I’ve got a fair bit of PIRATES 3 coverage coming in the next few weeks. A week from today, I’ll be publishing my visit to the editing room, where Jerry Bruckheimer walked me through nearly an hour of the film, and I’ve also got a great interview with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio working its way through the transcription process right now.

But for today, let’s kick things off with some remarkable new design work done by Aaron McBride and Crash McCreery. They had to expand on the Flying Dutchman crew in this film, and so today, we’ve got a look at the artwork that was part of that process.

Personally, this is why these films intrigue me. When I read the very first drafts of the very first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, there was no hint of the supernatural. But ever since I saw that first image of skeletal pirates marching across the ocean floor, I’ve been hooked on the potential of these films. I think Gore Verbinski and his design team have done some amazing, groovy work in bringing the various monsters in these films to icky life, and this time out, there are some really twisted new characters in the mix.

There are notes under some of these designs from McBride, explaining their origin:

“Wyvern Jack - Did some sketches early on to establish how much of him is withered away. Did some portraits to establish detail and experiment with his age. Tried variations where he looked 100 years old and encrusted. But it started moving away from being recognizable as Jack. Eventually settled on a Jack that was very crusty but not so aged.”

“Broondjongen - Final design by Model supervisor Geoff Campbell. His torso splits into open into a clamshell a withered figure contorted inside the clam in a death frieze. Like when a dominant twin will absorb it's sibling in utero and always has vestigial remnants of dead sibling.”

“Jelly - I tried to make his condition look corrosive and translucent. Looked at reference of Ebola where the skin begins to rash and liquify. The human bits you can see underneath the jellyfish membrane start to look like he was regressing back to an embryo. Like he was de-evolving. I looked at reference of chicken embryos developing in eggs. Also made one of Jelly's eyes entirely black and lifeless like he has an eight ball hemorrhage.”

“Manray - Elongated the tail on the back of his head. Almost like when a robber wears a stocking over his face and it pushes and pulls the features of their face flattening and distorting them. Gave him silver eyes and very small pupils to look like psychopath.”

“Piper - I tried not to give him specific eyes. Instead added many coral tubule holes to his face so to resemble many possible eyes like a spider.”

“Finnegan - Gore wanted him to have the coloring of a Rockfish. Very aggressive red spotting to compliment the sharp serrated fins on his body. We gave him a hair lip so he would have a perpetual distorted snarl. “

I’ll be back next week with that editing room visit, and we’ll start to get into some more of the specifics of what you can look forward to when PIRATES 3 sets sail at the end of May.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles