A Question About The Scars

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Miss Freeze
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Miss Freeze »

Okay, I have to know, did Kurt, of any universe, have scars or is that something that Brian Singer made up?

And the same thing with the no fur.

He's not the same without fur! *sobs*
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Tracker »

They are not "Scars" but tattoos, and apparently Kurt did those himself.

The only Kurt that may have scars was Nocturne's father (but don't quote me on this). Then there is that red tattoo thing that AoA Kurt has.:aoa
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Miss Freeze »

Thanks, sorry for calling them scars *ducks* But didn't someone in the movie call them scars?:? Or maybe that's just what they've called them in fics I've read *shrugs* Thanks again!
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Tracker »

Originally posted by Miss Freeze
Thanks, sorry for calling them scars *ducks* But didn't someone in the movie call them scars?:?
I think that maybe Storm was confused where they came from...but I don't remember anyone refering to them as scars directly.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Miss Freeze »

Okay. Wanna join my RPG and help me get more people to sign up for it?
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Maelstrom »

Originally posted by Tracker
Originally posted by Miss Freeze
Thanks, sorry for calling them scars *ducks* But didn't someone in the movie call them scars?:?
I think that maybe Storm was confused where they came from...but I don't remember anyone refering to them as scars directly.
There's a bit of conufusion on this on more than Storm's part ;). The markings have been called tattoos by certain members of the cast, the writers, and others associated with the movie, but they really are a form of ritual scarification.

A tattoo is something put into the skin with ink and a needle/sharp instrument. It uses the skin as a canvas, and the end result is flat. But for someone like Kurt, no ink has a hope of showing up on that skin except black, and it would be hard to see in any case. So those raised markings are actually carefully created scars.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by CurlyyHairGirl »

Yeah, I would call the scars. The scar thing was just for the movie and the furless thing, CGI can make things or people really bad or worse if not done correctly, and expensive. That can be a reason for no fur, but the Scars were someones idea, they showed Alan Cumming a couple to chose from and he picked a more complicated which he tought look cool, which he regreted because it meant that much more time in the makeup chair. The scars, according to some guy in the extras part of the DVD, are supposed to be angelic symbols, each one summoning a different kind of angel. Who knows why they chose to give him scars, for some peoplelike me...:shifty... they think the scars are cool *don't worry I am a fan of fur too*, but for others the scars can be a tad creepy, what ever the case, I agree w/Maelstrom, they are scars.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by rad_666 »

Everyone's opinions here are justified, but personally I love the scars. While I admit that fur could have looked better, the scars/tattoos add dimension to his face and make him a bit more less human. (Does that make sense? I don't know where my brain has gone these days).:rolleyes
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A Question About The Scars

Post by AceOfHearts »

I like the scars.
I like how they are angelic symbols too :nodyes
If he didn't have the scars then he'd just be .. plain.

And also, tattoos remain under the skin and doesn't make the skin rise. Which means they can't be tattoos. Scars :LOL
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Blue_Demon94 »

Well he did do them himself, so they could be infected:LOL Anyway, I liked the scars, they gave him some character that just being blue wouldn't allow him. Without the scars people would be like "Oh great, another blue person", instead they noticed the blue skin and the scars:nodyes Though I thought the makeup had a kind of solid look to it, which I thought could've passed for the velvet fur..
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Crawler »

*touches own tattoo* Tattoos CAN make the skin rise. Perhaps not to this extent, but mine certainly shows a bit of relief. :)

However, I call them scars. I'd reckon that to get that sort of detail and uniform scarring, he'd have had to use a cauterizing iron ("branding").

Either way, my only real quarrel with them is that they were blue...realistically, they probably wouldn't be. Presuming that the blueness is a pigment in his skin, the scars would still end up pinker than the rest of him (ask any dark-skinned person with a deep scar...).

I didn't mind that they went a different direction with his look...straight up blue would have been less memorable, especially after having Mystique in both movies, and flocking a person would be a terrible pain, both for the make up artists and the actor, as well as dulling the expressiveness of the actor's face.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Angelique »

A terrible pain, as opposed to the time Alan Cumming had to spend in the chair anyway? Not that I terribly minded defuzzing Nighty, but I don't think the scars were an improvement.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by rad_666 »

mmm. The scars were a great move, a mon avis.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Crocodile Hunter »

Imo it would be probably pretty hard to wear/use the fur.
i mean it would be hard to make it look good.
Actor would probably end up looking like chewie.
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Saint Kurt »

I keep meaning to add my two cents to this and I keep forgetting to. Having donned the makeup nearly as many times as Alan Cumming did at this point I feel like I'm kind of an expert on "Nightcrawler scarification".

I actually communicated online with one of the makeup artists on the film and though he did not actually work on Nightcrawler, he was familiar enough with the process to impart it to me.

First of all, they are meant to be scars - definitely not tattoos, and they are most definitely raised. Several designs were proposed and I think it was actually Alan Cumming who picked the final choice, but I'm not sure.

There are two ways to make scars in FX makeup - The first is additive and involves adding some kind of latex or other material to the skin to then "carve away at" and the second actually involves a chemical reaction between the skin and something called "collodion". I'll talk about the second way first because it's not what they did.

If you are of caucasian decent and you have any kind of meaningful scar from stitches or a big cut or whatever, you've probably noticed that it's indented. That's the result of the body's healing process. Whenever there's an injury that damages the skin (this is known in medicine as an "insult" so there's always insult added to injury) the body needs to take various steps to put the skin together; one of them is to fill the damaged space with "fibrin", tissue that serves no other function than to keep the skin from opening back up. Since these "patches" aren't really doing anything, they have less blood supply, less metabolic activity etc and so they tend to look kind of deflated.

If you are of African American, Hispanic, or Asian though - you probably notice that more often then not, scars actually raise up and form a bump. This is still that fibrin stuff but because your skin has more melanin in it, it formed what's called a "keloid" type scar. It's just a reaction between the additional melanin and the fibrin. (Melanin is cool - it does a lot more than make our skin darker.)

You're probably wondering what does all this has to do with Nightcrawler and makeup by now.

Basically collodion is this chemical that looks like clear nail polish and when you brush it on and it dries - it causes your skin to temporarily constrict so that everywhere you put the colloidan indents and the skin around it puffs up. The result - very realistic scars based on the bodies own biochemical processes!

Here's a tutorial on collodion scar makeup with pictures.

But that's not what they used for Nightcrawler's scars. His scars are raised like keloid scars, but true keloid scars are impossible to control. Plus the nature of these raised scars is to continue growing beyond the site of injury for years after. Talk about adding insult!

In Africa, where I think tribal scarification is most common, the patterns are usually made from tiny pin pricks to acommodate for these changes. Like this guy:
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But it means that Nightcrawler's perfectly even hairline scars don't really sound like keloid scars do they?

I decided that they must be magic movie scars. Sure you might find someone with a thin little raised scar like his were - but to have them all over your face and body all perfectly symmetrical like that is probably impossible. I don't think there's an equivalent to them found in nature. Luckily X2 was a movie though, so magic movie scars are possible there.

So that's what my degree in "scar-ology" got me. This got kind of long so I'll write about the process of putting on the raised scar makeup in another post.

-e
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A Question About The Scars

Post by Crocodile Hunter »

hmm.. i dont know ifts just a bad skin type or a different kind of blood something under my skin. but if i just scratch my skin like my arm etc. with a pen or a fingernail it turns white, then red and just like makes a scar effect wich stays for like 15minutes and then fades away. i mean it literally ummm.. "grows" :P
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