“I nearly got through the whole film without calling it a whale in front of Jim,” mentioned Dan Barrett, who served as senior animation supervisor on the movie as a part of Weta FX, a famed visual-effects firm based mostly in Wellington, New Zealand. “I did once, and you were immediately corrected.”

Enormous in measurement and undoubtedly whalelike of their common form, these creatures have distinctive anatomical traits that set them other than cetaceans right here on Earth. Still, they recall to mind the whales we’re conversant in of their extraordinary intelligence, their complicated programs of communication and their intricate social construction.

According to Rick Jaffa, one of many screenwriters of The Way of Water, the tulkun collectively embody one of many movie’s predominant thematic undercurrents: the notion of interconnection with these round us and with the pure world at massive. Conceiving of their look and attributes was essential on this second installment of the Avatar franchise.

As Jaffa and his co-writers — Cameron included — started shaping the story and the characters, the artwork division (positioned proper above their workplace at Lightstorm, Manhattan Beach Studios, in California) would incorporate these concepts into the designs of the creatures, readjusting as they went alongside.

“You felt like you were watching evolution in front of your own eyes,” Jaffa mentioned.

Tulkun in Avatar 2.

The tulkun even have a profound and historical relationship with the Metkayina, a Na’vi clan of oceanic folks residing on the fictional moon of Pandora. It is the Metkayina who welcome Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the human-turned-Na’vi hero, as he and his household cover from their enemies.

One younger tulkun particularly, Payakan, has lived in exile from the pack for years after a violent incident involving invasive people. But when he befriends Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), the Sullys’ rebellious center youngster, Payakan shares his story and will get a redemption arc.

Payakan’s standing as an outsider, Jaffa believes, additionally resonates with how misunderstood Lo’ak feels inside his household unit. This sentiment of not belonging in flip mimics the expertise of the Sully household, which has been pressured to seek out refuge away from its house within the forest.

Over the course of the action-packed narrative, as Payakan and Lo’ak be taught extra about one another, the friendship and belief between them develops right into a religious bond. This real interspecies connection illustrates Cameron’s message of conservation.

A manufacturing designer on the sequel, Dylan Cole has been invested on the planet of Pandora because the first Avatar, serving as idea artwork director on the 2009 movie. For The Way of Water, Cole mentioned, he and his workforce used Payakan because the prototype for the remainder of the tulkun. But getting there concerned loads of experimentation.

“At first glance, yes, he’s very whalelike, but every single detail and component of him is different and alien,” Cole mentioned.

One of the first design necessities concerned the audio sensors on the tulkun’s crest, positioned on the top. Initially, the sensor mast resembled the form of appendage discovered on the top of an anglerfish. But that model of the sensors was simplified after which eliminated as Cameron himself labored on a number of sketches to refine the crest form and the best way the top labored. Cole and his workforce took that last rendering, put the sensors again on the crest and arrived at what we now see on display.

Since the tulkun have armor-plated our bodies that should articulate very flexibly, the artwork division and the animators collaborated to create plates that will transfer with out crashing into each other when the creatures twist into varied shapes. That outer shell couldn’t operate like that of a sea turtle, for instance; it needed to be damaged up into distinct sections that will permit for what Cameron was envisioning.

“One pose Jim drew was the tulkun arching its back with its pectoral fins all the way touching,” Cole mentioned. “He was imagining these dance-type poses.”

Cameron had additionally written that the tulkun have been mouthbrooders, which on this case meant that new child offspring of the feminine tulkun reside in her mouth. The artists designed the mouth — which reveals a big pouch when opened — as if it have been an enchanted cave, since that’s the place Lo’ak interacts with Payakan’s “kuru,” the phrase for the tendrils that permit creatures on Pandora to mentally talk with each other.

Cole and his workforce landed on an unfurling fern coil with many factors of contact for the design of Payakan’s kuru. “We were trying to show that by having all those different kuru connections, their connections with others are that much more powerful,” Cole mentioned.

For Payakan’s most distinguished eye, his most anthropomorphic function, the method entailed making a cross between an elephant eye and a human eye, with a well-known iris and pupil. Separately, the sclera, the attention’s outer layer, would most intently resemble these of horses and cows and embrace a nictitating membrane, the built-in goggles that make it attainable to see underwater. The purpose with all of those particulars was to raise Payakan above a mere creature and provides him a persona.

“Payakan was probably the hardest creature for us to crack because it’s not just a creature; it’s a character,” Cole mentioned. “He really needed to be relatable and emote.”

The animators, in flip, targeted their efforts on manipulating the motion of the attention and the pores and skin round it to assist with efficiency. “We needed to get as much out of that as possible because that’s what Lo’ak connects with: this enormous eye, cheek and brow,” mentioned Barrett, the animation supervisor.

In phrases of the mechanics of the tulkun’s locomotion, the animation workforce used humpback whales as a key reference. For Payakan’s extra playful moments, nonetheless, the inspiration got here from seals, notably their expressive tails. In one occasion that Barrett calls “the puppy shot,” the affect is obvious as Payakan swims round Lo’ak.

To seize these interactions between Payakan and the Na’vi boy, the manufacturing constructed segments of the tulkun’s physique with fiberglass and foam to present Dalton, who performs Lo’ak, a watch line and a bodily reference whereas filming within the water tank. For underwater photographs, there have been units that might transfer by the water, with a flipper for the actor to carry on to. The refined tank may additionally generate a robust present to emulate Payakan’s pace.

The trickiest photographs to realize, in accordance with Barrett, have been these wherein Payakan is on the intersection between the water and the floor, when solely a part of his physique breaches. To make them occur, the animators needed to account for the huge motion of water that will happen when a creature the scale of a tulkun emerges from it, the sheets of water coming off him, and the mist as he clears his blow gap. This degree of realism exists due to advances in computer-generated imaging know-how that may assist with replicating buoyancy.

“Without that, we would have been dead in the water, so to speak,” Barrett mentioned, “because you would have lost the sense of reality without that water, which was such a big character in the film in itself and such an important part of Payakan’s connection to his environment.”

Another second, made attainable by a mix of digital instruments and motion-capture efficiency, synthesizes for Jaffa the poignant significance of the tulkun within the movie.

“The first time we all saw the image of Lo’ak and Payakan with arms outstretched underwater, as if they’re trying to hold hands or connect physically, we all got really emotional,” Jaffa mentioned.

For Cole, who is basically an Avatar zoologist, the tulkun exemplify Cameron’s obsessive consideration to the biomechanics of each entity that inhabits this world: grounded in substantial real-world references however imbued with sufficient meticulous, authentic particulars that we would virtually be satisfied that these creatures truly exist someplace on the market within the universe.

“I’m not only a fantasy film designer,” Cole mentioned. “I’m a National Geographic explorer on Pandora trying to report back.”

By Carlos Aguilar