Animation supervisor Brett Purmal on the lengths he and MPC took to find the right emotion behind Hanuš the space spider in ‘Spaceman’. An excerpt from befores & afters magazine.
In the previous issue of befores & afters (#17), we looked at many of the on set considerations faced by production visual effects supervisor Matt Sloan on Johan Renck’s Spaceman. Now in this new issue of the magazine, we follow that up with a deeper examination of MPC’s central spider character, Hanuš (voiced by Paul Dano).
In his own words, MPC animation supervisor Brett Purmal shares all about how he first explored the type of character Hanuš needed to be, what motivated his behavior, its relationship with Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka (Adam Sandler), and, ultimately, how the creature would be animated by the MPC team.
Purmal even searched key words describing Hanuš from the book that Spaceman is based on, to build up a picture of the creature and craft key poses, before diving into animation. That approach and more is detailed below.
The first conversations
Brett Purmal: Hanuš is a very unique character. He’s a space spider. I think one of the amazing things about the film is his backstory and how it was developed from the original book, ‘Spaceman of Bohemia’, by Jaroslav Kalfař in 2017. It’s a fascinating book. I hadn’t read it prior to us getting word that this was going to be developed into a feature, and having known that this would be adapted, I thought, ‘Well, this is the perfect opportunity to read it,’ and so I wanted to get right to it.
When the conversations first got started it was perfect timing. I say that because it was going right into the heat of COVID, right as the pandemic hit, and there was a real sense of uncertainty which is, I think, a real underlying theme throughout the film. So things like isolation, romantic and social challenges, life and death, forgiveness, atonement, I felt, were really relatable and helped draw me and the team further in.
So, I read the book. I also got the audiobook because I think there’s a way that a voice actor can deliver a character that puts additional emotion, or thought, or imagination behind a particular character in its development, that I wanted to get that take on it as well. With that in mind, I had my first impressions of what Hanuš could be like prior to actually speaking with Johan for the first time.
When we met with Johan, the first conversations we had were around mood boards he sent to our small pre-production team. Scripts were still in their first drafts. It was early talk. At that point, there were only a few of us on the show, and we got a chance to get a sense or almost a flavor for what and how the film would look and feel. There were brilliant photographs that Johan had compiled, him and his art team. We could discuss it all in an open conversation about those themes, those real feelings of isolation, the real tangible, raw nature of old-school filmmaking, smear on the glass lens kind of a thing, and you could just see it. Johan is brilliant in his way of describing things. He’s a really interesting character and really motivating to be around. I mean, you could listen to that guy for hours. Just the way he describes things, it really draws you in.
He started in music videos and things–Bowie, Madonna, Beyoncé–and did all of these practical in-camera effects. A lot of things really had this guttural feel and tangible look to them. It was almost like Baroque at the trailing end of the Renaissance. Johan’s got this really unique way of looking at things that I think is much more relatable, much more visceral than, I think, the typical films and stories that we see, so I thought that was great.
Getting a ‘feeling’ for Hanuš
The first images of Hanuš came to us from the art department. They were initial sketches, paintings, and even a sculpture was mocked up so that we could then sit and literally have a conversation about it all. Myself and our MPC VFX supervisor Bryan Litson, and the head of MPC’s character lab Tom Reed, and the production VFX supervisor Matt Sloan–we all were able to sit around as Johan described who Hanuš was.
Now, having read the book, it was really great to then hear from Johan’s perspective on it. The film is of course based on the book, and that’s how it started, and that’s what drives the narrative of the film, but then Johan started to interject his perspectives, his relatedness to isolation, atonement, a way of finding redemption which I thought was really interesting in his own personal backstory.
When Johan described the look of Hanuš, I already had a bit of an idea of what he could look like. But then seeing him in the initial concept design, it was fascinating because Johan described him as, he could be a billion years old. He’s wise beyond our comprehension, and yet he’s still curious, which I thought was fascinating. There’s not really any sense of time with this character, and he’s a traveler, as the book describes him. He’s very methodical, and he moves only when he must. Considering his intelligence, personality, and outward appearance, he’s more of an amalgamation of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, John Merrick in The Elephant Man, and Spock from Star Trek.
