Why did Davy Jones Look SO Realistic?

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Davy Jones from the Pirates of The Caribbean franchise is often hailed as the most visually impressive CGI character in cinematic history. But what sets him apart? Well, he holds the distinction of being the first character to utilize on-set motion capture, allowing his actor, Bill Nighy, to be physically present and interact with the rest of the cast.
This groundbreaking technology opened the door for subsequent characters to benefit from similar methods. One would expect improvements over time, right? Surprisingly, the quality of CGI characters didn't consistently advance. In this video, we'll delve into the reasons behind Davy Jones's success, explore where other characters fell short, and unravel a more profound aspect that goes beyond just CGI.
Join us as we dissect the intricacies of Davy Jones's VFX, uncovering why he achieved the pinnacle of photorealism and why subsequent characters struggled to match his impact
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:57 - Performance
2:21 - What Makes Good CGI?
3:35 - What Gave Jones' Performance The Edge?
5:44 - The Usage Of CGI
6:37 - The Beard
9:00 - Lighting
12:31 - Finishing Touches
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SOURCES:
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beforesandafters.com/2019/09/...
www.postmagazine.com/Publicat...
web.archive.org/web/200607172...
• ILM - Pushing the VFX ...
• ILM - Animating Davy J...
• Pirates of the Caribbe...
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www.verywellmind.com/what-is-....
/ @anupamaw
/ @lmitchellanimation
pixabay.com/de/videos/compute...
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#piratesofthecaribbean #johnnydepp #davyjones #vfx #filmmaking

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31 май 2024

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Комментарии : 3,1 тыс.

@CGWHY 6 месяцев назад

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!

@THE-X-Force 6 месяцев назад

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.

@CGWHY 6 месяцев назад

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"

@BatmanAoD 6 месяцев назад

@@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.

@Unorthadox_ 6 месяцев назад

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.

@OTOss8 5 месяцев назад

I'd like to see a video on why Jar Jar is even worse than people think. Cheers!

@cara-setun 5 месяцев назад

I remember watching and not even questioning Davy Jones appearing "crazy how they hired an actual cursed pirate for this movie"

@SnipingIsAGoodJobMate 5 месяцев назад

"Damn people in the Caribbean are fucking ugly"

@memonos 5 месяцев назад

Ngl he was truly terrifying yet mystical

@kylegonewild 5 месяцев назад

When you got Disney money...

@hardcum4096 5 месяцев назад

@@kylegonewild and yet they couldn’t hire competent people to do Star Wars

@kylegonewild 5 месяцев назад

@@hardcum4096 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.

@dadrian 6 месяцев назад

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

@kipkak80 6 месяцев назад

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

@MatiasFeliciano1 6 месяцев назад

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 🙏🏻

@RussellB 6 месяцев назад

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

@creativeleodaily 6 месяцев назад

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

@espenstoro 6 месяцев назад

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.

@billjobs5731 4 месяца назад

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

@hlonydlamini4496 3 месяца назад

They also held his hat when the ship went underwater

@Joe_Potts 3 месяца назад

And the occasional wiggle of a tentacle or two when he's asleep was a nice touch

@ouchiegiverjr 3 месяца назад

Hell he even killed with them, imagine trying to strangle someone to death WITHOUT that beard lol

@beckstheimpatient4135 3 месяца назад

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!

@KindredBrujah 3 месяца назад

@@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.

@tparadox88 4 месяца назад

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".

@macabo 4 месяца назад

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..

@LaurenOliviArt 3 месяца назад

@@macabowow! Great job on the movies. How many people were on your team?

@noobmasterruben5167 3 месяца назад

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

@kennethsatria6607 2 месяца назад

@@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

@noobmasterruben5167 2 месяца назад

@@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

@silvernight7971 5 месяцев назад

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.

@RAFMnBgaming 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Emi_ae 5 месяцев назад

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.

@thecockycow 5 месяцев назад

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.

@aaronsondag8347 5 месяцев назад

@@thecockycowstill did a better job than any Disney Star Wars or Disney marvel movie for CGI effects.

@THESLlCK 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@86lanzo 5 месяцев назад

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.

