How the Adorable Creepers Became the Driving Force of Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Mickey 17’
Bong Joon Ho loves a critter. The director continues his embrace of adorable animated creatures in “Mickey 17,” his sci-fi film about Robert Pattinson’s “expendable,” reprinted protagonist, who befriends the strange Creepers on the ice planet Niflheim. They are under attack by fascist Mark Ruffalo, who has come to colonize their planet.
The early design of the Creepers evolved considerably between Bong and creature artist Hee Chul Jang (“Okja” and “Snowpiercer”). First, they were insect-like, then they were flat like skatefish. But when thinking about 3D animation, the flatness didn’t translate well and looked bad. So the Creepers took on elements of rhino, walrus, millipede, and squid while retaining the inspect-quality of a caterpillar.
The Creepers come in three sizes: the giant, furry mama queen, the smaller juniors, and the cute babies, both of whom roll around and follow the mama. The challenge was obtaining the right look, functionality, and performance in animation (a collaboration between DNEG and Framestore). Dan Glass, who served as production VFX supervisor (“Okja”), helped achieve a workable model for animation with early tests that made them bigger and bulkier. The added weight improved how they moved.
“There’s a certain amount of Bong’s storytelling which leaves the origins to mystery, but they’re essentially vegetarian, peace-loving animals,” Glass told IndieWire. “ We used references from rhino, for the skin and the texture. Obviously insects and early, primitive sea fish and the way they open up, and insect legs from millipedes. And the fur, especially in the snow, was referenced from bison, and the way that the snow kind of patches and lingers in there.”
Understanding weight and movement was especially important. How do they roll or scurry about? “We did tests as a centipede, we did tests that were quadrupeds, which was adopted for the juniors because when they’re doing their big circle around the ship, the actual leg motion is more like a quadruped,” Glass said. “Their legs gather in groups at the front and at the back so they can kind of gallop. It became important for them to move quickly. If you’ve got a lot of legs, you don’t typically move very fast.”
What Glass enjoyed most was making the Creepers appear scary and threatening at first, but then revealing how kind and adorable they really are. Bong, who meticulously storyboards everything, encouraged individual bits of business that were hand-animated (Framestore handled the interior scenes while DNEG oversaw environments and crowd animation).
“In South Korea, people love to watch movies over and over again,” added Glass, “so Bong is very keen to put things in that you see only on the second or third time.”
For example, in the ship’s situation room, there is a shot that pans to the main monitor, which shows the mama dropping back down to her regular position. On the left is a junior that still has the “zipper” effect of its mandibles closing and opening, and, for a moment, a baby Creeper is revealed inside it. Blink and you miss it.
Bong’s dry wit is on display when the Creepers encounter the wounded Mickey 17 stranded in their ice cave and drag him out rather than eat him. “As one of the juniors jumps onto the mama and rolls off, he kind of tumbles and comes up to look at him,” Glass said. “They regularly bump into others and go flying, so that’s another thing if you watch and re-watch, you’ll see these little clumsy incidents happening a lot of the time.”
However, when they’re up on the crevasse and the mama slips and falls, Glass discussed with Bong if they were being too playful. “Because isn’t that meant to be when they’re sort of horrifying?” he said. But Bong liked that there was an edge of playfulness already.”
The end battle between the Ruffalo-led colonists and the Creepers was the only time that the director turned from storyboard to previs to plan it out. This was shot at Cardington in the U.K. (first converted for use on “Batman Begins,” which Glass supervised), where the team built out the ice planet with white screens. This was much better for matching cinematographer Darius Khondji’s lighting.
For on-set interaction with the actors, the VFX team went old school with the help of Stitches and Glue. They made a puppet-like stand-in for a baby with a 3D-printed face that was the proper weight to hold, and something larger and more creative for the mama. There was a 3D foam printout for the head on top of a pole and a lightweight scaffold structure for the back. This was operated by three puppeteers. It was like a Chinese dragon without the overlay, but was very versatile to move around.
They also used space hoppers and yoga balls for the smaller Creepers. “We always wanted to find a way to get a space hopper,” said Glass. “They’re basically the right height and space hoppers have ears you can hold, so that’d be easy. I thought they’d be good because you can cart them around, and just pop them where you need to. But, as Robert was between these things, he got all these yoga balls rolling across, and he had to literally weave between them.”
The final animation of the Creepers, who swarm the ship by the thousands to retrieve their baby held captive, is a joy to behold. “We obviously built a number of model variations, just in size, and then some texture on top of that,” said Glass. “But the biggest thing that I worked hard on with the team was to give them all animation variants.
The mama has one bit where she has to move quickly, right at the end, to get the baby. But, with a lot of legs, there was no way that would work so they trimmed a few. “It worked, but it’s still a bit of a cheat with half-sliding,” added Glass.
“But when you’ve got a crowd of that size, texture, and geometry variation quickly just merges,” he continued. “All too often with those kinds of large crowds, you can see the run cycles, and they’re just on repeat. And we put a lot of care into making sure that you never felt a repeated run cycle, which is quite a challenge. Every shot, even in the crowd, has a bunch of individual animations. As they’re talking about their mama, there’ll be one that sort of stops and puts their head up, looks around, and then drops down. This adds some individuality.”