It was almost like the biomechanics of an actual tarantula in that it sits, it waits, it considers. It’s very deliberate with its movements because the tarantulas that I had known before starting this film can be quite fragile. If a tarantula walked off a table, it could actually injure itself to the point of death, so it has to be very specific now and choose what it does, and it sits, and it waits.
In the film, Sandler’s character is literally facing these demons that hide in his shadows psychologically, and so Hanuš sits and waits for the opportune moment to then be addressed. Hanuš had this very specific, deliberate mechanic to him. It was compared to somebody performing a Japanese tea ceremony where every movement has a very specific placement, a very specific intention, and that also gave much more depth to his character, and his intelligence, and the things that he would’ve encountered in his life.
It’s almost like a wise bird. It doesn’t move any more than it has to, it doesn’t need to exert any more energy than he needs. It has to be very aware of his surroundings to live that long because if he were, in theory, to be a billion years old, he has to be doing something right to have lived that long. So I thought that was quite interesting to see how he as a character, especially as a spider, could be hiding in the shadows, and waiting, and observing Jakub unbeknownst to him and how uneasy that could make not only Jakub as a character in the film feel, but also to the audience as well.
Giving Hanuš more movement
That’s how I initially thought this was going to go, that Hanuš would just be ‘Chiaroscuro’-like, rim-lit in the shadows, and waiting for his moment. ‘Will he strike?’ might be the audience’s initial perception. And that’s where Johan wanted to take him originally, really keep him as this psychological, almost voice that Jakub hears. ‘Is it real? Is it him? Is it coming from somewhere else? If somewhere else, then from who, and what, and why?’
Hanuš refers to his tribe, and he’s very respectful of his species and his involvement with anything in the universe, and that it was against his tribe’s nature to be physically touched. ‘The body must not be violated,’ as he says in the book and film. I thought that was super cool because then the audience does not know if Hanuš is real or not, and given that Jakub is a scientist, an astrophysicist specifically, he wants as a man of science to know if he’s real–‘Am I crazy or not?’ I mean, he’s been aboard this ship months alone in isolation, having been forewarned that he will find psychological trauma–‘This will happen to you. It’s just a natural response of being human,’ and then him dealing with that–‘Am I creating these demons, or am I not?’
What was interesting was, as the film developed, Hanuš’ personality had to as well. There were initial conversations around no eye darts, no blinking, no breathing. But it was shown to focus groups, and because the movie was so dark–Jakub is figuratively and literally facing his demons–I think audiences were a little too uneasy with the fact that there was so little movement from Hanuš at first, and that he was so darkly lit and in the shadows, and that they wanted to find a little more relatedness to him as a character, so that way, we can empathize with him. So, come to the end of this film, the audience sees the companionship, the bond that’s formed between them, and then feels a sense of loss if and when he leaves.
To do that, we had to make him move a bit more. That’s why we looked at some of the reference of the way spiders wait, and then just strike out really fast. We wondered, ‘At what point can we play with a contrast of its movement to make it very appealing, to make it exciting like piano or music–da, da, da, DA, da–the really highs and lows with space and pause? Anticipating. Will he move, and if so, how fast, and with malice or not?’
I thought there were lots of interesting things to consider there. And then we started to look at him more biomechanically as a spider. Because of his intelligence, we figured that he would find ways to have survived maybe through direct manipulation of things and defense mechanisms. We looked into the anatomy of spiders and saw they have what are referred to as the pedipalps. These are these short little legs that protrude from the side of its head and thorax and aid in eating.
Now, Johan didn’t want them to be a standard leg. He felt that was a little crude and that anything that was more like claw or crab-like almost demeans his demeanor, intelligence and background. Johan wanted something sophisticated. He wanted something with grace and agility, dexterity, something he can gesticulate with, and that’s where he started pushing the concept more towards that of a tentacle because then he would have something very delicate, almost like an octopus or something that has a very specific and intentional way of moving that caters to his survival, but also, his intelligence and things like that.
