of the most subtle tics in every face we make that we don't need to greatly exaggerate our faces for our emotions to register to other people. It would be an enormous time dump for them to animate every tiny thing, so what you end up with are these tensor points where a whole web of muscles can be animated (scrunched brows, squinted eyes, deformations of the mouth, etc.) and operate in concert, unlike human faces which do operate in concert, but each muscle has contractions along its whole fiber, so things don't "stretch" and "morph" according to how the facial mesh is being distorted in real life. I think that's where CGI has the most room to improve, because you can see (especially in bad CGI) where they've just grouped together points on the skin texture along these muscle tensors, and if they're poorly spaced you just get a very obvious distortion of the whole skin texture, almost like you can see it stretch, which is noticably fake and uncanny.
I was hoping he'd point out and explain the eye-shadow in some of the BTS footage of Nighy as Jones. You can see him with a variety of eye shadows (green in the daytime scenes, and what looks like red in another), which helps to set a basis for how lighting will play off his skin. Using that footage as a baseline, they have a better point from which to work the lighting in CGI composites.
Also helps that since a lot of the film had practical effects and sets, the vfx artist had more time to perfect Jones and the other supplemental CGI elements instead of... making the entire movie
*Fun Fact* - one of the textures seen on the tentacles was actually a layered snapshot of a *discarded, stained coffee cup* . One of the editors saw his colleague with a stained coffee cup, they uploaded it for imaging, zoomed in & then applied that texture to the tentacles of Davy Jones.🐙
it was a lookdev/texture artist not an editor but yeah.
I love it
another fun fact. In curse of the black pearl. The textures for the zombie pirates rotting skin were a texture map from a slice of cheese pizza.
When I was a kid, I thought Jones and his crew were actually done with makeup. It was that convincing and it still is IMO. It's incredible how they were able to bring those characters to life, especially Jones.
If I remember correctly, they actually recieved nominations for best costume, and had to inform the nomination givers that there were no costumes. That's how good the cgi was
I think it looks like cheap cgi go figure..
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii wow your so different
@@janetmontalvo6944 sure
brain?@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii
I think that there's gotta be like some sort of muppet effect when we see an outlandish character doing normal and predictable things that makes us easier to accept them as they are without thinking about the behind the scenes stuff used to make it appear so. Performers have often said that after a while of working on a muppet set that they'll just focus on the muppet instead of the person operating it. When you get a CGI character like Davy Jones who isn't performing massive feats of strength or cartwheeling through bullet fire it's easier for us to be like "oh he's just a weird looking dude"
I think Davy Jones was just a complete accident of perfection on every level. I saw a Making Of and the guys were talking about creating Davy Jones and how it was just a random assortment of ideas a couple of them had that just accidentally came together to make the tragic character we see on screen. What should Davy Jones' ship be? The Flying Dutchman is a ship isn't it, lets do that. What should Davy's gimmick be? And an artist randomly was making crustacean people one day and they went with that. I don't even remember if they said how they came up with the Calypso storyline. That and all of the CGI coming together to make him, if this movie was made years before or after when it actually was I imagine Davy would look a lot worse then he did. I think he was done at the absolute perfect time.
I could swear I watched some behind the scenes thing on a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD back in the day where they talked about creating the CGI for Davy Jones and they mentioned that they couldn't get the skin texture right until one day someone spilled coffee and they used the coffee spill texture?? Something like that, this was a long time ago so I only vaguely recall lol
They didn't know how to do the kraken until animation director, Hal Hickel, made the crew watch the 1962 film, "King Kong vs. Godzilla" which has a live octopus crawling over miniatures
@@KreeZafiYep, the skin of Davy Jones is based off of a stain on a styrofoam coffee cup.
They got some of his skin texture from a dirty coffee cup which is insane!
