Alien Resurrection: Animating the beast

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leading from

Alien Resurrection: Alien beast CGI:

a)  The mandate

The mandate for Blue Sky's animation team led by Jan Carlee, was to create a bipedal creature that could walk using tri-segmented legs like a dog which didn't look and walk like human but also wasn't clumsy. 

The realisation came that they actually didn't know that the alien creature hadn't been seen walking upright before.

However, a man in a suit would not be able to walk the way they wanted if they were to show its legs in a frame.

They spent a lot of time coming up with animation rigs that would simulate the musculature and tendons of the legs. 

As the foot lands on the floor in close-up, the toes spread, the mass settles out, and the calf muscle tightens. 

The animation rig was just as complicated as their initial geometric alien model, so some of it was partially automated. 

The animation of the big foot landing, followed by the alien taking three more steps down the corridor, would take a couple of weeks.

1.  This explanation raises a question: why make the CG alien walk at all when there was a perfectly mobile man-in-a-suit version? "We thought we'd be doing all of this crazy action," Scollard says with a grin. "We didn't realize that nobody's ever seen the alien walk upright. The alien has tri-segmented legs like dogs' legs and a guy-in-a-suit can't walk like that if you want to see the legs in frame. That was a tremendous back-and-forth expedition."  (American Cinematographer November 1997 http://www.theasc.com/magazine/nov97/reanimate/pg1.htm)
2. Scollard: We were thinking we'd be doing all this crazy action.We didn't realize that nobody's ever seen the alien simply walk upright. The alien has tri-segmented legs, like dog's legs, and a guy in a suit can't walk like that, not if you want to see the legs in the frame. So not only did we have the alien climbing and swimming and so forth, we were the first ones to make the alien walk. That was a tremendous back and forth expedition for us. (Cinescape, Fantastic Four, p85)
3. Kopelman: The sequence opens with a foot landing on a steel floor, the the alien walks over camera and heads down the hall with its tail swishing in the lens. We spent a lot of time coming up with animation that would realistically simulate the musculature and tendons of those legs, so as the foot lands on the floor in close-up, the toes spread, the mass settles out and the calf muscles tightens. The animation of the big foot coming in and landing, followed by the alien walking about three more steps down the corridors, took a couple of weeks. It was a beautiful result.(Cinescape, Fantastic Four, p85)  
4. Kopelman: We hoped to get the attitude of the alien's feet and the upper body and the pace of its movements from the videotape, but its movements looked too human because it was human. So we tried to go as far away from a human with our animated walk without making it absurd. (Cinescape, Fantastic Four, p85)
    

b)  Movement Like a  vulnerable predator 


Originally they thought that they would be doing a lot of crazy action, but they didn't actually know about the fact that the alien had never been seen actually walking upright.

Scollard and Kopelman's solution seemed a little contradictory to the intentions behind the creature but they thought that the personality assigned to the alien was that it was a cautious and tentative, not because it was fearful, but because it was an efficient predator who didn't need the chase because it's confident in its ability to catch the victim.

It was a way for a giant creature to minimize its space. 

It reduces its size and looks very protective, but like Kopelman understood that the alien really had no fear. 

Its subtle crab-like diagonal walk, keeping its body low until it needed to somebody and gracefully rise, would make it predatorily efficient. 

For them it was an enormous "back and forth expedition".

