Weta Workshop artists 3D printed Alexander Skarsgård’s woven body for the new film “Wicker,” using flexible laser-sintered elastomer instead of real straw.
The film, now in theaters, stars Olivia Colman as a fisherwoman in a medieval village. She asks a basket weaver, played by Peter Dinklage, to weave her a husband. Skarsgård plays that husband. Writer-directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson adapted the story from Ursula Wills’ short story “The Wicker Husband.” They told the effects team they wanted to make the character practically.
That job went to prosthetic makeup designer Joe Dunckley and lead makeup effects artist Sarah Rubano at effects studio Weta Workshop. The pair spent 18 months on research and development alone. They wanted each strand of the weave to move on its own, like a muscle fiber driving the actor’s movement. A weave like that could not be molded, so they turned to 3D digital sculpting and 3D printing.
The work began with a full-body scan of Skarsgård, so every piece could be sculpted to fit him. Animation software then tracked the expressive range of his face. That let the team engineer movement into the weave around his expressions, so the actor did not disappear under the costume.
The weave was printed with a powder bed laser sintering process in thermoplastic elastomer (TPE). The loose powder holds the fine strands apart while they fuse. That support is what makes the open, intricate basket geometry possible.
Nearly all of the costume is made of 50 separate printed pieces. Each was painted to look like wicker and stitched onto a soft, flexible spandex suit.
“It’s a semiflexible material, not too dissimilar to the feeling of touching proper wicker weave,” said Dunckley.
Rubano handled the 10 prosthetic makeup pieces on his face. They ranged from ears, eye bags and lips to a jaw piece and a larger forehead, nose and cheekbones. His beard, hair and eyelashes are made of muka, a silky fiber extracted from the harakeke plant. Knotting those strands onto the printed weave let the team cut and style them like human hair.
Source: Variety