Honestly, I don't think Davy ever truly registered as CGI in my brain while watching the movie. Looking back though I did wonder if the skin looking wet was part of what made him so realistic so I loved hearing more about that as well as everything else you went through. It all just proves what great results can be had if you hire talented people and give them enough time to do their job properly.
Right? Like I thought "Wow .... that's an amazing prosthetic mask they gave him ..."
For me it’s literally watching the tentacles. Each one is just brimming with personality from an animation standpoint. To say no corners were cut in that aspect is an understatement. I watched Dead Man’s Chest one time specifically to watch the tentacle animation
That sounds weird but you get the idea
Same applied to me with Ceaser
Same here. Never wondered how they did it because the CGI never broke the immersion by being bad as modern shit
Don’t think it ever struck me he’s the most photoreal looking CG character from the films 1-3 which I’ve only seen, from a graphical standpoint. A lot of CG from 20 or so years ago had that putty and slimy kind of look, he still has but he’s way more detailed and it fits obviously with his character. He’s arguably the best human esque CG character done.
Fun fact: the skin texture for Davy Jones was discovered by accident, when one of the VFX artists noticed a coffee-soaked piece of styrofoam in the trash! They photographed it and used it as a template.
As soon as you started talking about the usage of CGI, I thought of all the scenes Jones puts out his smoking pipe with air that come out of that tentacle thingy, it's so satisfying to watch! I always HATE how a lot of alien like characters still act human and don't ever use the things that makes them alien, like, if your character has a tail, why don't they ever use it? Why is it there if it has no purpose? I'm majoring in acting and one of the first things I learned was that every single element in a scene has to have a meaning, if it's pointless it shouldn't be there, and I personally think this applies to characters bodies, specially when it's CGI or animation.
Yes
Yes! And why are they always walking upright?? I’d imagine aliens would have different ways of moving around much like animals
@@ArieELLE totally!
Ahh the young one has learned the vital principle of Chekhov's gun. So many higher ups in this industry don't know it or willfully ignore it. You'll go far, my dude. Rootin for ya!
@@ArieELLE Exactly, life needed billions of years to make humans, and they're telling me that a different species, on a different planet with different gravity and environments, took almost the same evolutionary path as us? Or have the same behaviour as humans even if they have more limbs, different organs, etc?
This whole thing reminds me of "capitalist realism", which is a trope in nearly all stories today.
It's the cop-out belief that no matter the world, people and culture of a fantasy or sci-fi setting, the economy and society will work like ours, even though everything else is different.
When in actuality since the author isn't some real God creating a real world, they could experiment with different ideas even if they wouldn't necessarily hold up irl, since the structure of a story can cover for it and nobody but a bunch of redditors would care to delve deep into freaking economy lore.
I think what's happening with non-humans in media is very similar. Writers get so focused on making the characters understandable to a modern human audience, that they forget the characters aren't human!
I'm a lighting artist for VFX. I love how you put this together, especially in a time where director's love claiming "it was all practical". Hat's off to perfectly breaking down the contribution of lighting to Davy Jones' look. Your video made my day. It's a tough and demanding gig, and few people know how many artist contribute to every frame. Thank you.
To this day, Davey Jones is one of the best looking live CGI jobs I’ve ever seen. Bill Nighy playing him was just a major bonus
As a makeup artist, I’m so happy you’re giving Azog shit and I totally agree with you - WHY! He looks crappy. The orcs done with SFX makeup look so amazing and made me become a makeup artist myself, there was no need to use CGI for him. Sadly I’ve heard more and more actors say they prefer motion capture over 5 hours makeup time…
Yeah, actors just got lazy. Sitting in the makeup chair for them is time wasted away from their tiktoks and instagrams.
@@BoringThings2069the future is now, old man
@@rockhardcelery1214And the future looks like crap, young man.
