This is the first of two installments in VFXWorld’s Creatures and Environments of King Kong.

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Peter Jackson’s love affair with King Kong has lead to his creation of this year’s biggest blockbuster event. All images © 2005 Universal Studios.

When Peter Jackson finally fulfilled his boyhood fantasy of remaking King Kong (Universal Pictures, opening Dec. 14), there was never any question that Kong and the other creatures that inhabit Skull Island would be CGI. Kong, of course, was key. “The scary thing about making the movie was the close-ups of Kong,” Jackson admits. “Would it work out OK?”

Indeed, Jackson was crucially interested in the emotional connection between the 25-foot, 8,000-pound gorilla and actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). The director wanted Kong to form an attachment and feel empathy for another living being for the first time. The greatest lesson Jackson learned from The Lord of the Rings trilogy was that the best fantastical stories are rooted in real world trappings, so he applied the same philosophy to King Kong, beginning with his new take on the legendary gorilla. Modeled after Snowflake, the albino gorilla from Spain, Kong evolved into a lonely, middle-aged, warrior. His brow is cracked, his jaw broken, he has a drooping eyelid and a snaggletooth and his powerful body is scar ridden.

“Kong is stronger than I thought he would be,” Jackson adds. “He’s more realistic. He is a gorilla, not a monster… you want Kong to be sympathetic [and brutish, which is part of the conflicting nature of the story].” Jackson was so pleased with Kong, in fact, that he made the unprecedented move of elevating Christian Rivers and Eric Leighton to animation directors.

Once again, as with Gollum, the director turned to actor Andy Serkis to provide the MoCap performance. Not only did the actor do extensive research but looked to Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame for inspiration, because his role was much more demanding and technically complex.

“We needed to make sure we delivered the expressions that Peter imagined Kong to make,” asserts Richard Taylor, the head of Weta Workshop who specializes in special makeup, creatures and miniatures. “We went through quite an interesting period utilizing frame-grabber software that you would use for stop-motion animation. And we proceeded to sculpt 18 expression studies for Kong. Each face was about 16” tall. We used the frame-grabber to check that the musculature was consistent with the bone structure underneath the skin, because it’s so easy to cheat beyond the facial points and turn it into a Looney Tune as you stretch the muscles. These were keyframe animation poses from a hoot to a scream to a snarl. Peter gave us a list of all the expressions he wanted to see the face in.

“In terms of the body, the creature enters the digital world through scanning [courtesy of XYZ RGB]. We wanted to install all of Andy’s essence into the design as well. You want to make sure that the musculature and facial expressions are complementary of the direction that the creature is going in. So at no point do we consider the design process as a blueprint. It’s an ever amorphic, ever evolving process. The performance capture is unique in that we aren’t capturing Andy’s facial movements but his emotional states. Each point is designed to capture an expression that he’s pulling. You can then transfer these emotional states to the gorilla [which has the same expressions as a human].”