Retired pro wrestler Dave Bautista's body has always been his instrument, but just how
do the special-effect magicians of Marvel transform a titan of the ring into an extraterrestrial
soldier of fortune?
The answer involves a lot more dental fakery, time in the sauna, and prosthetic sheeting
than you might guess.
Any artist will tell you that practice is key to mastery.
"Do it again!"
"I can't!"
"You do it again!"
But if the artist's canvas is a person who has to eat, sleep, and live life outside the
makeup chair, the best way to practice is to make a model and go to town on it.
That goes for Bautista's transformation into Drax, which begins with a model of his body,
which includes his head, face, arms, and torso down to his hips.
From this, the makeup team creates a clear plastic mold with holes to indicate where
Drax's many tattoos and scars must be placed.
The plastic mold is placed on Bautista at the start of his makeup session, and a type
of rice-paper-based special effects makeup known as "skin Illustrator" is airbrushed
through the holes.
The result is a map of where Drax's tattoos should be placed with an impressive level
of precision, allowing the artists to access a portable, easily replicated starting point.
This level of precision is essential to maintain continuity with a visually complex character
like Drax.
You may think it's easy to remember what color Drax is, but it's honestly pretty complicated.
Compare how he looks in the sterile light of a spaceship to the warmer sunlight of Ego's
home in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
As it turns out, his hard-to-pin-down coloration is very much by design.
Bautista's body paint odyssey begins with a base coat of grey.
Then, as makeup effects designer David White told Business Insider in 2014,
"We added thin layers of browns, reds, and greens within the base grey to break up the
tone and make it come alive before the final color sweep."
The green, brown, and red worked into his alien complexion are subtle, but present.
Infinity War and Endgame, which placed Drax beside far more human characters than ever
before, made the artistry behind his design truly pop.
The intricacy of Drax's tattoos presents a challenge: They're not quite like traditional
tattoos, as they're raised and a fairly consistent shade of red.
Yet neither are they as random as battle damage, or as uniform as purposeful body modification,
like Killmonger's extensive scars.
They are, like Drax, entirely unique and entirely alien.
To create them, the makeup artists use 18 prosthetic pieces placed onto the areas previously
mapped out using Skin Illustrator and the plastic mold.
Once applied, makeup is used to blend the prosthetics into Drax's skin, and a fan brush
is raked across his body, turning the raised tissue of the prosthetics red.
Few aspects of the outrageous look of the Guardians cast have presented the special
effects team with more challenges than Drax's unique tattoos — and, ultimately, pushed
them into ever-more impressive levels of innovation.
After the makeup is fully applied, one of the most difficult special effects problems
rears its ugly head: how do you keep the makeup looking great for hours of shooting, through
hot lights, unpredictable weather, bathroom breaks and meals?
Prosthetic makeup department head for Legacy Effects Brian Sipe explained the challenge
to the Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Local 706 website:
"Our enemy is heat and sweat, and we had heat from the lights, body heat from the actor,
and the muggy Atlanta heat and humidity."
Bautista is brush sealed with a mixture of chemical and medical adhesive.
Though this is notoriously intense way of finishing off one's look, it's Hollywood's
first choice, as it truly keeps even the most elaborate looks from smudging.
It's the details that truly make a character design sing.
Without her antennae and blank black eyes, Mantis wouldn't ride the line between adorable
and just-a-tiny-bit-creepy so well.
Without her pink highlights and facial grooves, Gamora might bring to mind asparagus rather
than a fearsome alien warrior.
So it goes with Drax, whose finishing touches have nothing to do with tattoos or blue body
paint.
Do you remember Drax's teeth?
Probably not.
But special care goes into making sure they look believably gross, as a bereaved warrior's
teeth would likely be.
Bautista's teeth are too even and well-maintained to fit the bill, so a custom set of dentures
transforms his pearly whites into dingy greys.
Drax's eyes are just as impressive as the rest of him — and just as work-intensive.
Tailor-made contact lenses transform Bautista's dark brown eyes into Drax's ice blue ones.
They're the sort of unearthly shade you only really see in television or movies; a blue
so bright and cold it brings neon lights and phosphorescent algae to mind.
In addition to this unusual color, the iris is encircled with a thin band of blood red.
These shades bring Drax's gaze to the fore of the screen, echoing the blue, grey, and
red color scheme of the rest of his body while signaling to the viewer that there are buried
layers to the hulking brute.
After Drax has kicked butt, taken names, chopped a few aliens into pieces, and dropped a few
devastatingly blunt quips, comes the final task, and it's a doozy: excavating Dave Bautista
from the many blended, airbrushed, glued, and sealed layers that make him into Drax
the Destroyer.
On first Guardians of the Galaxy, the makeup up team scrubbed it all off him with brute
force.
As Bautista told CinemaBlend, two days of this treatment made his skin, quote, "like
hamburger," and a better method was sought.
The answer was found in a portable sauna.
"I get in the sauna for about 20 minutes by myself, and then about three guys join me,
and they start scrubbing this makeup off me."
At the end of a day of shooting, Bautista sits in the sauna, raising his core body temperature
and building up sweat, which loosens the makeup's hold on his skin.
With the help of steam-pumping hoses, shaving cream, hot towels, and a silicone-based makeup
remover known as 244 Fluid, Bautista is freed from Drax's shell.
The routine for making Bautista into Drax has changed pretty dramatically over the years.
Initially, on the set of the first Guardians movie, turning Bautista into Drax took a tedious
five hours during which he had to stand as still as possible.
Taking the makeup off was another two-hour journey unto itself.
"They have these two sticks that they have, and they have tennis balls on top of them,
and that's what I grab and perch my arms up on."
The Guardians sequel saw a dramatic streamlining of the process.
His prosthetic tattoos were reduced in number from 27 to 18.
The sauna was introduced, and removal fell to 70 minutes.
Bautista told ScreenRant on the set of Vol. 2.,
"It's so easy, you wouldn't believe it.
I'm not kidding.
It takes like an hour and a half now.
The last one, they got it down to four hours and everyone was celebrating.
This, literally they attack me with paint rollers all over.
And it looks better too.
It looks way better."
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