Jeffrey A. Unay. © 2000-08. All rights reserved.
King Kong (2007)
Feature film directed by Peter Jackson
Feature film directed by Peter Jackson
King Kong was the first film I worked on at Weta Digital, beginning in 2004. I started work on the facial team on the character King Kong. The team consisted of Andrew Camenisch (Kong Facial Lead), Peter Syomka and myself. Peter and I built the upper part of the face and Andrew covered the mouth rigging, mouth shapes and facial pipeline development.
My main focus was on sculpting facial shapes for Kong's brows, eyes, inner mouth, ears and scalp. I rigged his pupil dilations for his eyeballs and set up his eyelashes. I also worked closely with a creatureTd on helping to develop facial sculpting tools, some which we still use today, as of 2009. During this time is when I began MEL scripting. I always thought of scripting as something only for the techy folks, not for artists. But my experiences on Kong facial really inspired me to grow both artistically and technically, learning to script in order to create the best art possible.
My main focus was on sculpting facial shapes for Kong's brows, eyes, inner mouth, ears and scalp. I rigged his pupil dilations for his eyeballs and set up his eyelashes. I also worked closely with a creatureTd on helping to develop facial sculpting tools, some which we still use today, as of 2009. During this time is when I began MEL scripting. I always thought of scripting as something only for the techy folks, not for artists. But my experiences on Kong facial really inspired me to grow both artistically and technically, learning to script in order to create the best art possible.
I've done facial work at Tippett Studio prior to this, but nothing as demanding as Kong. We would build networks of shapes, only to do it again and again until it was just right. And right when we were all sitting back in our chairs, happy with what we've achieved, we get the call to change Kong's face design....and two weeks right before the first trailer is to air! We nearly had to start from scratch. Needless to say, those were the two toughest and longest weeks on production for us. Somehow, it all worked out. At the time, this was the biggest challenge of my professional career. Thank you, Andrew, for raising the bar so incredibly high for us. You were such a fantastic lead!
This video was part of the King Kong Making-Of Diaries where they show the motion capture process of the Kong character. Weta developed new technology, lead by Mark Sagar, to drive the facial system we developed by the actual actor, Andy Serkis. So when Andy would snarl or frown or smile, that motion and expression was transferrable directly to the Kong character. Witnessing the beginnings of this was quite an exciting time for us all. I don't think anyone expected the results to be so good right from the start.