Jeffrey A. Unay. © 2000-08. All rights reserved.
The Waterhorse (2007)
Feature film directed by Jay Russell
Feature film directed by Jay Russell
The above video shows behind-the-scenes footage of "The Waterhorse" and interviews with Weta Digital crew. This project was my first "Facial Lead" credit at Weta. The challenge that this project presented, from a creature facial standpoint, was to create a monster that was highly emotive, a character that audiences would fear but also fall in love with. Caruso, the Waterhorse, goes through 4 different stages of growth throughout the film, as an infant, then to a puppy stage, then a teen and lastly as an adult. Each stage called for its own unique model and design. The way the face moved and emoted had to be consistent through to each stage, but at the same time each stage of Caruso had to have the ability to "act" differently when it was needed. For instance, the infant stage was very scared and timid. There was a lot of twitchy, worrisome expressions to create. And as a puppy, we obviously referenced a lot of dogs (esp. happy dogs). At this stage, you get a lot more mouth corner movement and big expressive brows and a big flappy tongue. The teen stage was the shortest onscreen, just a handful of shots showcasing the face. This basically meant that we could spend our time only on a few key expressions. The adult stage was, well, more grown up and a bit more intense. The expressions that we needed to build were mostly focused on any facial combinations that make up a scary monster's roar, stretching the mouth to its maximum to expose his scary teeth. I would say the adult stage was the most challenging not only because he was onscreen the longest (which means a more complex rig is needed) but also the shape of its face was far more reptillian, very dinosaur-like. But we knew there were a lot of eye closeups at this stage so we spent a bit more time on the eye subtleties.
This video showcases the puppy stage of Caruso. We spent a lot of time working out the readability of his brows. This was an especially important aspect of the character's face at this stage. The deformation of the brow had to read from close-up to afar. There were wrinkles that formed on the top inner part of the head. The best references we found for this were of videos of happy puppy dogs on youtube. Even when we're creating fantastical creatures, we always make it a point to base our creative decisions in reality at the beginning. Once you've successfully created something that realistically could work, to then be able to refine it into something that "reads" best on film, sometimes per sequence or shot.