How Avengers: Infinity War‘s “Head of Digital Humans” Created the Purple Face of Doom
Darren Hendler‘s been changing live action humans into digital creatures for nearly two decades. Since moving from South Africa to London and finally to Digital Domain in Los Angeles, the former electrical engineer has helped designed CG effects for such spectacles as I, Robot and Furious 7. With Avengers: Infinity War, he focused on the ...
How Avengers: Infinity War’s VFX Animation Director Micro-Managed Thanos’s Facial Expressions
Phil Cramer doesn’t watch films the way most of people do. When the man who directed VFX animation for Avengers: Infinity War goes to the movies, he studies the characters’ cheeks. “I like to stare at the actor’s face and see what moves and why does it move,” he says. “You’d be shocked by how ...
How Avengers: Infinity War‘s VFX Supervisor Created Thanos, Marvel’s Biggest, Baddest Villain Ever
Avengers: Infinity War, the biggest movie in history, found its CGI footing through the collective efforts of 11 different VFX outfits. Visual effects supervisor Kelly Port succinctly sums up the focus for his team at the Los Angeles-based Digital Domain company. Port says, “Basically, all the super depressing scenes were us.” He jokes, “It’s like ‘For ...
Watch VFX Artists Help Create Thousands of Stop-Motion Animation Sports Fans in Early Man
Stop-motion animation is a form of movie magic that has astounded audiences for years. Just last week, we spoke to Isle of Dogs production designer Paul Harrod about the incredible level of detail, and ingenuity, required to pull of Wes Anderson’s latest stop-motion masterpiece (he already has The Fantastic Mr. Fox under his belt). Stop-motion animation involves physically moving ...
Pacific Rim: Uprising‘s VFX Supervisor on Creating 300-Foot Monsters in Photo-Realistic backdrops
When he was a British schoolboy, Peter Chiang used to stand in the local bookstore staring at the covers of science fiction paperbacks and dreaming about fantastical scenarios. “I just loved the imagery,” says Chiang. “I started illustrating space ships and monsters and creatures, growing up on Thunderbirds sci-fi cartoon series here in the UK, ...
Watch Hugh Jackman’s Evil Logan Clone X-24 Come to Life
James Mangold‘s Logan was special. It recently made Oscar history as the first comic book-based screenplay nominated for an Academy Award, and in fashioning a brutal, brilliant and pared down story for Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (his real name is, of course, Logan), it was perhaps the most fitting farewell a superhero has ever gotten. One of ...
Watch This Incredibly Impressive & Very Gory VFX Reel for Fear the Walking Dead
A major disclaimer before you watch the fascinating VFX reel for Fear the Walking Dead below—do it before lunch. Or don’t do it at all if you’re not a fan of gore. This look at the very impressive visual effects, created by Goodbye Kansas Studios, is not for the squeamish. Then again, neither is the ...
Oscar-Nominated SFX Makeup Artist Arjen Tuiten on the Immense Responsibility of Working on Wonder
As part of our Oscars week coverage, we’re re-posting our conversations with some of this year’s Oscar-nominees, while publishing new interviews throughout the week. Wonder makeup SFX artist Arjen Tuiten is nominated for Makeup & Hairstyling. Also nomianted are Kazuhiro Tsjuji, David Malinowski & Lucy Sibbick (Darkest Hour) and Daniel Phillips & Lou Sheppard (Victoria Abdul). The last time ...
How The Last Jedi & Dunkirk‘s Colorist Subtly Manipulated Your Feelings
The son of farmers from near Turin, Italy, colorist Walter Volpatto went from studying electrical engineering at a local university to working at Italy’s national public broadcasting company, RAI. It was here he honed his chops with electronic compositing, lighting and photography. When computers became both ubiquitous and advantageous for his line of work, Volpatto ...
