Last time I talked to sculptor Jim McPherson, we discussed his work on the Black and White Batman Statue. Today, we talked about his role in creating Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland:
NERSociety (NS): Can you please tell us your job at Gentle Giant and what are your duties?
Jim McPherson (JM): I’m the 3D art director. In this case it means I communicate with film directors, do character designs and also work with character designers. We turn 2D art into 3D models. I sculpt on the computer and do character designs in Zbrush. Sometimes people sit with me as I work. Other times, I come up with designs and present them. I also sculpt characters for video games and toys.
NS: I’ve always thought that Gentle Giant only produced high end collectibles for movies. How did you become involved with Tim Burton’s, Alice In Wonderland?
JM: We had been moving toward doing concept work for a while. We did some designs for the Golden Axe videogame. Many directors, producers, actors and special effects artists come tour our studio. We have really amazing sculptors there and many of them have made the transition to computer sculpting. Other designers in the business are doing a Zbrush to Photoshop process for concepts.
White knight
NS: What’s the next step after it’s sculpted?
JM: Then the designers often provide the sculpted character data to the production. That’s what we do also, design in 2D and 3D and the 3D data is provided to the studio and used as a base for the final model. Gentle Giant has worked with most of the major creative people in the film industry and word started to get out that we would be a good resource for design. Ken Ralston, the senior VFX supervisor asked Gentle Giant Studios president, Karl Meyer to assemble a team to work on “Alice”. The studio had done quite a bit of work for the three Spider-Man movies with Ken. Ken had heard we had been doing some concepting and Maquette work and wanted to work with us. At Gentle Giant Studio, a group of artists including myself did concepts of all the characters in the script for three months.
NS: Were your designs done digitally?
JM: Many of mine were done in 3D in the computer but more as ideas rather than completed models. We had 2D artists: Ben Roman, Dave Igo, Kat Diaz and 3D artists: Brandon and Heather Lawless and myself. Christian Gossett was the art director on our end and he also drew concepts as well. All of this work was presented to Tim Burton in London by Ken Ralston every week. We acted as a kind of “Think Tank” to give Tim and Ken some examples so they could discuss different approaches.
Cheshire cat
NS: How involved was Tim Burton on the concept designs?
JM: Tim Burton did some drawings himself after we had completed our 3 month stint. He worked with some great concept painters, Michael Kutsche, Bobby Chui and Kei Acedera. These paintings were sculpted in Zbrush (digital in the computer) by Brandon and Heather Lawless at Gentle Giant, and output as maquettes. These include the Caterpillar, Frog Butler, Stayne, March Hare, White Rabbit, and TweedleDum and TweedleDee. Tim Burton approved the maquettes and said he wanted the character to stay as close to the maquettes as possible. Michael Kutsche told me it was the best and most faithful translation of his work that had ever done. It makes sense because all of our artists are very skilled in doing “on model” versions of Disney and Star Wars characters, actors or whatever design people need.
The digital data was given to the production and several of the characters are exact matches to the data. We’ve been doing quite a bit more concept and character design since. You’ll have to catch up with me, next year when I can talk about what we’ve done.
NS: I loved your concept design of the Jabberwocky, what was your favorite design from Alice In Wonderland and why?
JM: I probably got to work on the Jabberwocky the longest, so I’ll say the Jabberwocky. I was told to closely mimic the 1866 John Tenniel illustration. All the pieces I did for Alice were done very fast. We were trying to deliver completely different versions of every character, every week. In the future, I’m going to slow things down a bit. The final Jabberwocky design was done by Michael Kutche.
Jabberwocky
NS: You’ve worked with Steve Wang before, what’s it like working with him?
JM: Well, of course, he’s a brilliant artist and a director. I think he experimented and came up with many sculpting techniques that are used in all of the special effects shops now. I just talked to him at Monsterpalooza 2010. The last time we worked together was on Reign on Fire with designer/sculptor Miles Teves.
I first met Steve Wang on Gremlins 2. I also met Matt Rose, Aaron Sims, Eddie Yang, Norman Cabrera, Joey Orosco, Jose Fernandez and a lot of incredibly talented people for the first time on that film.
Atomic Dragon” designed by Jim McPherson
NS: You’ve been in the entertainment industry for more than 20 years, what has been your most memorable experience?
JM: I remember everything. It’s all sort of memorable. But the highlights are:
– Moving to California with the help of my friend Kevin Lima, now director of “Enchanted.” We worked at the Puppet Workshop in Providence RI together.
– Getting the phone call on my answering machine from Rick Baker offering me a job, and then getting to design a character for Gremlins 2.
– Seeing Eddie Murphy improvising out in a playground during the makeup test for the Nutty Professor.
– Designing the Mant for Matinee and going to Universal Florida to shoot.
– Struggling to sculpt in the computer for 2 years with Maya and then learning the sculpting program, Zbrush, in one day on the Fight Club Videogame.
– Being promoted to the Visual Development Department at Walt Disney Feature Animation and modeling characters with designer, Joe Moshier and director, Sam Levine.
– Working at Gentle Giant Studios designing characters, first on Sega’s Golden Axe.
Alice Toy Models
NS: Thanks for the insightful and detailed interview!
You can see more of Jim’s work on his site (new revamped site coming soon) and make sure to add him on myspace!
Disney’s Alice In Wonderland comes out on home video on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010.
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