NarniaWeb member icarus found an entry on Lee Ravitz’s resume, stating that he was involved in green screen tests for the Dufflepuds in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. This leads us to believe that the Dufflepuds with either be entirely CG, or they’ll be motion captured much in the way that Gollum was motion captured for The Lord of the Rings. Lee Ravitz’s resume states:
Role: Dufflepud (Green Screen VFX Test Shots Only)
Type: Film (Feature)
Production: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Director: Angus Bickerton
Company: Purple Sail Ltd.
Venue: Twickenham Studios
Like Gollum, though Andy Serkis’ costume was white and it was on a location mostly, or any of Robert Zemekis’ motion capture CG projects (Polar Express, A Christmas Carol), Ravitz was likely dressed in a green-screen suit for testing. This would help the computer program to understand the movements that the Dufflepuds would likely make. They’ll probably wind up entirely computer generated.
But this doesn’t rule out that they’ll use the actor from the waist up, much like when they brought Mr. Tumnus to life on the screen, as well as many of the other creatures that inhabited Narnia, that were half-man type.
“Director” Angus Bickerton is the Visual Effects Supervisor on Dawn Treader, making him the Director of visual effects, at least for that shoot, if not more. Twickenham Studios is located in London, and is actually a rugby stadium.
The name “Purple Sail Ltd.” likely comes from the concept art for the ship, The Dawn Treader, in which it has a purple sail. It’s gotta be the production company’s name for the film, as productions that shoot in countries other than where the studio is located have to, for tax purposes, form an actual temporary company that lasts as long as the film is in production. For example: Prince Caspian used the name “Wimbleweather Ltd.” for it’s production company.
For more information about Lee Ravitz, check out his resume.
I think green screen tests clearly imply that they are experimenting with the Tumnus method. If they were doing 100% CGI characters, there wouldn’t be any need for green screen.
Yep, that’s what I was thinking as well. It’s good to see that someone agrees with my position on this.
I like what they did with Mr. Tumnus. I think the same sort of method would be cool for the Dufflepuds. I image that being a partially CG animated character is probably more fun for the actors than a full CG creature.
The entry has been removed from Ravitz’s resume, following the pattern of quickly-vanishing concept art and storyboards.
I always assumed “small” dufflepuds would be fully-CGI, but if the characters were larger, they’d be half-and-half human/CGI, like Tumnus.
Isn’t Jim Rygiel was the senior VFX supervisor on VDT? IMDb lists them both. Interesting.
hope they don’t look fake. as long as they look better then video game quality (they won’t be that bad i know) i am fine…..
Wait… does this mean we have a tentative Dufflepud actor? Or was he just helping run tests? I’m confused.
I think that a partial CG Dufflepud will be work perfectly fine.