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People of ILM - Profile - Alex Laurant |
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Alex Laurant
ILM Art Director - The Mummy Returns
By Ron Magid
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ILM art director Alex Laurant was born into an artistic family and was encouraged to draw and paint from an early age. A chance
encounter with the International Tourney of Animation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (plus countless TV viewings of
Ray Harryhausen's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) spurred young Alex to become "a total FX geek" and make his own 8mm stop
motion monster movies. In high school, Alex realized his puny budgets couldn't finance his epic imagery, so he turned to pen and
paper where he had complete artistic control. By age fifteen, he freelanced as a T-shirt artist and commercial illustrator, then
"got serious" and enrolled at California College of Arts and Crafts, journeying to Florence, Italy to study art for a year. In 1990, Alex
was hired by Medior, a multimedia firm, where he was encouraged to learn Photoshop and to create 3D computer animation. After
joining ILM in 1996, Alex quickly rose through the ranks, serving as FX art director on The Mummy and most recently, the
uber-ambitious The Mummy Returns.
RM: I understand that you started out with pen and ink?
AL: Yes, my background is in traditional media and I'm really grateful for that. Besides giving me a great opportunity to do
"Back in my day..." soliloquies, it taught me an appreciation for the design process without a reliance on the computer,
which can become a crutch sometimes. Although I have become totally addicted to Photoshop and 3D tools, drawing on
a computer with a digital pen will never replace the tactile quality of sketching on paper. But anytime I have to draw the same
thing ten times in perspective - and my deadline's that night - I can't resist using the computer. I'll draw it once and reproduce it,
then go in and tweak each copy so it doesn't look cloned. That's the perfect use of the computer for me.
RM: Sounds like you did that a lot on The Mummy Returns, especially when it came to designing
shots with thousands of Anubis Warriors.
AL: Getting a convincing canine, humanoid, bipedal Anubis Warrior was a really good challenge, and I was heavily involved with that.
After [director Steve Sommers] chose several pieces of key concept art by Carlos Huante that captured the mood of the creatures,
my job was to translate those concepts into something that worked anatomically and was buildable in the computer. I refined the
proportions, added real musculature and details, and locked down what those teeth, claws and ears were really going to look like.
That's what the FX art director does: I start before anybody else in CG production really comes on - [visual effects supervisor] John
Berton and [animation supervisor] Daniel Jeannette excepted - and conceptualize what the creatures, characters and environments
are going to look like, working with nothing more than pages from a script.
RM: Did you do most of the drawings or did you oversee other artists?
AL: For both Mummy movies, at the beginning of the brainstorming process, we got input from several concept artists because we
wanted to present a variety of unique approaches. So I am just one of many contributors.
RM: How were the final designs chosen - can anyone on the team design anything if they have
the right take?
AL: Exactly. In the case of The Mummy, it happened that my stylistic approach nailed Imhotep's design, so I became the daddy of
Imhotep. Steve's mantra was always "I don't want the audience to think it's a costume, a puppet or CG - I don't want it to feel like
any of those things they're used to." Lots of other artists contributed wonderful work, but it just happened that their versions of it
weren't Steve's vision. On The Mummy Returns, Carlos captured the Anubis warriors, and Derek Thompson captured the Scorpion
King and the Pygmies. It comes down to whoever happens to nail the feeling for the director. Then it's like "That's it!" That
becomes the Bible.
RM: Is it typical for directors to work directly with the FX house this early on - even down to
conceptualizing scenes?
AL: No. What's great about Steve is that he comes to us to do the design. He doesn't have freelancers or a practical make-up house
do the first rounds of visualization - as many film productions will do. We get to start really from the blank page. In fact, when we started
choreographing the Scorpion King battle, he was so overwhelmed with production that he hadn't quite nailed it down, so he asked us
point blank, "Help me out, stimulate my imagination, give me some gags to get me going" as we had with the Priest Mummies and Soldier
Mummies at the end of the first film. So Daniel Jeannette, the animation supervisor, and Miguel Fuertes, the lead animator on Scorpion King,
and I sat down and brainstormed a convincing non-traditional way to get the creature to hit its marks and, sure enough, some of those bits
of choreography worked their way in, which was really gratifying.
RM: I loved the reveal when the Scorpion King emerges from the shadows.
AL: We were so happy when they went for the whole idea of keeping him in darkness. Originally, he was going to have his big pincher
claws covering his face, then he'd slowly unfurl and we'd see it was The Rock. But as it is we used lighting to do the same thing. When
the doors first open, you see this smoky, steamy rocky stuff back there but you don't know what it is. It could be part scorpion, it could be
who knows what? It delays that mystery and teases you just that much longer.
RM: Lighting is such an underused trick in CG, but it's almost the entire tool kit when you are an illustrator.
AL: The temptation to show everything is a common pitfall that we try to avoid. So anytime that we can preserve some true mystery, we
try to go back to that classic horror visual vocabulary.
RM: Are the best visual effects shots mostly about design?
AL: That's right. It begins with a sense of composition and forms that you can reduce down to a few really broad strokes to tell the basic story.
RM: Is that why you advise people who want to do this kind of work and end up at a place like
ILM to start with pen and paper?
AL: Yes. When I talk to students or I'm reviewing a portfolio, I am looking for someone with a strong core art background and an
appreciation of art history as well. It's not just about taking a few figure drawing classes or being a whiz-bang comic book illustrator -
although those are really wonderful skills to have. But as an art director or concept artist you need to have breadth and depth, which
is something that I find many of the school programs are lacking. So it's worth the extra time spent studying art history and learning a
variety of approaches.
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