When the Oscar nominations were announced, buried below the headlines (Sinners scored 16 nods!) and snubs (sorry, Wicked: For Good) was sort of a head-scratcher involving Avatar: Fire and Ash. Recognition for Best Visual Effects was a given; Avatar: The Way of Water won the category back in 2022, as did the original Avatar in 2009.
But while the third Avatar failed to find itself in the Best Picture race, a first for the franchise, James Cameron’s latest series entry did enter brand-new Academy Awards turf: Best Costume Design.
You’d be forgiven for wondering exactly how that’s possible. Isn’t Avatar: Fire and Ash, created using cutting-edge motion-capture technology, very almost an animated film? Aren’t the costumes more in the realm of production design than actual crafting of garments, as seen in the other films nominated in the category (Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sinners)? In a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s costume designer said that her team does, in fact, make physical outfits for all those nine-foot tall blue people. Sort of.
Deborah L. Scott, who already has an Oscar for her work on Cameron’s Titanic, explained that despite the assumption that her work on the film was entirely virtual, that’s not the case. “This is real costume design work. So it’s like a door opening to a new era to have that nominated and recognized as an alternate way of designing costumes.”
Every CG-animated outfit you see on screen is based on an actual physical creation, Scott said.
“We build each piece, from a loin cloth to a necklace, to human scale and deliver it to Wētā FX. They scan it and their artists start to model it. Then we virtually fit samples to a nine-foot-tall blue body, making the costume a second time in a virtual fitting room. Then you can manipulate it. Maybe my human sample needs to be a little longer on my blue person. Then they’re on to modeling and texturing, based on the road map of the sample,” she explained.
“If you just hand over a design on paper to a VFX company, which is usually what happens in normal animation, they take it from there and determine the materials without knowing the nuances,” she added. “A leather chest plate moves a different way on your body than a necklace. Some animated projects have designers, but they’re not involved in building. You can’t compare it to animation, as our focus is on realism.”
And just because the Avatar movies take place in fanciful settings—with characters that can be underwater or flying, depending on the scene—that doesn’t mean VFX magic does all the heavy lifting. “We film tests of every piece involved in dancing or swimming or flying and turn them over to the animators and simulators, so they understand how the costumes move in water or wind, because that’s the caliber and demands that Jim has,” she clarified.
The Oscars take place March 15. Will Avatar: Fire and Ash break new ground in the Costume Design category?
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