IGN: Where did the idea for Dren come from?
Vincenzo Natali: I was inspired by a thing called the Vacanti Mouse. It was a nude mouse (hairless) that looked as though there was human ear growing out of its back. It was an MIT experiment. Not genetic experiment, but it looked like one. And it was such a shocking image that I immediately felt there was a movie in that mouse. That was the beginning of Splice... 15 years ago.
IGN: What early discussions did you have about creature design?
Natali: My overriding desire with designing the creatures in Splice was to make them feel believable. The tendency in creature films is to make a creature that is larger than life. But with Dren we tried to scale her down to a human level. She is more than a creature, she is a character in the film. So from early on the philosophy was always 'less is more'. We tried to be subtractive in our design, to pull things away from the human form rather than sticking things on top of it.
Splice at IGN.com
IGN: How did you settle on the look of Dren?
Natali: The earliest conceptual drawings I did myself. But there was a point about 10 years ago that it looked like Splice might get made and I was able to hire some artists. In particular I worked with a New York based artist named Dan Ouellette, who did brilliant work. Later on I worked with Amro Attia in Toronto and Peter Konig in Berkley CA. All of these artists did stunning work that developed my initial ideas into usable designs. At that point CORE Digital pictures started doing R & D testing. It was a long, gradual process. Dren is truly the child of many fathers.
IGN: How did you go about casting the character?
Natali: We cast adult Dren out of France. Splice was a Canada-France co-production and it necessitated that certain elements come from overseas. Fortunately, the very first person to come to the auditions was Delphine Chaneac. It felt like she walked out of my head and into the room, she was that close to my vision of what Dren should be. She understood the character on a very visceral and intuitive level. It was a perfect match. Delphine embodied the character perfectly. She developed all of Dren's physical behaviour and most importantly, she gave Dren a soul. Once we had Delphine, we reverse-engineered her into all the earlier stages. For example at every stage of Dren's growth she always has Delphine's eyes.
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IGN: How much of the character's final appearance was practical, and how much CGI?
Natali: It would be hard to give you an exact percentage because it varied from stage-to-stage. Sometimes she's completely digital, sometimes partially, sometimes not at all. But as much as possible we tried to have a physical representation on the set, even if it was going to be completely replaced later on. The assumption being that the best digital effects are always grounded in reality. And I was adamant that we use real performers as much as possible. So from the Child Dren stage onward, it is always an actor, all be it one who is digitally enhanced.
Splice is released in the UK today.