I have so much respect for makeup artists as well as actors who have the patience to sit in place for practical makeup effects, but i absolutely cannot blame them for not wanting to do that, it sounds like torture
I mean, I can easily see why you wouldn't wanna sit 5 hours basicly doing nothing. The makeup can be tough on your skin too
I remember when I was a little kid and saw Davy Jones, I always thought it was just a VERY complex mask and I had no idea how they did the rest of the cursed crew because I just didn't understand the concept that a computer could create such a character. That's how real I thought he was.
They got everything right! Davy Jones feels so real to me. His eyes, voice, expressions, and affect were mesmerizing. Best villain ever put to the screen.
What always fascinated me is how does the Dutchman crew look better in broad daylight than rainy night? Insanely well-done.
I think the main thing that is stopping current CGI from reaching this kind of level is the insane time constraints the CGI artists are under now. As well as the overload of work they have to do, with pretty much every film now being very CGI heavy... Whether it actually needs to or not.
It's also just not the same people. Many of the really good artists and developers in VFX left the industry or retired in the 2010s, went to tech, games or other industries. So much work moved to other countries that many US west coast based artists left the field.
As someone who is currently learning to become an animator/vfx artist this was such an interesting watch! You managed to summarize many important things to look out for in such a short amount of time. This got me brainstorming for new animation tests right away. Great video with great explanations! Thank you for making this. I'll definetly keep these tips in mind
I think while talking about the use of CGI and often overuse of CGI/“bad” CGI, we need to talk about the time crunch and the lack of fair compensation of CGI artists. The short documentary Life After Pi goes into this. While the movie Life of Pi won the award for best visual effects, the studio behind it was filing for bankruptcy as they were accepting their award. All that hard work and it wasn’t enough to pay off. VFX studios are paid a certain fixed rate for their work and they have X amount of time to complete it. Now say the film needs reshoots and another several hundred VFX shots. The VFX studio was given that set budget and now they have extra shots that need completing on top of the shots they were working on to begin with under that same time frame. THAT’S when CGI starts to take you out of the movie or you reach the uncanny valley. Big blockbusters are cranked out so quickly, there’s not enough time to really get down to the most minute detail to ensure that the end product looks perfect.
It’s actually kind of infuriating to watch the budgets for these films balloon in inverse proportion to the quality, and direct proportion to the VFX team’s suffering
Yeah I totally thought part of this video was going to be talking about this aspect of it
What's wild about this is that MCU seems to be a common go-to for people complaining about bad CGI (i haven't watched enough of it to know if I agree), and yet with just a quick google, Avengers: Endgame had a significantly longer production time and employed quite a few more VFX studios (with ILM on the list) than Dead Man's Chest, so the rate at which new films get made shouldn't really be an excuse there. Doesn't mean working conditions for VFX artists weren't still bad, but for the film itself, it shouldn't have time crunch as an excuse
@@reaganharder1480 they are not even comparable, the “abuse” of cgi in marvel is crazy . The budget may be way higher, the timeframe longer, and they may have way more teams working on it but the workload is also exponentially higher.
@@reaganharder1480 You really think that having hundreds of studios located all over the world(with different time zones btw), to work on one cut each of the same movie is not an absolute nightmare? Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Ah and they are all underpaid and overworked too, with idiot directors that need 3k reshoots to get shit right because they don't know anything about CGI and the people whom should plan this are on a time crunch to shit out 6 series and movies in 2 years.
My dad was the compositor for the scene where Davy Jones was playing piano and falling asleep for the guy to steal the key haha, just gotta do a little brag haha
Your dad contributed to make a movie loved by hundreds of millions.
Does he still work on movies?
And your dad did a fucking great job.
That is my favorite scene.
That's cool as shit haha
Your Dad is amazing
Even though you can see the limits they had if you look close, it still always works perfectly in the word and your eye is never drawn to something that specifically stands out unlike many cg projects.