@hardluckmk.52 5 месяцев назад

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

@mak_attakks 5 месяцев назад

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

@gabrielcabreira1740 5 месяцев назад

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.

@_chickenhead 5 месяцев назад

This is why Grievous in ROTS works so well too :)

@kable6693 5 месяцев назад

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.

@OhMyGadd 5 месяцев назад

The lighting and colour matching is still pure perfection and that something that people dont realise has a big effect on realism.

@user-vb6eh5po4t 3 месяца назад

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.

@goldenhate6649 2 месяца назад

@@user-vb6eh5po4t 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.

@livingbehind661 2 месяца назад

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....

@GonzoIsCool 2 месяца назад

Exactly

@chrislenferna4384 Месяц назад

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.

@Vi.wo13 5 месяцев назад

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…

@BoringThings2069 4 месяца назад

Yeah, actors just got lazy. Sitting in the makeup chair for them is time wasted away from their tiktoks and instagrams.

@rockhardcelery1214 4 месяца назад

@@BoringThings2069the future is now, old man

@blubirdhill2608 4 месяца назад

@@rockhardcelery1214And the future looks like crap, young man.

@orangeants 4 месяца назад

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

@andrewhenshaw4067 4 месяца назад

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

@tronam 6 месяцев назад

Because the VFX artists were given enough time to complete their work. It is an art after all, and quality can't be rushed.

@kasperrubin9078 6 месяцев назад

Not without a "bit" of crunch time

@jasonjansen9831 5 месяцев назад

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.

@billybadass3056 5 месяцев назад

right.. its very simple and not that hard to understand

@tronam 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@byucatch22 5 месяцев назад

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.

@hirohayashi4819 6 месяцев назад

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.

@alephkasai9384 5 месяцев назад

I used to think they were in really well made costumes with CGI over it to make the costume more alive.

@roguesample 5 месяцев назад

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

@silviuvisan505 5 месяцев назад

It was so good we still miring even to this day 20 years later

@harveythompson3161 5 месяцев назад

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

@GingerZombie29 5 месяцев назад

The crew looks so great, I thought it was all practical make up.

@nathmartins3154 4 месяца назад

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.

@user-ws2kb7zh3w 4 месяца назад

Yes

@ArieELLE 3 месяца назад

Yes! And why are they always walking upright?? I’d imagine aliens would have different ways of moving around much like animals

@nathmartins3154 3 месяца назад

@@ArieELLE totally!

@reductosmash2483 3 месяца назад

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!

@Ignatiusussy 3 месяца назад

@@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!

@matthewm3912 4 месяца назад

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.

@HerHollyness 5 месяцев назад

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.

@eekee6034 5 месяцев назад

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.

@enider 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Someone-sc2hk 5 месяцев назад

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

@ZMYaro 5 месяцев назад

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.)

@warchiefvenomn7612 5 месяцев назад

Lightstorm has been giving their CGI artists quite some time to make the Avatar movies. Wish more studios did the same.

@thatsrealroughbud...2394 5 месяцев назад

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.

@ScarlettOcean92 3 месяца назад

You know, that is an exceptionally good point. Damn you're so right

@andrewvasquez7872 3 месяца назад

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.

@Ignatiusussy 3 месяца назад

@@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.

@BlazingSteel 3 месяца назад

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.

@netizen6958 2 месяца назад

Sadly Bill Nihgy didn't like it so much. He felt ridiculous in the suit.

@HexigonSB 3 месяца назад

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.

@thurielangel3239 4 месяца назад

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.

@Satellaview1889 6 месяцев назад

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!

@friskjidjidoglu7415 5 месяцев назад

Well said. I swear Hollywood has gotten so lazy. they dump everything onto the VFX people.

@evtimstefanov5441 5 месяцев назад

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

@byucatch22 5 месяцев назад

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.

@lxdead5585 5 месяцев назад

@@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).

@byucatch22 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@EmileVinesh 6 месяцев назад

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.

@beans4126 6 месяцев назад

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

@flynndean 6 месяцев назад

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.

@gavinbeard4026 6 месяцев назад

It’s not exactly 20 years old it’s 17 but still close haha.

