Tintin Forums

I'm a little unclear just how the new films for Tintin are being done. Could someone please enlighten me? I don't know if the actors chosen are just acting as voice-artists or else starring in physical roles.

From what I understand they're lending their voices but also participating in motion capture, with the end result looking animated. They said they're going to look like "Real herge people" but honestly I still can't figure out if that means obviously a cartoon style or like real people, just with the same hair, clothes etc...

I think motion capure means that the actor is "wired up" so that his physical performance can be used to "drive" or animate a computer-generated character. The computer-generated character doesn't have to look like the actor, but the actor has to be able to move right for the part. Andy Serkiss doesn't look like King Kong, for instance, or that much like Gollum, but he can act their physicality and body language right, if that makes sense.

That said, I saw Andy Serkiss on a chat show a few months ago and, as well as demonstrating his ability to do good reckless comedy pratfalls, he looked a lot like Captain Haddock too (albeit a bit on the skinny side). So maybe they're casting this film at least partly on having the right facial looks too, so that they can wire up the actor's faces for motion capture as well as the actors' bodies. This sometimes seems to be done with motion capture. For instance, the motion-capture character Davey Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean looks very much like Bill Nighy, the actor playing him, in terms of facial features and expressions, even though he's been morphed into a sea creature.

On a side issue, I think I read somewhere that this will also be a 3-D film, which seems to be a current fad for both live action and CGI movies. But maybe the reporter was muddling up all these technical terms flying around - 3-D motion-capture, CGI... Calcuvision too, I expect.

(Personally I'm finding 3-D films like Bolt look just look a bit too dark and a bit too fuzzy, so maybe I'll try watching Tintin in a 2-D showing when it comes out. But that's for another thread!)

Gollum's face was actually designed to resemble Serkis'.

cigars of the beeper
Gollum's face was actually designed to resemble Serkis'.

Thanks Cigars; I stand corrected. I should have stopped with the King Kong example for that point (unless they also worked Serkis's facial features into King Kong's).

From what you say, Gollum is more like my Davey Jones/Bill Nighy example, and more like what I'm guessing they might be doing with this Tintin film - using actors who look a bit like the characters they're playing.

Thanks guys! That's a little more clear, now! :)

You can actually see Andy Serkis himself playing "Smeagol before he found the Ring" at the beginning of The Return of the King. That's a good place to look to see the resemblance.

I have to say that I knew what Andy Serkis looks like from other things he's done, plus he's the ship's cook in King Kong too, and to be honest, I can't say that I can see the likeness...

Another thing is that, given Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are to be the Thom(p)sons, the physicality of the motion-capture artists must be a minor concern: they aren't exactly peas in a pod those two.

That stuff has to be super easy to change now though, right? Just some digital tweaking or pre-rendering. Like someone else mentioned, Serkis was nowhere near King Kong's size or height but could still do the motion capture. And speaking of casting.... Actually, haha I should take this to the proper thread.

Andy Serkis said in some interviews that to get Gollum's face they combined his grandpa's face with his newborn son's face. Creepy!