Then, that echoed in design out to his feet. So instead of having these standard claws like spiders do, he had these, again, tentacles through his toes for the design continuity. That was also one of the challenges that we faced because now we’re looking at a spider in zero gravity with eight legs, and two tentacles per foot. That’s 24 appendages that have to move anytime he moved. So that obviously took on its own challenges.
Deeper into the psyche of Hanuš (including a call to the ISS)
Then, we looked at, ‘Well, what would he use these appendages for to complement his personality and things of that nature?’ There’s gesticulation, maybe some idiosyncratic movements, and things that can help emphasize particular parts of the dialogue. Hanuš is introduced to a hazelnut spread, and what I think is one of the more powerful themes is that Hanuš comes across as a very inquisitive explorer who knows nothing of the human race. Just through observation, he starts to be more affiliated with the human race.
Johan and I had some pretty in-depth, deep conversations about it psychologically, and one of the really interesting things that came out of those conversations was that Hanuš, similar to the Gorompeds that overtake his body almost to infestation, becomes infected by the human condition. Which I thought was super powerful. It’s almost like plugging into the Matrix and being exposed to a myriad of different viruses, or malware. No matter how intelligent you are, what you don’t know, you don’t know, and by exposing himself to and through his inquisition and just the nature of his survival and curiosity, he starts to learn about human emotion through Jakub’s memories. As a result, he starts to introduce himself to things that are what’s considered like comfort foods, like things that humans would take on in order to repress any type of psychological damage.
Not many people would survive up there. There’s a lot of tests, which I thought interesting when I first started researching astronauts. It’s very physically demanding, but it’s equally if not more so psychologically demanding. The things that you have to do in order to overcome your own consciousness are incredible, and actually, it brings to point some of the research that went into this film.
It was not just the book we initially dissected before Johan made it his own. Lot’s of research was done investigating space exploration and movements in zero gravity. I got onto a call with Johan one day and he said, ‘We just had an interesting conversation. We called the International Space Station.’ I’m like, ‘Are you serious? Wow!’ He’d been Skyping with an astronaut live in space aboard the ISS.
I thought that was amazing because not only is he doing his due diligence to do the research of it and the psychological part of it, especially out there, and alone, and isolated, and there’s no ambulances, or police, or hospitals. If it goes wrong, you’re on your own. It’s completely the Wild West. It’s the closest thing I think anyone can get in the modern day to it, and he’s asking those types of questions to the astronaut as he floats around in space, ‘What’s it like when, and what do you do if, and how do you feel?’ He also asked a bunch of mechanics questions about, how do you actually move around space inside and outside the Space Station.
Space animation of a space spider
I also got a chance to speak with some of my colleagues who had worked on other major space films and shared with me some of the research they found. Most of the VFX was done here in Canada, and when you look at some online resources for space exploration, a number of them are from Canadian astronauts who are aboard the ISS to do very specific educational science-based learning for education systems back on earth. It was amazing to see how much of a presence Canada had up in space. They’d be researching things like, ‘What does it look like when water is released in space? or what happens to the centrifugal force of an object when its weight isn’t evenly distributed? What happens to the rotational axis over time?
We found that being in space is almost like being in a kayak going down a river. Once momentum is initiated, it will continue forever until an external force acts on it. So it’s almost like being in a kayak where if you wanted to stop yourself, you’d have to reach out, grab something on the shoreline, and then the rest of your body would keep going down the river. You would have to physically pull yourself to stop. Now that we knew psychologically where Hanuš was at, we started looking into, how he’s meant to move in zero gravity. How would he utilize his appendages to move efficiently around in and outside the ship?