@insoporous9978 6 месяцев назад

@@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.

@beans4126 6 месяцев назад

@@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.

@Neon_Henchman 4 месяца назад

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!

@ijarbis187 2 месяца назад

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.

@tolkienfan1972 4 месяца назад

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.

@Alex-ug9wx 6 месяцев назад

I do find it absolutely astonishing how amazing his CGI was. Literally lifelike in every scene he’s in!

@JustNiceStuff-ux5nz 6 месяцев назад

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.

@danielkelsosmith 5 месяцев назад

And now you get disgusting VFX like in She Hulk 💀

@mightypharaoh7586 5 месяцев назад

@@danielkelsosmithshe isn’t worthy of good CGI lol.

@captin3149 5 месяцев назад

@@danielkelsosmith While I agree it's bad, can we REALLY be expected to hold TV-level CGI up to Movie-level CGI?

@BishtrainerTai16 5 месяцев назад

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.

@SannaiSan 5 месяцев назад

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.

@tricursor2481 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Native_Creation 3 месяца назад

yes, and I imagine they used references of actual octopi or squids, as it may be an actual biological response when they're stressed.

@arraine 3 месяца назад

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.

@MrOzzybenny01 3 месяца назад

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.

@baxterwilson368 6 месяцев назад

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.

@toongrowner1 6 месяцев назад

absolutly the same for me

@idedary 6 месяцев назад

Same for me, it was just so realistic my brain never doubted it. It has not crossed my mind even once when watching it.

@dr.sergeykutzofykock9720 5 месяцев назад

Yall smoking crack

@therainman7777 5 месяцев назад

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.

@doomhowar 5 месяцев назад

@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.

@neutchain7838 5 месяцев назад

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.

@theodornechita7875 5 месяцев назад

Bro your profile picture made me think I have hair on my screen

@neutchain7838 5 месяцев назад

@@theodornechita7875 works as intended mate, trying to get people to use the dark theme lol

@hopefullyanonymous3466 5 месяцев назад

@@theodornechita7875am I the only one who’s never fallen for the hair thing?

@Luke101 5 месяцев назад

Good on him. The pirates trilogy films are the gold standard in blending practical and digital effects work. Absolute feasts for the eyes

@clockworkkirlia7475 5 месяцев назад

Some of us like a bright and cheery interface!@@neutchain7838

@lightonthehill8548 3 месяца назад

So, basically, Davy Jones's CGI still works for the same reason that the original Jurassic Park's T-Rex attack holds up - they knew the limits of contemporary CGI, and used lighting (darkness + rain) to their advantage.

@josephmulligan3247 4 месяца назад

Whipped my head around when I heard you got your first patreon sub. Video is of a quality I'd expect from a larger channel. Great research, keep it up!

@chrisbrown7175 5 месяцев назад

The fact that the CGI still looks good just shows how much effort was put into him

@captainrex6484 5 месяцев назад

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.

@holdeenyo8914 5 месяцев назад

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

@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii 5 месяцев назад

I think it looks like cheap cgi go figure..

@janetmontalvo6944 4 месяца назад

@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii wow your so different

@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii 4 месяца назад

@@janetmontalvo6944 sure

@quietus5077 4 месяца назад

brain?@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii

@lyria261 3 месяца назад

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

@KRJayster 3 месяца назад

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.

@bronzekoala9141 6 месяцев назад

They DID have quite groundbreaking Subsurface Scattering in this movie though. It's not only because it was hidden by reflectivity.

@Soniti1324 5 месяцев назад

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

@bronzekoala9141 5 месяцев назад

@@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

@sparky-xz1nb 5 месяцев назад

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.

@aprilblues3202 5 месяцев назад

⁠@@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.

@sparky-xz1nb 5 месяцев назад

This comment section reminds me of uno. Orange s, grey s, then grey a, and now another grey s.

@LadyDragonbane 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Nimoot 5 месяцев назад

Right? Like I thought "Wow .... that's an amazing prosthetic mask they gave him ..."