Gollum, from The Two Towers is also one of the most realistic cgi characters, and that was 2002. His skin has that transparent aspect you referenced where the light goes through the surface and reflects off of internal tissues. And the frame rate of the animations is so high that he just really looks like he's there in the scene. Subtle facial expressions and skin movements as well, plus he's often wet or slimy looking. I also think Thanos looked great in Infinity War and Endgame, his skin looked real and facial expressions were natural. The eyes make a big difference too.
Endgame was definitely a step down in quality, but top tier in Infinity war. Of course his first couple appearances were more just in case the story went somewhere. And yeah, there are only two scenes I have gripes with in the entirety of LOTRs, one is mount doom where the hobbits are climbing and the feet are hovering off the ground (once you see you won't unsee it, sorry not sorry), and the opening scene as it feels a bit uncanny nowadays. But for a movie series that is like a 9 hours plus long, thats pretty damn good.
Well, then there's Galadriel's wtf scene, but we don't talk about that...
Man, who knew. You give artists time, and they deliver.
This pirates-movies are so good because the cast and crew were people who actually cared and payed attention to detail and got enough time to make it good.
I remember watching Curse of The Black Pearl as a child and seeing the crew walking under the ship in the moonlight, it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.
That scene with the lined up music is still awesome.
Thanks for sharing, these movies were definitely highlights of childhood
Seeing that in theatres was marvellous really
One character who has evolved beyond Davy Jones is probably Rachel from Blade Runner 2049. She was so realistic in her appearance that a lot of people didn't realise she was CGI until the film makers dropped a breakdown of how they made her. The BTS of them super imposing her over the original actress in Blade Runner is borderline indistinguishable
just went to a video to check out what you mean, her skin still looked a bit too perfect and unblemished/textured
Alita Battle Angel and the hybrid shots from The Way of Water also look very good
Part of why she looked so real was because her face didn't move all that much. Our eyes can pick up on facial features so well that I guarantee it would have been a lot easier to pick up on her CGI face the second it started moving a lot. Not trying to diminish how great she looked in BR 2049, but that was the main reason why she looked so good.
This is one thing I think about when I see people complaining about CGI. Most people who do don't realize just how much CGI is in most modern films, even films that claim to shoot practically. As an example, Top Gun: Maverick, while it does have a lot of practical shots to get genuine performances of actors in high-G maneuvers, or realistic movements of fighter jets, a considerable amount of what you actually see in a lot of those shots is still CGI.
@trancosa13 to be fair, it's a CGI model based on a 21 year old woman in a Hollywood film portraying a synthetic human. Sean Young in the original film has very few noticeable imperfections or blemishes in her skin, so that's not really a fault of the model. If the model is trying to replicate a woman with near perfect skin, the skin should be near perfect
one little detail i love about davy jones is when he gets angry or emotional, his tentacles start wriggling around like crazy. it's just such a good way to utilize his features and it always impresses me.
I think another key aspect that kept Jones out of the uncanny valley were the eyes specifically. Many CGI characters have completely recreated eyes that despite somewhat realistic can't really show the nuances of human emotion. However Jones' eyes are actually Bill's eyes and that makes a huuuge difference.
His eyes are cgi as well. The artists were just that good. Corridor crew covered this
@@Luke101 damn then the art team is in a whole other level
To me it's 95% in the eyes! He has fully expressive eye muscles and brows, which most CGI characters honestly don't have.
Too right... the Eyes Have It
@@johannfowl8653 they're in a whole league of their own.
Ahoy! The Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies is my favorite of all time. I’m glad to finally have an explanation for such an immersive experience watching these movies! In fact, it’s about around the time of the year where I binge watch them all over again. Arghhhh! Thanks for the fine video, matey!
something i love is how the character design and the actors performance match up really well. Bill Nighty is very expressive with his lower lip while his upper lip remains very stiff and that works very well with a character like Davy Jones who has that very thick tentacle lip thing going on.
It's that British high-class 'stiff upper lip'.
Bill Nighy is an absolutely fantastic actor. Even besides the amazing work that the VFX team did on him, Davy Jones as a character wouldn't have been nearly as iconic without his brilliant performance.
yesss. nighy playing jones was critical. the vfx and animation was a cut above the rest, but wow was his performance phenomenal i love his work.
I'd say Infinity War/Endgame's Thanos and the Na'vi/Avatars from Avatar 2 are both very very convincing but those, and Davy Jones are the three peak examples of artists putting a ton of work and taking the time to get the look right.
I just watched Dead Man’s Chest again after many many years….and man. Davy’s intro on the ship was sensational. Intense, evil, and like the Devil himself. The CGI is excellent.
Davy Jones is one of my favourite fantasy characters ever
This franchise has an absurd amount of excellent indroductions to (new) characters, especially Dead Man’s Chest
As a former ILM employee I can tell you: It is even more impressive knowing how they actually did it and what software they used :D Also: Thanks for this video! It is nice know that at least SOME people understand and appreciate the work we do. Especially those jerks like Andy Serkis, Taika Waititi, Chris Miller and Phil Lord.... well, don't even get me started
Wait wait, Andy Serkis is a jerk? Tell me it ain't so
@@TheWartechgaming What can I say? Telling everybody in Interviews that HE did ALL the work and VFX artist only do "cg make up"? Well, you get the idea
Chris Lord & Phil Miller? Is it about the drama surrounding beyond the spider verse?
@@patrickmuller3248 I don't believe I've ever heard him say he did ALL the work in any video. I could be wrong
@@TheWartechgamingYeah... I remember the contrary in the behind the scenes on the extended editions of the Lord of The Rings movies... They went into great detail about how much work the animation was and Andy Serkis seemed astounded by their abilities and proud to work together with the animators.
Also the video forgets that there were movies before Dead Man's Chest... And that GOLLUM, not Davy Jones, was the first character to be made with on-set motion capture technology... That I'm aware of. Honestly mo-cap has been around since the 50s, technically, and used practically since the 80s. I think it would've been too much of a pain to use it on-set though, and I don't know how cumbersome the 80s set-ups were.
Point is... I'm already annoyed with people not knowing what they're talking about... And quite suspicious that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about either.
1:36 this almost made me have an existential crisis thinking Bill Nye played Davy Jones. 🙃
I think you're absolutely right. The CGI is so well done, that instead of sticking out, it takes second place to the performance and story. The tech is amazing. The artistic talent is huge. But the subtle emotional performance is number one.
Davy Jones is one reason why Dead Man’s Chest is my favourite Pirates film, and even after all these years the CGI in the first three Pirates still holds up. Every time I watch this film I’m still impressed at how good the visuals look, especially since there’s so much in the film, but the quality doesn’t drop.
As someone who's spent many years doing 3D modelling your explanation of how the lightning is like a magic trick is absolutely fantastic. The correct scene lighting influences the quality of your final product more than you can ever imagine.
one thing i want to add that I love about DJ is that he has weight. he has impact not just in the metaphorical sense. his movements creak floorboards, he shambles and stomps. its these little things that add up to give him such good realism.
The last time I watched Dead Man's Chest, I was thinking about how Davy Jones looked like he could step out of the screen at any second and look compeltely believable and real, and wondering why CGI 20 years later looks so much worse. So I am very glad that I found this video, because you do an excellent job of answering that question.
Time to rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean!
I love how this demonstrates just how important real artistry is to CGI and how it still needs to go hand in hand with the tech.
In Logan, the younger Hugh Jackman was achieved by a full CG head replacement on a stunt performer. They used the same technique in a lot of the driving sequences, digitally replacing the stunt driver's head with CG Hugh, and nobody noticed. There have been several photorealistic CG people in film, they just usually go unnoticed.
I wouldn't say nobody noticed. It was weird to watch, "uncanny" if you will.
I think part of the reason why it worked is it was intended to be uncanny in the narrative. It's intentionally eerie for this character to see a younger version of himself. Intention behind these effects goes a long way to making them work or not. Realism isn't always the goal.
