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BY DAVID SERVER |
Hey X-Fans! X2 Production Designer Guy Dyas was nice enough to take
time out of his busy schedule in Prague working on Terry Gilliam's "Brothers
Grimm" to talk to CountingDown about some key concepts and character
designs from the new X-Men flick that's currently rocking the box office!
But enough from me -- onto the one and only Guy Dyas!
Nightcrawler:
One of my favorite aspects about designing for a film like X2 is that
you get to interpret the designs and translate the look from drawing
to live action film for the new characters. For most of the characters
in X2, I start out with sketches based on Bryan Singer's vision. Then
it really is a collaboration of many departments from special FX make-up
to costume to help bring the design to life.
For Nightcrawler, we started out with a very demonic interpretation.
I love the way Adam Kubert draws the X-Men and to me, his design of Nightcrawler
was the right direction to go for his big screen debut. Adam's drawings
show him both as very charismatic and extremely agile. Then of course
the casting of Nightcrawler played a big part in his design. When Bryan
cast Alan Cumming we were able to weave in a lot of additional characteristics.
For example, Alan made Nightcrawler a lot more mischievous, which I think
plays well into the rest of the X-Men, Alan is also very graceful which
fits in perfectly with Nightcrawler's past as a circus performer... We
then did some concept sketches for the special effects make-up department,
specifically Nightcrawler's face, hands, feet and tail. I guess that
the biggest challenge with Nightcrawler was the fact that we were adding
a new character with blue skin and we wanted to make him stand apart
from Mystique. In the comics it works well when several characters have
similar characteristics but in the film, we felt we needed more differentiation.
We did tests for Nightcrawler with several shades of blue, finally choosing
the midnight blue seen in the film. The blue make-up foundation used
by the make-up department was a very complicated process and ended up
involving several layers of black and blue so as to accentuate Nightcrawler's
facial features. We even added some metallic into the blue for added
dimension. The scars on Nightcrawler's face and body are something new
and the idea was actually introduced by our writers Dan Harris and Mike
Dougherty.
Nightcrawler's tail was my favorite feature to design because it needed
to seem alive and never look like an added rubber prosthetic. Originally
the shape was a lot more demon like but we wanted it to be more than
just the triangular devil's tail shape. If you look at Nightcrawler's
tail closely, you will notice that we've kept the silhouette but we've
also added some ridges and hollow areas, which make it seem articulated.
We also added some barbs on the edges which allow it t grab onto things
very easily without necessarily having to wrap around objects. This is
a feature that is not unlike some of the textures and characteristics
found on deep sea fish which was one of my sources of inspiration. I
also have to say that one of the great benefits of working on Marvel
comics adaptations is that there is such a vast pool of great artwork
to reference for inspiration. With each new character being introduced
we are spoilt for choice, Marvel is an institution when it comes to great
artists and designers. We never held any official meetings with
any of the Marvel comics artists but Avi Arad and Kevin Feige were always
there during pre-production to advise us in bringing the X-Men world
to life. They have a great sense of style and an inherent knowledge about
the way the Marvel world is best portrayed. That said, Marvel was also
great in letting Bryan and I surprise them with a lot of new visual ideas
!
About Deathstrike:
Because of the story line in X2, having Deathstrike wear a black suit
seemed the logical way to go. For most of the film she has to be quite
subdued and when she is finally revealed, we felt that we couldn't just
have her break out into her flashy red and yellow suit, although I like
what she wears in the comic book a lot, it's very sexy ! In the film,
the costume that Bryan envisioned and that Louise the costume designer
created is very intricate, it's very theatrical and in many ways it's
reminiscent of the comic book. It's detailing is really beautiful, very
3 dimensional which combined with her ultra long adamantium claws makes
her one of the films best visual surprises. When designing her claws,
realism is what Bryan and I strived for. In the same way that Colossus' transformation
needed to seem intuitive and biological, Deathstrike's claws needed to
appear in a fluid and flawless manner. Once the design for her adamantium
claws was finalized, we had prosthetics made and then in the fight sequences
we added them in CG.