@hopefullyanonymous3466 5 месяцев назад

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

@dislexyc 5 месяцев назад

Same applied to me with Ceaser

@yasininn76 5 месяцев назад

Same here. Never wondered how they did it because the CGI never broke the immersion by being bad as modern shit

@jgooner894 5 месяцев назад

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.

@MrMcGrawAndTheBigFeathers 3 месяца назад

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

@quadgod77 4 месяца назад

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!

@lemurianstar 5 месяцев назад

*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.🐙

@macabo 4 месяца назад

it was a lookdev/texture artist not an editor but yeah.

@user-ws2kb7zh3w 4 месяца назад

I love it

@EvanVerse 3 месяца назад

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.

@NourArt02 6 месяцев назад

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.

@CMCFLYYY 5 месяцев назад

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.

@narmale 5 месяцев назад

@@CMCFLYYY like Gladiator... you know something is wrong... but unless you know before seeing that scene... you still know something is wrong

@leoSaunders 5 месяцев назад

? wdym? it's the longest part of the video starting at 9:00 it's even called lighting

@harrisonmccartney4878 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@tyrant351 5 месяцев назад

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.

@lennyl2179 3 месяца назад

Wow this got to be one of my fav videos on this platform. With "At world´s end" being my fav movie of all time, i finally found an explanation of why Jones looks so good. And it all makes perfect sense. Thank you man you got the like and follow

@TannerCh 4 месяца назад

An excellent breakdown! Loved this video!

@Tyranidus7 5 месяцев назад

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.

@KreeZafi 5 месяцев назад

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

@breawycker 5 месяцев назад

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

@DCMarvel2009 5 месяцев назад

@@KreeZafiYep, the skin of Davy Jones is based off of a stain on a styrofoam coffee cup.

@lollybirdy 25 дней назад

They got some of his skin texture from a dirty coffee cup which is insane!

@Ristridyn 5 месяцев назад

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.

@fandimm180 Месяц назад

I loved how the tentacle actually swings a bit when bill moves his head, or make a face.. just simply brilliant

@alpacaofthemountain8760 Месяц назад

Great video! I think that it's interesting that hiding flaws in your CGI with these tricks makes us see it as more realistic than trying to have no flaws in the CGI and showing everything.

@jolo6051 5 месяцев назад

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.

@oskarraeburn5260 5 месяцев назад

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

@entitledblackwoman 2 месяца назад

Your dad contributed to make a movie loved by hundreds of millions.

@thatonerotom8999 Месяц назад

Does he still work on movies?

@Brei. Месяц назад

And your dad did a fucking great job. That is my favorite scene.

@ldawg7117 Месяц назад

That's cool as shit haha

@jupso-sn6jl Месяц назад

Your Dad is amazing

@itsahrims 4 месяца назад

this was so well done. cant wait for more deep dives

@smashdriven1640 2 месяца назад

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.

@B---tw3kh 6 месяцев назад

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

@trancosa13 5 месяцев назад

just went to a video to check out what you mean, her skin still looked a bit too perfect and unblemished/textured

@HigherQualityUploads 5 месяцев назад

Alita Battle Angel and the hybrid shots from The Way of Water also look very good

@YouOnlyIiveTwice 5 месяцев назад

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.

@churder6788 5 месяцев назад

SHE'S CGI WTF just checked and dam

@reaganharder1480 5 месяцев назад

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.

@909Films 6 месяцев назад

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.

@RozWBrazel 6 месяцев назад

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

@Doomsword0 5 месяцев назад

Yeah I totally thought part of this video was going to be talking about this aspect of it

@reaganharder1480 5 месяцев назад

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

@Melanie-Shea 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@DeadKraken 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@Whatsuppbuddies 3 месяца назад

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"

@MephistoRolling Месяц назад

Really great points and definitely agree. Especially with the point about many other characters not needing to be CGI.

@kingusernamelxixthemagnifi3488 5 месяцев назад

What always fascinated me is how does the Dutchman crew look better in broad daylight than rainy night? Insanely well-done.

@vonnie0_0 4 месяца назад

I was wondering my Davey Jones was my fav character in that movie (besides jack sparrow of course), you reminded me why I liked him so much, I can see the amount of care and passion that was put into the guy. :)

@aerospacehorizons 3 месяца назад

Excellent analysis and video!