Its wild because they did the same thing in the prestige over a decade ago, with hugh jackman
great cgi goes unnoticed, people take it for granted
A lot of the greatest work in film basically strives to go unnoticed. It will be there and appreciated by the people looking for it.
I love seeing the effect of my sound work in a test screening but then nobody really notices why it was better 😂. It makes me happy though.
The crazy part is the level of detail.
The details of the ship, the hats, the tentacles, the mussels, the water. And the lighting.
The artists not being horribly rushed and the good lighting are key. When I watched these, I originally knew Davy Jones was CGI, but a couple minutes after first seeing him, I completely forgot he was CG and continued to forget through the rest of the movies!
Also what happened to makeup and practical effects? It’s best to do everything possible practically, then do CGI for anything impossible.
davy jones didnt even use practical effects
i always thought they must use practical effects but no
none of cursed pirates use it
this paired with great writings, really made a great movie
it really questions me on what if the thing sequel really made with good CGI rather than shitty CGI on the last boss
practical effects are a layer of complexity on a film set that a lot of production probably don't want to deal with. having it done in post is probably cheaper and easier to do for the main principal photography part of a movie.
money. shitty, garbage amateur cgi = more money saved.
For nine whole minutes of this I was gritting my teeth getting worried you weren't going to say the one key thing that seems so obvious to me but I'm glad you got there in the end, him being constantly wet does wonders.
It's a shame you didn't really have anything much to say about his eyes, I think it's a real testament to the performance and the rendering that I've seen multiple people talk about Davy Jones and assume that while his face is CGI, it's CGI pasted over the real footage of him so they think those are his _real eyes_ peeking out from underneath.
I'd venture to say that people assume that because, IIRC in the special features for the first Pirates they flat-out say that's how they handled undead Barbossa - they kept Geoffrey Rush's eyes.
That's actually a huge difference and should be talked about more indeed.
There's definitely some misinfo being circulated about his eyes. If people just watch ILM's behind the scenes videos, it'll clear everything up
You know last time I watched any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies was when I was like 10 or 12, so 8-10 years ago. I'm going to rewatch the series. Thank you.
I'm a VFX Artist with over 25 years experience. Some VFX look worse now because most Studios have MUCH less time/budget than they did back in 2005.
Back then there were a few 100 shots now some films have 1000s, but a much shorter deadline.
Thanks for the video!
That's what I figured. More to do with less tike fewer people and not enough money
Things have gotten really bad for CGI post-covid, and I imagine it's the massive layoffs they did, movies not making as much money as before... etc. It sucks that movies from the 2000s and 2010s have better effects than the 2020s, you would think it'd be the opposite.
The shaders are actually a bit dated if you watch the movie again. But it helps that the character is stylized, with skin that has a lot more wetness and shininess than real human skin, which helps stay clear of the uncanny valley.
Yeah. The age of the technology can be seen better with the crew of flying Dutchman.
Not to say they looked bad, but there were moments where the light and the surfaces didnt look right. Most notably seen in Williams first encounter with them.
Like the first Jurassic Park, its now a waiting game with how old this movie gets before the CGI becomes noticeable despite the tricks to hide it. I mean, Jurassic Park has gone 30 years and its still holding on tight with only a few parts of the movie showing some age. So since this movie is nearly 20 years old now, will it take 40-50 to become noticeable in a few scenes?
I still don't think it's dated - especially since the whole Pirate's trilogy has better CGI than 99% of the CGI in movies in the past 10 years.
The whole Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy had amazing CGI
I like how where there would be a nose, his skin is flabby as opposed to a human rigid nose, so it reacts to the pulls of his lips movements. That leaves the whole cheekbones and everything in between to be more expressive.