About Stryker's base:
This set always appealed to me from the very first time I read the script
because it's a mythical place when it comes to Wolverine and the story
of the X-Men. Stryker's base was also exciting to design because of the
extensive scenes that take place there and the importance of the color
and feel of the environment. This secret base is like nothing the X-Men
have ever seen before. The color and overall palette is very different
from the sets in the rest of the film and in particular Xavier's world
back at the mansion. We built Stryker's base on the biggest stage in
Northern America so essentially Bryan and I had the freedom and luxury
to design and build this set in one piece. . the period and architectural
style is 1930's industrial, enhanced with pockets of ultra modern details
and technologies. The modern additions are supposed to reflect Stryker's
desire to retrofit little by little the entire complex and restore it's
original functionality. To a certain extent Bryan gave me a lot of freedom
with this set and I was able to work very closely with Tom Sigel our
D.P. and his team when it came to the variations in the lighting. It
was important that Stryker's base appear both high tech, yet claustrophobic
and on the brink of self destruction due to age and decay.
The augmentation room, which is a part of Stryker's base, is in many
ways going to be the "piece de resistance" for fans of the X-Men! Bryan
Singer, Tom De Santo and I added all sorts of intricate details to help
tie it better into the X-Men universe and the comic books. The augmentation
room is used both in flashback scenes and in a climactic fight sequence
towards the end of X2. For me, it was an absolute honor and dream come
true to be able to design the place where Logan becomes Wolverine!
About Beast:
Beast was so close to making it into X2 that I'm almost certain that
he'll appear in the next film. Actually in X2 there's a scene with Doctor
McCoy that Bryan cleverly included, which in many ways sets up his future
appearance. The challenge with Beast is that most of the time in
the comics he's blue and has a very similar hairstyle to Wolverine's.
This meant that we needed to set him apart by accentuating his most Beast
like characteristics. We tried to do this by giving him more of a blue-grey
tint, covering him with a layer of fine hair and by making him extremely
muscular. Our concept for Beast was never tested on an actor, but we
could already see that he is going to be a great cinematic presence!
We've made every effort to be as faithful as possible to the comic.
About Colossus:
First and foremost, Bryan looks for realism in his interpretation of
the X-Men and I think that's what really sets his films apart. For Colossus,
Bryan cast a great young actor and my job was to conceptualize the morphing
of his skin from a normal appearance to the metallic structure Colossus
is famous for. Once again we wanted his transformation to be intuitive
and biological so we assumed that Colossus' body permanently contains
a form of liquid metal which only appears as a body shield when he feels
threatened. It's as though his body contains metal alloy bones and muscles
which appear when his skin becomes translucent on the surface. The visual
effects for this transformation work really well in the film because
in recent years CG techniques for rendering metal and liquid metal forms
have been perfected thanks to many past sci-fi films. Also the scene
showing Colossus' transformation is set at night, the conditions are
dark which help emphasize the reflections of the metal. It's very dramatic
while leaving a lot to the imagination. I'm sure that we'll see a lot
more of Colossus and this effect in future X-Men films.
About the X-jet:
In the first X-men film, there were very few scenes in the X-Jet and
so a design was never fully conceptualized and a bare minimum was built
for the set. If you look back at the scene it shows very little and the
illusion works quite well. However in X2, a lot of key scenes take place
inside the X-jet and I needed to fully design it. To me the X-Jet is
Storm's domain and as such I designed the interiors with very sleek lines
in order to perfectly combine form and function. The X-jet is also
involved in a lot of key scenes and stunts which required that we build
several versions of it, some set pieces were actually taken to some of
our mountain locations for some exterior scenes.
One of my favorite scenes is the opening sequence of Nightcrawler's
attack on the White house:
Our White House set is obviously not an exact duplicate of the White
House, but rather a condensed version of it. This set was the very first
set I knew I had to build because of the very elaborate nature of Nightcrawler's
acrobatics and stunts. For example the secretary's office that's connected
the Oval office and the corridors were designed slightly larger in scale,
giving our stunt co-ordinator more freedom when staging the fights. For
safety reasons we also added padding under all of the carpets and we
built a lot of the fixtures (including the frames around the paintings)
out of rubber.
The only room that was built as an exact replica both in size and in
furnishings is the Oval office. We went to great lengths to recreate
everything in detail. For example we had one of our construction crew
members work exclusively on building and carving the President's desk.
We also duplicated the existing pattern and seal of the Oval office's
carpet by having our carpet woven to match. This adds a nice touch to
Nightcrawler's attack sequence because so many shots were filmed from
above, looking
straight down onto the room and the carpet.
The White House set was very popular with the cast and crew during
filming, so much so that it was also used for a lot of the publicity
stills as well. We even celebrated Halle Berry's birthday in the Oval
office and I'm pretty sure that absolutely everyone took the opportunity
to sit behind the president's desk !
About the plastic prison:
This set is all about high security and so my design had to convey
that idea. In the original film we established Magneto's plastic prison
cell, but we really had no idea beyond that as to how it functioned in
relation to the rest of the facility. We saw a walk way extending from
the cell, which was a brilliant idea, but it was my job to build upon
that. Bryan Singer and I really worked on the design of this set and
we came up with the various security check points as seen in the final
footage of the film. The room that is best featured is the film is the
final metal detection area before the walk way to Magneto's cell. It's
a very sterile environment and it's meant to represent a flawless system
to stop Magneto from coming into contact with any metals. But as we soon
realize no system is entirely perfect and with time many have forgotten
how dangerous Magneto can be!
About the Danger Room:
This is a set that was fully conceptualized and was going to be a key
moment in X2 because it was going to allow us to witness one of Wolverine's
training sessions. The room's overall shape was oval, but the control
room from which Xavier can monitor the progress of each session was going
to be mobile. So basically the fight was going to be very dynamic because
the Danger Room's weapons were going to be dynamic and our point of view
from the control room was going to be dynamic. I am a big fan of Adam
Kubert's work and he's very cool because he did a story board sequence
for me showing Wolverine in action and based on my Danger Room design.
We built half of the enormous set on stage, however due to time constraints
the overall sequence needed to be cut from the final script. It was particularly
sad for me because so much development, design and even construction
effort went into the set, but ultimately I think that it is better to
save it for a future film so as to be able to feature it fully. With
a scene taking place in a space like the Danger Room you just don't want
to have to compromise and I think that it will be a big part of the next
film.
About the Sentinels:
The Sentinels are something that Bryan and I were already designing
even before the start of pre-production on X2. We wanted to have a specific
Sentinel design in mind so as to better help Bryan and the writers incorporate
them into the story. For inspiration I mostly looked at Alex Ross' designs
of the Sentinels because they are simultaneously beautiful, industrial
and eerie. I then made a visual chart of every robot ever portrayed on
film so as to influence myself to come up with a brand new design, in
the hopes of creating something truly original. Without sounding pretentious
I just wanted to design something never seen before on film for the Sentinels!
Currently my sketches are locked away and are waiting to hopefully be
used in a future film...
About X3:
I haven't heard anything official about X3 yet, but I know that with
X2 we tried to not only expand the X-Men universe but also create a slightly
darker tone. What I like about working with Bryan is that he has a really
clear vision for the X-Men films and this makes for a very creative and
interesting design process. In X2 I had over 65 sets to create and needless
to say that as a relatively new production designer I learned a lot,
there was so much star power in our film. As an artist I am drawn to
films with a touch of fantasy. I always like to try and see the world
through fresh eyes. My childhood was influenced by images of films that
were larger than life and that's probably why I had such a great time
designing for the X-Men.
We designed a lot of new characters and environments for X2. Some made
it into the final film and others will be saved for future episodes.
Basically the designs that didn't make it in the film were:
- The Danger Room and the Danger room control room (where someone
can monitor & supervise the training sessions)
- Beast and Beast's laboratory
- Angel and Archangel
- The interior of Alkali Lake's abandoned base, which included some
very intricate prison cells and a giant cylindrical room where a big
fight sequence was going to happen between Toad and Nightcrawler, a
breathtaking mid-air battle.
- A land vehicle that was going to come out of the cargo area of the
X-Jet.
- A secret level in the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
That's all from Mr. Dyas folks -- we here at CountingDown would like
to thank him once more for all his time and for sending us these groovy
images to boot! |