@HonestWatchReviewsHWR 6 месяцев назад

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.

@macabo 4 месяца назад

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.

@HarmonicWave 5 месяцев назад

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.

@goldenhate6649 2 месяца назад

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...

@thecoolbeanz10 Месяц назад

Great breakdown! Keep it up!

@biggles258 4 месяца назад

Very insightful and well presented. Many thanks. Subbed.

@FrappuccinoAlfredo 5 месяцев назад

Man, who knew. You give artists time, and they deliver.

@cracksparrow5723 5 месяцев назад

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.

@rowantic6539 5 месяцев назад

That scene with the lined up music is still awesome.

@sublimechimp 5 месяцев назад

Thanks for sharing, these movies were definitely highlights of childhood

@sh1yo7 5 месяцев назад

Seeing that in theatres was marvellous really

@lemonade3793 4 месяца назад

I think another big factor that helped this character look so realistic and natural was that he had no hair. Hair is one of the most difficult things to animate or portray in cgi, and I love that instead of looking to 'conquer' all the difficulties, the decisions played around what was possible at the time and maximized it as much as they could. Very cool subject and well done video.

@wasteyelo1 9 дней назад

Genuinely looking forward to this. Loved playing the first game. Mechanicus are perfect for video games

@patrickmuller3248 6 месяцев назад

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 6 месяцев назад

Wait wait, Andy Serkis is a jerk? Tell me it ain't so

@patrickmuller3248 6 месяцев назад

@@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

@mohdamerulaidilbinrazisahm7317 6 месяцев назад

Chris Lord & Phil Miller? Is it about the drama surrounding beyond the spider verse?

@TheWartechgaming 6 месяцев назад

@@patrickmuller3248 I don't believe I've ever heard him say he did ALL the work in any video. I could be wrong

@plzletmebefrank 6 месяцев назад

@@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.

@sirshotty7689 5 месяцев назад

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.

@UbiMortus 3 месяца назад

It's that British high-class 'stiff upper lip'.

@eviloutionise 5 месяцев назад

Very informative, love this.

@DGalious 4 месяца назад

i can't believe it was so long time ago... 17 years ago? Still the best CGI character ever! Strong story, drama, screentime, performance, VFX.... absolutelly perfect and stands the test of time! An example worth to look at!!!

@sophiastargazer 5 месяцев назад

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.

@beezyqueen 4 месяца назад

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.

@sharktoof1 5 месяцев назад

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.

@juhis5936 5 месяцев назад

Davy Jones is one of my favourite fantasy characters ever

@racernatorde5318 Месяц назад

This franchise has an absurd amount of excellent indroductions to (new) characters, especially Dead Man’s Chest

@nennejoh 3 месяца назад

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.

@samuelleask1132 15 дней назад

You can hear just how excited this guy is through his narration, I love it

@johannfowl8653 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Luke101 5 месяцев назад

His eyes are cgi as well. The artists were just that good. Corridor crew covered this

@johannfowl8653 5 месяцев назад

@@Luke101 damn then the art team is in a whole other level

@pahvi3 4 месяца назад

To me it's 95% in the eyes! He has fully expressive eye muscles and brows, which most CGI characters honestly don't have.

@tomowenpianochannel 4 месяца назад

Too right... the Eyes Have It

@merafirewing6591 Месяц назад

@@johannfowl8653 they're in a whole league of their own.

@mdmn-ARCA 6 месяцев назад

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.

@airsheeps 6 месяцев назад

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.

@alexfarkas3881 6 месяцев назад

That's actually a huge difference and should be talked about more indeed.

@mak_attakks 5 месяцев назад

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

@Frosty_tha_Snowman 3 месяца назад

1:36 this almost made me have an existential crisis thinking Bill Nye played Davy Jones. 🙃

@danielzboy Месяц назад

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.

@kategrammer1576 5 месяцев назад

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.

@bulldogklaus47 6 месяцев назад

The CGI is certainly unparalleled but let's be frank; nobody but Bill Nighy could have sold this as well. His performance is breathtaking.

