Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1495092
give it the gaze of a murderous mechanical hornet. Nowhere was a biomimetic approach to design more direct than in the crabsuit, our new underwater AMP suit; we experimented with a number of configurations, but at the end of the day, Jim said, "Guys, it's a crab suit. Let's make it look like a crab!" Sometimes design solutions are waving their pincers right in your face! Keyframe illustrations of whaling, action and disaster beats provided a chance to lean into story and mood and find the real visual and emotional impact of the RDA's "high-performance cruelty." These were especially gratifying to work on, especially when Jim would like one of them and turn it into a beat in the film. Though Avatar is a heavily digital movie, the scope of live action and physical build was enormous. Sets ran the gamut from slick laboratory tech to maritime industrial looks to 3D-printed concrete, all showing the incredible skill and attention to detail of the NZ art crew, artisans and dressers who finished them. Ally Maher's paint crew was exceptional. Vanessa Cole had to wrangle a vast amount of custom fabricated high-tech pieces, but also put a cluttered and wonderfully humanizing stamp on the film's "good guy" sets—the laboratories used by scientist allies of Jake and the Na'vi. Many precise physical builds, created in NZ or in LA at Wild Factory, were required to put our vehicles onscreen—cockpits, interiors, floodable interiors, destroyed exteriors, 50-foot pieces for motion base and even a 30-foot fully functional, E. BRIDGEHEAD NEUROLAB. PHOTO COMPOSITE BY STEVEN MESSING. F. WHALING FLOTILLA. ILLUSTRATION BY LIAM BECK AND FAUSTO DE MARTINI, BASED ON DE MARTINI AND BEN PROCTER CONCEPT MODELS. G. MATADOR VESSEL ON FX GIMBAL. SET PHOTO BY KIM SINCLAIR. H. SEADRAGON. LLUSTRATION BY PAUL OZZIMO BASED ON A DE MARTINI MODEL. E F G H