Imaginary Worlds - Making Up Creatures

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

If we ever make contact with aliens, they probably won’t look like humans with pointy ears or bumpy noses, but creature makeup design is more about communicating ideas. I talk with creature and makeup designers Steve Wang (Predator, Planet of the Apes, Underworld, Gremlins,) and Neill Gorton (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Being Human, Watchmen) about the process of turning a human actor into something convincingly non-human. Also, Rosemary Chalmers of Leeds Arts University explains why she wishes more creature designers would look more to the natural world for inspiration.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I have always been fascinated by creature makeup design. And it's partially because these actors are clearly human. But I'm always amazed when they get to the point where I completely believe that they're not human. And I like watching the behind-the-scenes documentaries where the actor gets up at 5 a.m. and does several hours of makeup. And sometimes the person applying the makeup with the prosthetics will say something like, yeah, we thought we'd put these ridges on

their foreheads and then change the shape of their ears and then paint their face blue until we got it right. And I'm always left disappointed because I want more insight. I mean, I went to art school. I know there's more to the design process than that. I mean, these characters are designed by humans for human entertainment. The designers have to navigate through an uncanny valley between the human and the non-human, the earthly and the unearthly. Well, I got to ask two major artists in the field of creature makeup design about their creative process, and I was geeking out the whole time. Let's start with Steve Wang. Steve was only 20 years old when he got his big break.

He was working with the late Stan Winston on the movie Monster Squad, which was not exactly a classic, even by 1980s standards, but it was a big special effects job. Steve says he will always remember the day that he learned that Stan Winston liked his work, because Stan used to play practical jokes on the young employees, especially the ones that he thought were promising. Basically what happened was I was working at the shop that day and everybody was on set and I was prepping for something to go on set that night. And so I ended up chatting with the secretary while I was working. And so Stan comes in and Stan says, oh, what are you doing?

And I said, well, I'm working. And he says, well, it looks like you're talking to a girl. And I said, no, I'm almost done. I'm just, you know, and he says, okay. he says, get in my office. You know, I'm really pissed at you right now. And so I thought, oh crap, I'm fired. You know, Stan sat me down and he says, you know, I'm really, I'm really pissed at you right now. And I'm shaking in my boots. And he says so much so that, you know, you did a great job on Monster Squad. And I want to give you Predator to head up with me on this project. In the design that he and Stan Winston came up with for Predator, the killer alien with a mouth that opens up like a spiky tent, that launched a movie franchise and a toy franchise, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger called it. You're one ugly motherfucker.

For most of film history, creature designers used foam latex. In fact, when I did my episode about the fans who collect movie props, the deterioration of foam latex was a big problem. Like, you could spend a lot of money on a mask that Roddy McDowall wore on one of the Planet of the Apes movies, but it would be crumbling today. So in the 90s, the industry switched to silicone. And Steve says that's why everything looks so much better now. Because silicone has a translucency more like skin. And also it's a solid compound. It's not

like a foam rubber. It's solid. But you can plasticize it, make it soft, as soft as hard as you want. Over the years, they've developed these new ways of making prosthetics now that are just incredible. They look literally like skin. Like under the most experienced artists, they could make makeups that look so real. Sometimes you have to double take to make sure it's actually a makeup. One of the misconceptions that people have

about creature effects is that it's an all-in-one job. That may have been the case when guys like Stan Winston were starting out in the 70s, but now every level of creature design is broken into separate jobs, from the concept artist to the sculptor, to the painter, to the makeup artist. I'm one of the guys that actually build the creatures.

I physically go in there and I'll do the head casts and I'll do the sculptures and the molds and whatnot and make the appliances. And then you send it on set with a makeup artist that'll go on set and apply it. Not that I'm not capable of applying it, but in my particular case, I like to stay in the shop and work because rather than go on set for three months and applying the same makeups, that three months time, I could be at another shop already on another project building some more cool stuff. But there's one big misconception that he always has to fight against.

I think the biggest challenge is trying to get past the taboo of the so-called man in a suit and make it work within the film. Doing that is a difficult task in itself. A lot of people have done it and failed terribly. And then in turn have hurt us and made our work look bad. I've often wondered about the so-called man in the suit, like the creature from the Black Lagoon or the alien in the first alien movie. Because logically, it doesn't make sense that so many non-human creatures would have two arms, two legs, a torso, a neck, and a head.