Now, there’s understanding how one moves in space. However, there’s also Hanuš as a character. For example, you could study somebody swimming, but there’s a difference between going to your backyard and jumping in the pool, and then how an Olympic swimmer moves. Both might operate at different cadences or efficiencies. Hanuš, as initially described by Johan, is very graceful and is very aware of his means in space. There’s nothing like in a human who is having to deal with physically, psychologically not being encumbered by gravity that he uses it to his advantage in every way possible. He doesn’t have to think about it to get around corners or anything like that. I thought that was interesting because it gave a sense of confidence. There isn’t anything clumsy about him at all, especially since he has eight legs to stop, support, and propel.
How the book helped enable Hanuš poses
Initially, we were given a very simple rig to test based off the initial concept art. When we had a rig that was capable of achieving the locomotion we needed, we started creating ‘storytelling’ poses. I had the physical book, and I had the audiobook, but then I had the ebook as well. That allowed me to search the book for key words and actions that could be visually interpreted into the scenes from the in-progress script.
I started searching for Hanuš scenes where he interacted with Jakub or was on his own, and then I started to explore static body poses that would visually communicate those scenes. Not only does Hanuš have eight legs, he’s got all the tentacle toes, the tentacle pedipalps, but he also has mandibles. Spiders have these large fangs off the front that occlude the mouth. We wondered, what does that look like for Hanuš? How wide? How subtle? How much do we see the mouth?
So we started to play with that, plus, is he very reserved? Is he very delicate, or is he very broad? We knew he had an intelligence to him, almost Spock-like, but there was some very intellectual reserve behind him. So we knew he wouldn’t be doing anything over the top, but how broad do we want to make him? Is he very confident in his posing, or is he not sure if humans are a threat or what have you?
The first poses we presented Johan were based on very specific scenes in the script. So we would say, ‘Here’s act two, scene one, interior, a particular part of the module where Hanuš is doing this.’ Everything was very specific. It wasn’t, ‘What does a typical spider do? What can we just come up with that would be interesting?’ It was, ‘This is how Hanuš could look in the context of the story with the assets in the interior doing a particular action,’ which I thought was really helpful for Johan because he could then very quickly start to see, how does he look within the scene and context of the story? Does Hanuš hold onto the interior of the ship looking up at Jakub or does he hold on floating face to face? Does he speak sideways or upside down? We presented these scene poses to Johan and got some feedback so he could then help visually steer where he wanted these to go, and then the rig started to develop a little further.
Hanuš speaks
Once we were in a position to start building Hanuš’ facial rig, we referred to Paul Ekman’s research of facial expressions to build a FACS (Facial Action Coding System) shape library. We knew we would be hand keyframing the facial animation so a FACS approach was the best way to get accurate dialogue quickly.
FACS helped build things out not only for facial sync, but also facial emotion. So before we got into dialogue, we built a library of Paul’s universal facial expressions. We started things with anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, contempt, things like that, just to get a range. Then we started to pull those expressions right from scenes of the book.
I would search the book for very specific emotional phrasings, and I would find particular words that were used, and I would count how many times they were used either in the description of Hanuš or in an action that he did like ‘aggressive,’ or ‘sympathetic,’ or ‘shy,’ or ‘sadness.’ I would actually count them out. If that was the emotional state he emphasizes the most or communicates the most, that’s what we’re going to spend our time on.
It let us then be more efficient with our modeling and rigging teams to cater the face to the emotional range that he would be most found in. We don’t want him to be really great at smiling if he’s always angry.
We would then present Hanuš to Johan in scene specific storytelling poses with complimenting facial expressions. This approach gave both Johan and our animation team a clear jumping off point for each sequence. We knew where Hanuš needed to be in the shot, what pose was required, and what expression to use. These poses were put into our pose library for animators to start each shot. Given we already had the directors feedback, this process allowed shot cameras to be quickly and accurately staged around our poses. As soon as we had a production ready face and body rig, we re-created over 65 animated performance tests based on specific scenes from the shooting script.
We’d have continuity and efficiency at the same time, and we had all of that even before production even started. It was great to be that far ahead of the game and gave us confidence going into production when our client complimented us for it!
Read the full article in issue #18 of befores & afters magazine.