How The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer Turned a Monster Into a Romantic Lead
In the final part of this two-part interview, visual effects coordinator and frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborator Luke Groves reveals how he worked with the filmmaker to craft some of The Shape of Water’s most awe-inspiring sequences and reveals how he and the visual effects team at Mr. X walked the line between CG magic ...
The Shape of Water‘s VFX Producer on Creating the Year’s Most Unique Leading Man
For all its ambitious underwater sequences and that stunning central creature, it’s oddly easy to forget the technical majesty at work in Guillermo del Toro’s meticulous, Oscar-nominated The Shape of Water. Not for its lack of quality, in fact, quite the opposite. The work, which makes every inch of del Toro’s beguiling fantasy possible, is so ...
How Pickup Trucks Helped Make Star Wars: The Last Jedi Most Visually Stunning Battle
One of the most stunning visuals in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—and in any Star Wars film we’ve seen—was the final battle between the First Order and the cornered and depleted Resistance on the remote, barren planet of Crait. One of the most arresting things about this small, uninhabited rock in the Outer Rim Territories ...
How the Oscar-Nominated War for the Planet of the Apes VFX Supervisor Reversed Human Evolution
The Planet of the Apes reboot has been a massive success, and its impact on the film industry is hard to overstate. It began with Rupert Wyatt’s 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes and carried on with Matt Reeves Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014 and his riveting coda, War for the Planet of the Apes, ...
The Crucial VFX Enhancements That Led to Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s Snoke Finished Look
From a holographic bogeyman in Star Wars: The Force Awakens to a flesh-and-blood supervillain in The Last Jedi, Supreme Leader Snoke required the very best of the visual effects team to get him just right. This year’s crop of Oscar-nominees for visual effects represents some of the best villain-building in recent memory, with The Last Jedi nominated among killer replicants (Blade ...
Watch How They Made the Thunderbird, Obscurus & More in This Fantastic Beasts VFX Breakdown
It takes a small army (or sometimes a middle-sized one) to make a film like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. When you have a wizard losing a briefcase full of magical creatures in Jazz age New York City, you’re going to need a really good visual effects company. Thankfully for Warner Bros., director David Yates and his ...
The Title Sequence Isn’t Disappearing – It’s Headed Back To The Big Screen
It appeared quietly, in the right corner of your Netflix screen a few months ago: the “skip intro” button. A translucent shortcut customized by the streaming service built to work both with any series, cold open or no, meant to allow binge-watchers to expedite their viewing experience. In the past, new features and redesigns have ...
Watch How They Made an Amphibious Creature a Credible Romantic Lead in Awesome The Shape of Water Video
You don’t get 13 Oscar nominations for nothing, folks. Guillermo del Toro’s lovingly made, gorgeously realized The Shape of Water is that rare film—both a technical and emotional triumph. You don’t have much time to marvel at the technical stuff because you’re pretty much immediately swept away by the emotions of the story, by the radiant performance ...
How the VFX Team Created Rotting, Terrifying Ghost Sharks for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
What does it take to create the visual effects for a film as massive as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? Try hundreds of dedicated artists working on set and in locations around the globe. Moving Picture Company deployed some 700 visual effects artists, as well as an on-set crew, to create some ...
Oscar Watch: SFX Makeup Artist Arjen Tuiten on the Immense Responsibility of Working on Wonder
The last time we spoke to special effects makeup artist Arjen Tuiten, he was explaining the laborious but successful transformation of Woody Harrelson into our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, for Rob Reiner’s LBJ. Working alongside makeup designer Ve Neil, Tuiten crafted new teeth, ears, age spots, freckles, and jowls for Harrelson. Becoming LJB also ...
The Dazzling Design of Ghost in the Shell
*We’re sharing some of our favorite interviews of the year this week in our ‘Best of 2017’ roundup. Freakish cyborgs look right at home in Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell sci-fi epic thanks in part to three years of ingenious design work from New Zealand-based Weta Workshop. Inspired by Masamune Shirow’s visionary Manga series ...