Although there actually is a scientific theory that our physical layout is the most efficient design for a highly intelligent life form on any planet. It's certainly the most efficient design for a TV show or a movie on a tight budget. I asked Steve, which is more challenging, designing a scary monster or a friendly non-human character played by an actor in a suit. The friendly alien is definitely much harder. When you do a scary monster, a lot of times all they have to do is just roar and bare his teeth and act menacingly. And usually they're shot in the dark. Usually they're shot in the dark.

But the character, like, let's say an E.T. or Rick Baker's Harry and the Hendersons, where it's in bright daylight, it requires the performance of an actor who also knows how to pantomime. Because even if the creature has a voice, often the prosthetics are so heavy, the voice needs to be dubbed again later. The biggest question with non-human characters played by humans is what to do about their eyes. I remember working on Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. We were shooting for and pushing for contact lenses to make the eyes look more ape-like because they have much bigger irises than humans. And there was a lot of pushback in the studio saying, no, we hired all these name actors.

They were concerned that having animal-style eyes would make it hard to see their performance. I also talked with the creature designer, Neil Gorton. He worked on the reboot of Doctor Who for 13 years. And he said he's had the same arguments over there with producers and directors around the character's eyes. And sometimes I'm pushing to say, look, you really need to dehumanize this. There was a character which was a kind of a wooden girl.

The director really wanted her to have human eyes. And it was like, look, she's physically meant to be made of wood, entirely of wood. As soon as you put flesh and blood eyes in there you've you've lost that illusion i mean i understand the other point of view for actors their eyes are very important instruments to communicate with the audience and with other actors but it's always bothered me when i see an alien or non-human character where every aspect of their face has been completely redesigned but they have these very human eyes underneath all that makeup. Neil has found interesting ways around that.

One of the most popular aliens that he designed on Doctor Who were the Ood. The Ood have bulbous, bald heads and wrinkled eyes, sort of like an octopus. And instead of mouths, they have a mess of squid-like tentacles that hang down to their chests. And they hold a glowing ball on a wire that communicates their thoughts. There are actually a lot of interesting storylines with the Ood because they're part of a servant class that were liberated by the Doctor and his companion Donna.

We thank you, Doctor Donna, friends of Oodkind. And what of you now? Will you stay? There is room in the song for you. Another popular alien species that Neil designed in Doctor Who were the Jadoon, a paramilitary force

with huge animatronic rhino heads. Troop 5, floor 1. Troop 6, floor 2. Identify humans and find the transgressor. Find it. heads. When I asked Neil about the Ood and the J'dun, he credited the showrunner Russell T. Davies for giving him clear and simple directions in the script about what the aliens should look like. In fact, when Neil first read that the J'dun would have rhinoceros-like heads, he was sceptical. It's not an overly alien one. It's just basically a rhinoceros. And part of me kind of wanted to reject that, going, oh, that's just too simple.

But he was right. It conveyed all these things we needed to convey about the character, all these things we needed to convey about the character, about this alien police officers who are relentless and strong and single-minded. And the Rhino just kind of encompassed that really well. Neil mentors a lot of young designers, and his advice to them is to keep their ideas simple and clear. A good design is something that you see and you get the story, you understand what it is without anyone telling you or needing lots more information. So I'll get a student say, well, I've got this idea and it's an alien and then he's part robot and he's an alien part robot and he's on this planet, which is all water. So he's an aquatic alien part robot, but also he's on this planet which is all water so he's an aquatic alien part robot but also he's part insect so he can fly so he's an aquatic alien part robot who can fly and you just go

you're never going to get all this information into one visual so strip it back and keep it really simple yeah it kind of reminds me of like i used to take screen running classes and they would always talk about what's your elevator pitch you you know, like if you're stuck in an elevator with an executive, you know, could you pitch your story in one or two sentences and then immediately get it? It sounds like it's kind of the same thing with creature design. You basically need sort of a quick elevator pitch to what it looks like and people should be able to imagine it really quickly. Well, this is it. I mean, the OOGE, you just hang your hand in front of your face and you almost, even when I'm talking about it, I put my hand up and like it's a bunch of tentacles,

you know, you can't help that. And that's what good design is. Now, another thing I've been wondering about is the difference between aliens in one universe versus another. Like in theory, there's no reason why the Ood could not have been on Star Trek, or the Klingons could not have been on Doctor Who. In fact, Neil says that when he worked on Doctor Who, the producers often wanted more humanoid aliens like Star Trek, but he would argue back that Doctor Who is inherently more adventurous. And that comes from the concept of the show.

