How Netflix's One Piece Live Action Prosthetics Team Designed Buggy, Arlong, and the Fish-men

In One Piece — whether it's the manga, anime, or the live-action adaptation — it doesn't take long to realize that the pirates vying for the ultimate treasure are no ordinary human beings. Take Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy): Our main character is literally made of rubber after having eaten a Devil Fruit as a child. And he's not the only one with otherworldly qualities. Across the eight episodes of Netflix's One Piece, which adapts the manga by Eiichiro Oda, we're introduced to a clown who voluntarily splits his body into pieces (hello, Buggy), a ram-like butler named Merry, and a gang of fish-men known as the Arlong Pirates. 

Jaco Snyman, credited as both the Prosthetics Head of Department and Creature Designer for the series, led the efforts to bring many of these characters from page to screen. Before Netflix's live-adaptation was released, Snyman spoke to TV Guide about the biggest challenges behind designing everyone from Arlong to Buggy, and the significance of maintaining authenticity in Netflix's One Piece.

When you were watching the anime or reading the manga, what was a character that you thought would be most challenging to bring to life in this medium?
Jaco Snyman: I was really daunted by the task of making Arlong. He's just such an iconic character. And so much thinking and planning went into it before we got started. There's a certain amount of things that we can get away with because we're changing the way you'll see the story. But there's only so much you can do before people are like, "Ah, that's too different." For Arlong, we really wanted it to be a real person instead of being a CG-created creature, just because he's such a powerful character. We wanted him to be believable. McKinley [Belcher III] who plays Arlong did such a good job, he brought the character to life. But we went through quite a few variations of prosthetics and designs before we were happy with the end result.

What were some of those variations that didn't work?
Snyman: We couldn't make his nose exactly the same as it is in the manga and the anime, because it's like a long sawtooth-shaped nose. If you directly translate it, it's just really silly. And we have to make the prosthetic fit onto a human with human proportions. So we went back to what he was based on, which is the sawtooth shark, and we based his facial anatomy on a sawtooth shark's nose. And the other thing we tried to do was with his skin color, since he's purple in the manga and anime, we thought it would be cool to have his skin have a purple sheen — instead of making it purple. We tried a metallic purple sheen on his skin, which actually looked really cool. But in certain lighting conditions, it didn't really work. And so we ultimately decided to go with the purple [skin] which makes it Arlong. 

The hardest part is to try and bring Mr. Oda's vision to life. Ultimately, my team and myself tried to make these things for the fans — so they showed all the designs to Mr. Oda and he approved them. 

I thought the designs for other fish-men, like Kuroobi (Jandre Le Roux) and Chew (Len-Barry Simons), were fantastic. What was the vision behind them?  
Snyman: We did some tests with Chew initially to see how big we could get his lips because it's supposed to be like a spitting fish. The actual fish doesn't have big lips, but the character has such iconic big lips that we had to see how big we can make his lips with prosthetics without going into VFX. We did a set of lips for [Simons]. And right after we glued the prosthetics on, this guy started putting faces on and it's the funniest thing you've ever seen. And based on that size, we created his full prosthetics look. And after we made his look we played around with different skin tones. The other thing is, Arlong and his fish gang, they all have different skin colors. Chew's like a light blue, but it doesn't necessarily translate that well on camera. So we had to do a couple of skin color tests as well. And with Kuroobi, from early on, we tried to incorporate the triangle into his anatomy. And we really just tried to stay as close to the original characters as possible.

I also wanted to ask about prosthetics for the Straw Hats. When the teasers came out there was a lot of talk among fans about Usopp's nose and it looking human-sized instead of longer like in the manga. What were discussions like for portraying that?
Snyman: Early on, we had discussions about these things with [executive producers and showrunners] Matt [Owens] and Steve [Maeda]. And since we are changing the medium of the story, we're trying to make it more real. You don't see a guy with a long pencil nose every day. And something like that would be too distracting for the actor to deal with. So we decided just to keep the actor normal. And I know in the original story, a lot of the jokes are based on his nose and everybody's always calling him long-nose. But I liked that we were able to make things a bit more real and I think once people watch the show, they'll see that it doesn't actually matter — I don't think it's taking away from the character at all. 

Let's talk about Buggy (Jeff Ward). What was most challenging about designing him? 
Snyman: We made a big bulbous nose for Buggy, that was quite fun. I remember having the discussion with Matt because I was confused, I never realized that the nose is supposed to be Buggy's real nose. I asked Matt, did he glue something on there? And Matt's like, no, he was born with a nose like that. So we made a couple of different tests of noses, and came up with the with the nose that worked.

Is there a character with an element you think fans would be surprised to learn was prosthetics?
Snyman: A few of the characters wore very subtle prosthetics. One of them is Merry. He's wearing a very subtle prosthetic on his top lip to make him look more like a ram. If you don't really look for it, you may not notice it, but it just helps him look more like the character.

Were there subtle prosthetics for the main five Straw Hats?
Snyman: I think now and then Mackenyu got scars and cuts, but nothing too gory or too bloody, which is difficult because he gets a big cut as you know from the story. And we didn't want to make a big open wound where we could see his intestines. So that was quite a tricky thing to do, and try and keep it watchable by everyone without turning it into a horror movie.

That would totally change the tone of the show, if his intestines were spilling out after fighting Mihawk (Steven John Ward).
Snyman: We had to hold ourselves back but it's worth it in the end.

The live-action adaptation of One Piece is now available to stream.