@Hari-du6pt 4 месяца назад

Phenomenal breakdown. great job.

@amarug 3 месяца назад

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.

@Dpate10 6 месяцев назад

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.

@ramnophone6650 6 месяцев назад

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.

@joshuakhaos4451 5 месяцев назад

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?

@queenb2450 5 месяцев назад

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.

@sloganwade4994 6 месяцев назад

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.

@devinkipp4344 6 месяцев назад

I wouldn't say nobody noticed. It was weird to watch, "uncanny" if you will.

@jameshamill4709 6 месяцев назад

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.

@shanmantv 6 месяцев назад

Its wild because they did the same thing in the prestige over a decade ago, with hugh jackman

@JamesBond-gk2jo 6 месяцев назад

white lives matter

@alexo_pog 6 месяцев назад

great cgi goes unnoticed, people take it for granted

@kracyndalabombarbe2342 Месяц назад

When i first watched the pirate of the Caribbean franchise as a little kid, Davey Jones has always stuck with me. Ive recently restarted watching the movies when i have time to, but his face and how cool he looked always stuck with me

@moseswalker9719 4 месяца назад

love how you wrapped that up.

@HpArtcraft 5 месяцев назад

The Way of Water proved that with a clear vision and time for a VFX crew to do their best, the results are mindblowing.

@Poney01234 5 месяцев назад

Too bad they forgot to write a script

@groxiverde 5 месяцев назад

@@Poney01234 dead man's chest plot is sooo much worse so what's your point? Are you the typical avatar hater npc?

@Poney01234 5 месяцев назад

@@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.

@jarodchen7667 5 месяцев назад

dead man's chest plot is definitely not worse than avatar 2, I'm sorry

@Rhodochrone 5 месяцев назад

@@groxiverde Enjoying Avatar's weak-ass story seems way more NPCish to me

@WestonNey3000 5 месяцев назад

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.

@3takoyakis 4 месяца назад

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

@daveSoupy 4 месяца назад

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.

@jacobasnodgrass5853 4 месяца назад

money. shitty, garbage amateur cgi = more money saved.

@sayanthsp6241 3 месяца назад

Well spoken sire, this had been pressing my mind for a long time, happy to get it cleared

@camerongregory5815 4 месяца назад

The CGI in "The Creator" was again in parts truly amazing in my opinion, and after watching the film and I checked the budget I couldn't believe it. It seriously punched above its weight in terms of cost to quality of look and feel.

@jackthegeat2234 5 месяцев назад

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.

@Edgar-ty2ne 5 месяцев назад

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.

@mrfatuchi 4 месяца назад

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.

@gurrypreet7327 3 месяца назад

Now that’s a brilliant comment

@violetfactorial6806 5 дней назад

The idea of using glare like shadow never occurred to me but it's obvious now that you've pointed it out. Brilliant observation.

@matthewdutton9910 3 месяца назад

What an incredible analysis

@FaptnUndrpants 5 месяцев назад

One of the secrets of VFX is knowing the limitations of the craft. Former VFX supervisors turned Directors tend to be more aware of what they can and cant get away with. David Fincher is another prime example. It can be really subtle, like choosing what camera angle to use, or what lighting will help sell or ruin an effect in a given shot/scene. It helps to have two feet in both camps during principal phtography so that you don't screw yourself later in post because you made a decision to shoot something a certain way on the day.

@hm4645 6 месяцев назад

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!

@Bowiiihowdy 5 месяцев назад

That's what I figured. More to do with less tike fewer people and not enough money

@kelechi_77 5 месяцев назад

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.

@kushrathod7745 9 дней назад

nicely explained man

@hunduns9901 Месяц назад

Amazing breakdown

@aidanrogers4438 5 месяцев назад

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.

@halloweennoob 6 месяцев назад

Darth Gayder-What a hero

@RafaelNadeAndrade 4 месяца назад

Brilliant breakdown of a brilliant work. The extrapolation of the lessons there to other fields follows up very naturally. For example that new technologies have limitations, know them and focus on using them right where they give the maximum impact, the final result will be better than if you used it for everything everywhere.