I mean, the main character is from the concept of the show. I mean, the main character is an eccentric explorer of the universe. So you need an eccentric universe for them to explore. You can have something really bizarre. You've just got to have faith in it and have faith in the script writing and the story and all that kind of thing. Star Wars is also more varied in its creature designs. But that also comes from the concept,

because the original trilogy was basically about an alien Wild West that was being squashed by a human-centric empire. Steve Wang says a perfect example of a Star Wars alien is Babu Frick, the little animatronic mechanic in Rise of Skywalker. You will never find Babu Frick in Star Trek, because he's very whimsical. Wait, wait, wait. We make him translate it, he won't remember anything. Do I remember? Oh, black. Who?

Black, black. There must be some other way. I don't recall seeing much wh whimsical style creatures in Star Trek. Star Trek, there was a joke about Star Trek for many years where they call it the nose of the weak. You know, because it was very cheap and very fast to do alien makeup. You just sculpt some kind of a weird nose bridge and you pop it on their nose and now they're an alien. Although I've never had an issue with Spock because the non-human elements are subtle and targeted. It's just his ears, his eyebrows, and his haircut.

In fact, I think the most successful Star Trek aliens reimagine only a few human features with strong choices, like the ridged foreheads on the Klingons. And that leaves room for the actors to convey subtle emotions in close-ups, because Star Trek is really focused on how these different species can work together and find common ground. I think Star Trek is less successful when they go to the other extreme, and the actors have no room to emote under all that makeup. But Steve says the rules of creature design shift when you're working in a different genre, like horror. In 2004, he was brought in to work on Blade Trinity,

which is about a Marvel superhero who was part vampire. Steve was brought in because the director was unhappy with the design that they already had for the villain whose name was Drake. What happened was they had originally hired a concept artist named Carlos Fuente. He's one of the greats in our industry. And he had came up with a design for this Drake character,

but it felt very sci-fi. And the director wasn't sure. He said he didn't know why, but he felt something was off about it. So when I was brought in to create this monster for the film, they asked me to look at it and say, well, what do you think of this? You know, he says, I like the silhouette, but everything feels weird. I said, well, because it doesn't feel like it belongs in this vampire world. You know, the vampire world feels more gothic.

You know, it's a very earthbound sort of motifs and very classic and historical feeling. Huh. Yeah, that's a really interesting example. I can see what you mean, too, in terms of if you're dealing with horror, there's something that's got to be earthy or fantasy, you know, earthy or earthbound as opposed to sci-fi, which must feel like literally unearthly. Yeah, like literally, if you're doing a fairy, you don't want to put three eyes on the fairy, you know, or you don't want to put tentacles on the fairy or something because then that

starts to feel kind of alien-like. You know, or you don't want to put tentacles on the fairy or something, because then that starts to feel kind of alien-like. There is another important pitfall that designers need to avoid. Real-world stereotypes. The most infamous example was Jar Jar Binks, who is heavily criticized as being a racist caricature. Also in The Phantom Menace, the Neimoidian aliens were disturbingly similar to Japanese stereotypes from World War II. And in Star Trek, there's been a long debate as to whether the money-grubbing Ferengi are a little too close to anti-Semitic stereotypes. Again, Neil Gorton.

You've got to remember that nearly everything is based on, you know, we don't know what an alien looks like. It's as simple as that. We don't know what an alien looks like. So ultimately, anything we're doing is informed by and the reason we connect with it is because it's familiar to us. So we use familiar things in our design. So it's only natural, I think, for some designers and directors and people like that trying to tell a certain story to tap into caricature and they will caricature people those kind of stereotypes will fall in there to me that's a

slightly lazy thinking we don't have to do that there's better ways of telling that story and you only have to look at something like an ood you You know, you're being a butler, you're being a servant type character, but you're totally alien. And you can tell that story in other ways without having to, you know, drift back into cliche. I mean, often it's the directors, the writers, or the actors who are making those choices. But Steve Wang says designers are responsible too. I've gone to studios and I've seen certain designs. I mean, I've caught myself saying, while looking at that, like, oh my God,

this design is a complete racial slur. I've seen that. And I've seen somebody do a prototype for a really famous cartoon character that they were considering making a movie of. So this one studio did a life-size bust prototype of this character. And it's got a hat. It's got all this stuff. It's like an animal character.

I don't want to say exactly what it is. I don't want to point fingers. But right away when we look at it, it looks like a racial slur. I don't want to get into describing it too much. Now Steve saw that design when he was visiting another studio, so he didn't say anything to anyone. But somebody might have, because that design never went forward. And it was a design for a CGI character, not something he would have come across in practical

effects, which is the term for non-computer animated prosthetics and animatronics. which is the term for non-computer animated prosthetics and animatronics. After the break, we'll go deeper into the tension between CGI and practical effects and find out how computer animation almost put Steve out of a job. We interrupt your podcast to bring you breaking news. Tim's Classic Breakfast Sandwiches are just $3 when you buy any size coffee. You heard that right, $3. Your mornings will never be the same. Plus tax, Canada only, limited time only, terms apply, see app for details.