Davy Jones DID have sub-surface scattering, both Mental ray and Renderman at the time had very appealing skin shaders and ILM built their own on top. It was the enormous amount of attention to detail from everyone, including the director + the great render-time displacements and small bits of dynamic hanging fabric and constant moisture on the character coupled with great design and cinematography that made this work. And its not true that skin is harder to do that complex layer cloth, these days if they want to re-create Dave the cloth will take more time than the skin. but even if you put real skin on CG these days, the characters would still look off because there is no thought or artistry put behind them. It's Jurassic park theory all over again when today's dinosaurs are less believable than the first film's. But I agree Davy Jones still stands as the best CG character ever created.
Yeah I was gonna say this. The renderers reached basically peak for almost 20 years now, all thats changed is that there is ALOT more processing power available so naturally they are going to be able to cram much more detail now and still render the thing in reasonable time. I remember watching those vfx guys youtube video of them trying to recreate the liquid terminator scene from Terminator 2 where he goes through the jail bars... Despite so so so much more tech available to them they still didnt match the original because they were time constrained. The conclusion was that time and talent is still paramount. Things dont automatically look good unless you put the work in.
Now that’s a brilliant comment
Wow this is actually genius now that you point out all the techniques they were taking advantage of. I've never really thought about it before but you're so right.
The Way of Water proved that with a clear vision and time for a VFX crew to do their best, the results are mindblowing.
Too bad they forgot to write a script
@@Poney01234 dead man's chest plot is sooo much worse so what's your point? Are you the typical avatar hater npc?
@@groxiverde The main difference is I was 13 when Pirates came out, so I didn't notice about the script :)
Also, I'm super annoyed the fantastic tech invented for Avatar is wasted every 15 years because of high school level scripts.
dead man's chest plot is definitely not worse than avatar 2, I'm sorry
@@groxiverde Enjoying Avatar's weak-ass story seems way more NPCish to me
I love how Dave’s Jones, when he dives his ship underwater, you can see his tentacles hold onto his hat so it doesn’t fly off from the submersion. Brilliant attention to detail.
I caught this on my last watch too!
Even in the first one which was 2003 the CGI STILL holds up. Like it’s bette than now, HOWWWW?
I just re-watched these films and I was surprised at how well he holds up.
I remember being very disappointed when the 3rd one lost the Best VFX Oscar award to The Golden Compass.
To me it comes down to this:
- True to the very theatrical yet nuanced performance (so the animation feels natural)
- Tentacle animation that enhances the performance
- Dramatic coloured lighting
- Incredible work on secondary and tertiary forms
- Incredible work on organic feel (especially SSS and speculars from the wetness)
- Technical mastery from ILM + Renderman
Let's see what the video says
Edit: Alright yep that's pretty much it
Steve Walton's work on the textures and shading was just out of this world. First time we had believable SSS working on a character in a major motion picture. Absolutely seminal!
- Time to do all of that
Effort. That's what made it look so good.
Reminds me of the prawns in District 9, honestly. Blomkampf had a very similar focus with emotion & character driven CGI. Very simple, close up shots of emotes do such a good job of bringing them to life and making them feel unbelievably real and relatable. Honestly, I feel like he took the near perfection of how Davy Jones was done, and took it to a whole nother level -the prawns are portrayed full-body many times and don't fall prey to the same pitfalls you present as failures of CGI character representation. He even pays attention to highly detailed emotes in the rest of their bodies - like the tiny chest mandibles (for lack of a better term) which move and twitch according to their feelings and actions in real-time.
You forgot one simple yet really important point.. the EYES...
As human beings we perceive the whole world through them and we look for them/ at them when we interact with other people.. so the fact that his eyes are a key part on the interactions he has with other characters and whenever he is expressing something his eyes looks really expressive, is really clever from the director wich you said its a VFX artist himself.. he knew where we would look whenever the characater presents himself, and he knew that if he wanted the audience to think something was "ALIVE"and real, the eyes would be the key
It looked so good because the CG lighting was used on everyone in those scenes. Blending them flawlessly.
