Digital makeup begins to shine

"Avatar" digital makeup artists used a more advanced computer system along with miniature head-mounted cameras to capture the nuances of the actors' faces.

Most people don't think of makeup as a cutting-edge discipline, but in the aftermath of "Avatar," it has gained recognition as a critical component of performance-capture technology.

Lots of attention has been lavished on the film's breakthrough editing, which digitally stitched together performances from different takes, and on its cinematography, which seamlessly combined live-action and CGI. But it was "digital makeup" that helped make possible the human-like facial expressions and emotions of Pandora's inhabitants.

The technique isn't new, but "Avatar" advanced it to a new level. The film's makeup department head, Tegan Taylor, has used it on films dating back to 2004's "The Polar Express." By now she's built up enough experience to qualify as the makeup queen for 3D performance capture.

Unlike traditional film makeup, which prepares actors for photography, Taylor prepares them for their roles by applying hundreds of reflective dots onto their faces, allowing their emotional expressions to be fed into the computer software that renders the animated images.

Her art has evolved. On "Polar Express" she and her team painstakingly applied hundreds of reflective beads on each actor's head to help capture facial data. "Avatar" used a more advanced computer system along with miniature head-mounted cameras to capture the nuances of the actors' faces. For that film Taylor replaced the beads with a phosphorescent paint she had to invent. "Nothing existed on the market," she says.

No sooner was "Avatar" complete than Taylor ported the same techniques to "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn," a 3D opus helmed by Steven Spielberg set for release in late 2011. The film is now in post-production, with Weta Digital handling the digital fx, as it did for "Avatar." Weta topper, Peter Jackson, is a producer of the film, along with Spielberg, and is in line to helm the sequel.

"Weta was in the room with us," says Taylor, referring both to "Avatar" and "Tintin." "My job as department head was to make sure all their needs were being met." She also had to balance Weta's requirements with the concerns of "high-profile actors like Sigourney Weaver, making sure she is comfortable and the products I'm using are compatible with her skin. That's one of the fine lines we walk."

Taylor, who trained as a traditional makeup artist 20 years ago, continues to develop her own digital makeup products - or "potions," as she calls them. "In between 'Avatar' and 'Tintin,' I slightly altered them, changing the consistency for longer-lasting results," she says. "I found paints with fluorescent and black-light properties that glowed in the dark."

Taylor just completed her work on Simon Wells' "Mars Needs Moms" and is in tests for Robert Zemeckis' "Yellow Submarine."