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Like when Jurassic Park first came out and I saw that scene with the T-Rex, I remember watching that film thinking to myself, oh my God, our industry is going to die. CG is going to take over. And it did for quite a long time. There was a time when the industry just came to a screeching halt and people just weren't getting jobs for quite a long time, like a good 10 plus years. Because back in the 80s, we were like rock stars. for quite a long time, like a good 10 plus years. Because, you know, back in the 80s, we were like rock stars.

You know, back in those days when I went on set and, you know, and they said, okay, bring in the creature guys, and we're walking on set with these, you know, animatronic creature heads or bodies. And literally, I remember walking down the set and people would part like the Red Sea for us. And it was surreal. It was like that moment in The Right Stuff, you know, when they've landed and they're walking out,

and it's that beautiful slow motion shot of us walking. And now we're just benders. And Neil Gorton says the CGI bonanza that followed Jurassic Park sometimes ignored the reason why those dinosaurs look so convincing in the first place. All the movement was done by real animators. was done by real animators. Phil Tippett, who was a model animator, a guy who moved a puppet and photographed it one frame at a time, supervised the animation.

And so you got something that felt much more real because it was grounded. It had a real physics involved in the way it moved, and the animators were trying to mimic that. And it all went wrong later when someone just went, hey, I can make this creature kind of leap enormous distances and bounce off the ceiling. And at that point, you just go, well, nothing can do that. So this is going to look ridiculous.

Since you can do anything in CGI, the question is how to make it believable. And that is an interesting area to explore. So let's go on a sidebar for a few minutes, away from practical effects, into the field of ecological world building. Rosemary Chalmers teaches creature design and concept art at Leeds Arts University in the UK. She focuses on the types of creatures that could be done with animatronics, but more likely

today, they'd be computer animated. And she always asks her students to imagine this creature they made up did not just pop into their heads. It evolved through millions of years of adaptation. You want to think about what function you want your creature to have. So for example, what function you want your creature to have. So for example, do you want it to be resistant to fire or resistant to heat? And then what you do is you'd think about real world animals that have that adaptation. But the thing you've got to do when you're designing a creature is kind of think a bit wider than that. So the key to making a creature believable is to use just more and pick very specific adaptations from lots of

different real world animals. In other words, if you're designing a creature on a very hot planet, it needs to be heat resistant. So it could have skin like a lizard, giant ears like a fennec fox, and a hump like a camel. But she always reminds her students that in real life, a lot of animals have features that may look beautiful or cool to us, but nature doesn't care about beauty or what looks cool. If an animal has a feature that doesn't serve a function, evolution will get rid of it. I have a bit of a bugbear with creatures that they look like they've just come straight out of one iteration from a concept artist. And they haven't really thought about how it looks with the environment or anything.

It's a very pretty film, but Pacific Rim, the creatures in that, kind of bother me a bit because they're just so, so over the top. Another pet peeve of hers? Dragon designs. You know, like I was really excited about seeing the dragon in Game of Thrones, for example. You know, it was better than most, but we were still just like, OK, they've just designed something quite lizard like. And it doesn't really look like it could carry the weight on its wings. And it is a problem that no one seems to be able to solve because I think if you needed to carry that weight,

you would have to have humongous wings. And then there's the problems of how large would the chest muscles need to be to support those. And you also have to think about genre. Like one of the things that she liked about Fantastic Beasts and where to find them is that the Fantastic Beasts defied evolutionary logic and didn't have a sense of realistic weight. If you'd have got out, that could have been quite catastrophic. There's that bird that has like four wings

and you kind of think think would that really actually work you know as a flying being because there's kind of magic involved then you can kind of go okay that's fine but her favorite ecosystem is the star wars universe especially the creatures you see in the background and it's quite a shame because in the films, you often only see them for a split second. And it's almost like there's a whole ecosystem that's been developed. So there's prey and predators and there's plants as well. Personally, my favorite alien ecosystem was Avatar. There was a unity to the blue, green and purple designs

of all the creatures on the planet Pandora, I mean, I completely believe that the wide variety of life on this planet had all evolved from the same common ancestor. But if you're designing a creature for horror, Rosemary suspends a rule that you should mix different elements from real-world animals. In fact, she says the most effective horror designs blend human with one other animal or non-human element. Like the Demogorgon in Stranger Things has a head like a Venus flytrap, which is freaking creepy.