The eyes are the windows to the soul. By leaving Bill Nighy's eyes exposed instead of going full CGI, it made Davy Jones a real person.
That’s not correct, the eyes are cg too.
@@leecaste What!?
This is a misconception
Davy Jones and Prawns from District 9 absolutely aged like fine wine.
💯!!! Neill Blomkamp has some fantastic VFX characters.
District 9, the droids in Elysium (the few shots of them there are), and the photorealism of Chappie was pretty great too.
Having such a great actor play as Davey Jones really played a major part in his realism
Incredible actor but also there's a focus on him looking as grimy as all the other pirates. Helps him blend into the scenes and look right. The lighting is really important and he matches the lighting which is everything I think.
As a special effects makeup artist, I had a hard time clicking on this video since I (and many of my peers) are worried cgi will take over our jobs someday. However I’m actually really glad I did watch it, I have a new appreciation for amazing vfx work and the artists that create it, and I love how you mentioned that this is a perfect example of cgi in part because it was used where necessary. Sfx makeuo is amazing and can do a lot, but we couldn’t have created apasperfect of a moving tenctacle face as cgi can. I also appreciate how you called out that some cgi characters look way better when done practically. Thanks for this video, it’s so cool to see the work that went into Davy jones.
As someone mentioned before here, they did use subsurf scattering. I remember when I saw it in the cinema, I was blown away by the realism. And the animators did an insane job overall, but they did have a bonus: It was in the "nature" of Davy Jones to allow and display a lot of this subsurf effect as a somewhat translucent aquatic glibbery-glob and this MASSIVELY bumped up the realism from a rendering perspective. You can try this yourself: spend 2 seconds modeling a blob in blender and slap a subsurf shaders on it, select two ridiculous colors like pink and purple and bump up the strength and when you render it, it already looks like its about to come "alive", pretty cool effect. Still the artists did a god-tier job, this is not supposed to critique in any way, but just add another nugget of background.
One of the reasons Davy looks so good is also because there's a lot of dynamic lighting in a lot of scenes he's in which is gonna make anyone look pretty badass
Darth Gayder-What a hero
Bill Nighy's performance definitely is a huge part of it.
It's mad to think this movie came out in 2006 and how a lot of CGI nowadays, while obviously impressive technically, just haven't quite captured that same sense of presence that Jones had. Just the perfect combination of Nighy's stellar performance actually being captured properly and complimented by the unique design of Jones himself with the technology at the time.
I think another factor worth mentioning is Pirates was a franchise that still used a lot of practical effects for the actual shooting locations and set design. CGI was still used at times but it wasn't like most of the movie was shot seemingly infront of a big green screen for every single action sequence. I think some CGI characters are a bit harder to get invested in if EVERYTHING around them is also CG. I know it can be used to help make them look less "video gamey" but I think a mix of practical with CG does wonders like with Pirates or the original Jurassic Park (more a compliment about the practical effects for that one but still.
This kind of comment irritates me.
I think it’s wrong to mention practical effects in this context. Davy Jones is entirely a CG render, he looks real in any shots whether there are other ‘practical’ effects present or not.
He feels authentic in closeups that are just of him and a blurred background.
Ultimately there are plenty of other films that blend practical effects with CGI characters, and the CGI character looks terrible.
If anything, bad CGI will stick out more when other aspects of the film look real.
There is no getting around that if you want your CG character to look good, you have to make it look good.
@@btn237 Yes and no. You can have the most technically impressive looking CG in the world like in the Avatar movies but it's never enough to still convince you the actors are actually interacting with it beyond essentially a tennis ball on a stick in a big green void.
@@caldw615
This is correct.
You can nail the CG closeups, sure. That's all on CG team.
But it's just as important for the CG to look good when it's worked into the background and not only the primary focus.
It ALL needs to look good, which means the whole team needs to be on their game.