1. Scollard: There are a limited number of ways a biped can walk and still be believable. I think we found a really nice solution. It sounds contradictory, but the alien moves like a vulnerable predator. It reduces its size and looks like it's slinking and being very protective, but at the same time it really has no fear. So it's really a way for a giant creature to minimize its space. It walks at a diagonal, which I think is predatorily efficient.(Cinescape, Fantastic Four, p85) 
2. Kopelman:The director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet,  had this vision of a sort of cat-and-mouse-playing alien, always in control of the situation. We could accomplish these slow, deliberate movements because our CG model was detailed. It has a very deliberate, "I'm gonna git you" gait, kind of like a gun slinger's with a real slow, deliberate, in charge attitude. It's like Clint Eastwood, very purposeful. The tail is an extension of the body in one good line coming from the head. The tail has a nice whippy motion, a dagger-esque feel, but the head motion is very slow, with a little tilt,  and a nod.  Its motions are really graceful and very purposeful. It was interesting to animate because, it's always been a man in a suit.Cinescape, Fantastic Four, p85)
3. The challenge for Blue Sky's animation team, which was led by Jan Carlee, was to create a bipedal walk using tri-segmented legs which didn't look human but also weren't clumsy. "There are a limited number of ways a biped can walk and still be believable," Scollard maintains. "Our solution sounds contradictory, but the alien moves like a sort of vulnerable predator. He reduces his size and looks very protective, but he really has no fear. It's just a way for a giant creature to minimize his space. He walks at a diagonal, which I think is predatorially efficient."  (American Cinematographer November 1997 http://www.theasc.com/magazine/nov97/reanimate/pg1.htm) 
4. What we finally came up with was that the alien is tentative, not because it was fearful but because it was efficient and fearless. It has this subtle crab-like movement, it walks at a slight diagonal, keeping its body low until it needs to face somebody and then it very gracefully rises. So I think the personality assigned to the alien was that it's a cautious, efficient predator who doesn't need the chase because it's confident in its ability to catch you."
   (Starburst#234, p44-5)

c) Swimming beast

To create this aquatic alien, the Blue Sky team visited the pool set several times, bearing with them a shiny sphere and a hollow cube.

Both shapes served as references for the theoretical camera which is the computer.

This recognised the way the cube exists in space and from there, they built the alien.

The computer also understood the way light effects and the flex of the cube that helped them referencing the lighting..

1. To create this aquatic alien, the Blue Sky team visited the pool set several times, bearing wit them a shiny sphere and a hollow cube. Both shapes served as references for. (The making of Alien Resurrection)
2. Jan Carlee: The theoretical camera which is the computer. It recognises the way the cube exists in space and from there, we built the alien. The Computer also understands the way light effects and the flex of the cube that helped us referencing the lighting. (The making of Alien Resurrection)

Blue Sky animator James Bresnahan examines an underwater shot

d) Developing the animated alien beast

To facilitate the animation process and create more natural looking movement for the warriors, the Blue Sky team made one modification to ADIs creature design slightly restructuring the legs to make them appear more animalistic and less human.

With that refinement completed, animators Steve Talkowski, James Besnahan, Doug Dooley,  Nina Bafaro and Jesse Suaerman developed walk and swim cycles, also determining how the skeleton should move and the flesh deforms under different conditions

Rendering of the CGI alien, with proper lighting to place the character securely and believably into live action scenes was achieved at a resolution suitable for each shot, and with an eye towards economy and efficiency.

The most data-intensive were underwater shots of the alien swimming close to the camera that necessitated quite lengthy close-ups of the computer-generated head.

The high resolution CGI model that they had was about 85 MB of data, which was a lot to handle in those days and indeed something to talk about, and so Mitch Kopelman observed that this was the most complex and detailed model that they had ever made.

On top of that, the close-up model required something on the order of 300 MB of texture maps.

Fortunately, the majority of the shots were a little more reasonable, so they could do them fairly economically, without sacrificing image quality.

The technical directors responsible for lighting and compositing the scenes included Rett Bennatt, David Esneault and Thane Hawkins.

1. To facilitate the animation process and create more natural looking movement for the warriors, the Blue Sky team made one modification to ADIs creature design slightly restructuring the legs to make them appear more animalistic and less human. With that refinement completed, animators Steve Talkowski, James Besnahan, Doug Dooley,  Nina Bafaro and Jesse Sugarman developed walk and swim cycles, also determining how the skeleton should move and the flesh deforms under different conditions (Cinefex 73)
2. Rendering of the CG alien, with proper lighting to place the character securely and believably into live action scenes was achieved at a resolution suitable for each shot, and with an eye towards economy and efficiency. The most data-intensive were underwater shots of the alien swimming close to the camera that necessitated quite lengthy close-ups of the computer-generated head. The Hi-Rez model that we had was about 85 MB of data" commented the sky visual effects supervisor Mitch Kopelman, "which was the most complex and detailed model that we've ever made. On top of that, the close-up model required something on the order of 300 MB of texture maps. Fortunately, the majority of the shots were a little more reasonable, so we could do them fairly economically, without sacrificing image quality." The technical directors responsible for lighting and compositing the scenes included Rett Bennatt, David Esneault and Thane Hawkins (Cinefex 73)