It seems that when something is most horrific, it's when it's actually slightly hybridized. And it's that kind of uncanny valley thing where it's kind of more horrific because you recognize slight human qualities in it. Horror has a long history of human hybrid monsters, hence the so-called man in a suit. In fact, there was a backlash among horror fans when computer animation took over. In fact, there was a backlash among horror fans when computer animation took over, and that led to a resurgence of practical effects in horror and eventually sci-fi and fantasy. Which brings me back to Neil Gordon.

He was the special effects designer on a BBC show called Being Human. It was a great show about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf that were flatmates together in Bristol. Neil got a lot of praise for the werewolf transformations, and his approach was to focus on the pain that the characters were going through because it enhanced your sympathy for them. We were trying to avoid completely grotesque, you know, because you like these people. I think it was that that really made it work, was the fact that they were real, tactile, physical things in the real environment.

So you connect with it, whereas somewhere in your psychology, in your psyche, you know that as soon as it goes to a CGI thing, you go, oh, expensive cartoon. But the competition with CGI is still fierce. And he understands why some producers and directors want to go with CGI. For producers, it means that, you know, for us, we have to build up front. So producers can, you know, they've got to get everyone to agree on how things look,

agree on budgets and give you money early before you even film so the cgi thing is very it's very skewed in that direction because it just means they can worry about it later they can pay for it later they can adjust their their finances later if they if they want two of them or 200 it doesn't really make any difference. Whereas if they want that up front, they've got to make a decision. Ironically, it's more practical not to use practical effects for them. Yeah, basically, which I understand. But at the same time, there's a lot of people coming back to who go, look, I get it now.

I've grown up. Now I'm seeing a lot of directors coming through who grew up with CGI, who are then looking at practical effects and going, you know what, that feels different. And that looks different. And there's something I like about that. You know, I've grown up with all this CGI stuff. I know I'm attuned to that. And I'm now looking for something else. Steve Wang also saw computer animation reach a saturation point, which was a relief to him. We're at a point now where people are, I think CG has finally found its place.

You know, like the studios and the filmmakers understand, you know, there are certain things are great, CG is great for, and there are certain things that you just should not CG. So now I think we're kind of at that point where sometimes you can even do practical effects that can be enhanced by CG. Right now, the industry is at a standstill. Projects are being greenlit, but nobody knows for certain when filming will start. I mean, it would make sense to me if producers would want to use CGI more. I mean, you don't have to worry about social distancing if an actor is standing on a green screen talking to a ping pong ball and a stick.

But Steve and Neil have both gotten calls from producers who are itching to get back to work. I mean, I hope they figure out a way to get back in the studio. I would hate for the tactile sensibility of creature makeup design to be lost. And whenever I see a non-human character with a design that I haven't seen before, as a viewer, I feel like I've discovered a new species that I didn't know existed. It makes the universe feel bigger and more mysterious. At the same time, good designs reflect back on the questions that sci-fi and fantasy have always been about. What does it mean to be human?

Can we recognize a sense of humanity in someone or something that doesn't look like us? What is the difference between the non-human and the inhuman? And how can we avoid becoming inhuman? That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Rosemary Chalmers, Neil Gorton, and Steve Wang. You know, Steve may be a big deal in the special effects industry, but he had a tough time convincing

his traditional Chinese family. In that culture, you know, they believe that in order to be successful in this world, you have to either be a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, or you have to, you know, own a doctor, an engineer, or you have to own a restaurant or something. So when I was trying to learn how to make monsters on my own, they thought I was just playing. They thought, what is he doing? This is not a career. And I remember one time my mom's business was in trouble. This was like in the mid 80s. And I basically sent her a check for

like $16,000. And she was like, where did you get this money? And I said, from playing. I put a slideshow of Steve and Neil's work on the Imaginary World's Instagram page, along with Rosemary's creature designs. And we were also doing a special giveaway with the website Podchaser. It's a fairly new independent podcast site, and we want to get up to 100 reviews,

preferably five-star reviews. So if you really like Imaginary Worlds, tell people about it on Podchaser. And once we hit 100 reviews, Podchaser will randomly select one of the reviewers to receive a prize package of an Imaginary Worlds sticker, mug, and t-shirt. To learn more, go to podchaser.com slash imaginary worlds. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emolinski at Imagine Worlds Pod. And if you really like the show, please do a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover imaginary worlds. The best way to support the

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