An excerpt from befores & afters print magazine.In Jon M. Chus Wicked, the Wizards monkey guards were CG creatures created by ILM. Jon wanted a powerful-looking creature, outlines ILM animation supervisor David Shirk, so art exploration led us to combine elements primarily from larger apes like chimpanzees, baboons and orangutans, with a characteristic monkey tail. Rather than waddle upright on two legs, a more powerful quadruped walk was developed and was the principal locomotion along with a physical size that made them feel intimidating next to the human characters.Early ILM animation testing explored an orangutan-based walk, says Shirk. But the characteristic balancing on the sides of their feet was traded for a more grounded and much heavier soldier-like feeling. From our main hero monkey, we developed multiple variations to populate the army of monkeys featured heavily in the films third act.ILM concept art.On set, stand-in performers rehearsed and worked on-camera with the principal actors to aid with interaction, eyelines and framing. Shirk notes that any extreme stunt performance was left to animation. For acting beats, he says, particularly in the case of Chistery, who is captain of the monkey guards, the on-set team gave us a starting point for physical performance and placement but acting choices were left to post-production and grew organically from the edit as it developed.We used an unusual approach to arrive at the acting beats, continues Shirk, who notes that a proprietary Face Select toolset was used by ILM. In collaboration with the director, I worked with the animation team to create close-up live performances, delivering multiple options per shot that were used in editorial to define Chisterys acting performance, then used that as the template for animation. Final animation consisted of hero keyframed action.At one point, Elphaba reads from the sacred Grimmerie spellbook, resulting in the monkey guards transforming to sprout blue wings. There was a lot of talk about transformation because it was obviously something that was very painful, recalls visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman. Jon directed the animators to do certain things in Zoom sessions, working with David. In fact, for one of the shots, Jon kept saying, I can see David Shirk right there!The transformation scenes were a bit of a tightrope, weighs in Shirk. The filmmakers wanted the effect to be visceral and scary but not excessively grotesque or too horrific. The on-set performers gave us a strong starting point for blocking, especially in defining how Chistery would travel through the space as he scuttled, rolled and writhed. As we had many monkeys to depict in this process, an exploratory mocap session was also invaluable to try out many types of actions quickly.We learned that playing up confusion, fear and bewilderment but being judicious in depicting pain in the crowd reactions helped to soften the edge, adds Shirk. It was a rule that carried over to any close-up facial performances throughout the scene. As always, for key beats involving emotional performance, delivering multiple vid-ref takes helped us to home in on what the filmmakers wanted from the characters.For the wings, ILM animated these to emerge from under costumes, bursting as they unfold, rather than showing them emerging directly from the body. Over 5,100 feathers per monkey had to be groomed. Shirk notes that staging was handled carefully so feathers grew and multiplied across bodies while never being shown emerging from skin.issue #26 WickedFor shots of the monkeys taking flight, ILM first collected reference. Eagles and owls were primary sources of flight and takeoff/landing inspiration, advises Shirk. A major obstacle was that rather than the wings growing from shoulders as they do with birds, ours grew from the middle of the back, creating an especially tricky challenge in making natural-looking flight movement. Many motion tests were produced to refine the look of their flight and even though our monkeys had full heavy limbs, and, eventually, cumbersome armor as well, the director wanted their entire body to feel engaged during flight, so limbs never hung or dragged. When in full flight, the legs are played lightly and have a strong secondary dynamic reminiscent of a tail while the arms have a sort of pump, staying engaged and feeling like the shoulders are helping to motivate the wing action.The post The making of Chistery and the monkey guards from Wicked appeared first on befores & afters.