LogInILM's visual effects supervisor talks about creating The Thing, Mister Fantastic, and Galactus.
ILM & Marvel
Industrial Light & Magic is a famous VFX studio that has worked on bringing to life countless movies, including The Mandalorian, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and the recent Fantastic Four: First Steps.
In a blog post, ILM's visual effects supervisor Daniele Bigi talks about the magic the team breathed into the film and shows what some scenes looked like in the early stages.
ILM & Marvel
Among other things, ILM was tasked to create an innovative look for The Thing. “We did all of the initial development with [production visual effects supervisor] Scott Stokdyk and [visual effects producer] Lisa Marra from Marvel, in collaboration with [head of visual development] Ryan Meinerding. Ryan provided us with the concept for The Thing, which is what we based our work on.” ILM developed the entire character and distributed the asset to the film’s other visual effects vendors.
The team aimed to create "the most believable, realistic performance that would respect Jack Kirby’s original design, from the size of the rocks to the very specific rock formation of The Thing’s brow."
ILM & Marvel
They moved the rocks on the character depending on his expression and stretched them where they were invisible.
“We used our blend shape technology to move the underlying surface, but there are rocks on top of it that are actually colliding. They push each other and land in a natural position. In some shots, we had to guide the simulation in an artistic manner to avoid having rocks go into unwanted territory and seem weird or strange. The process is something new that we developed for this movie.”
Moreover, the studio led the look development of Mister Fantastic and contributed to New York City.
“Roughly 90% of the New York City shots were done in computer graphics by ILM. It’s a 1960s futuristic New York, and while certain aspects appear exactly like our New York, there are many buildings and stylistic elements that reflect both 1960s and futuristic designs. A large section of the city, including Times Square, was ingested from Sony Pictures Imageworks, whom ILM collaborated closely to combine different city blocks into a unified layout with a matching style, color palette, and overall look.”
The goal for Mister Fantastic was to avoid a ‘noodles’ or ‘spaghetti’ feeling of his limbs. “Instead of developing the character for months and then realizing that it didn’t behave in the right way, I proposed exploring various 3D action poses with extreme body stretch from several angles. Matt was incredibly receptive to the notion of rendering these static frames before having a functional rig or muscle simulation for the animator to use.”
ILM & Marvel
ILM & Marvel
With Sue Storm’s, ILM created effects based on optical elements, which "were meant to be analog, in a way."
"There are no effects simulations of any kind. Most of those shots were crafted by ourcompositing team, so it’s a 2D-based approach using references of how lenses naturally create refraction and color variation. You see that we enhanced and exaggerated the prismatic fringes that occur with specific types of lenses."
“Going with the latest, state-of-the-art technology is not always the answer. In this case, it was the opposite. We wanted it to feel simple and analog, so we stayed with the real optical effects. It’s all about what the director wants and the feeling you wish to convey.”
ILM & Marvel
ILM & Marvel
Finally, there was Galactus, who was meant to resemble his actor much more clearly that The Thing.
“We were able to use Ralph Ineson’s performance through a normal blend shape technique for Galactus’s face. Matt wanted to infuse Galactus with a god-like aspect, so he had us downplay the realistic human aspect and micromovements of the actor’s face. We reduced the range of motion and kept the face a bit firmer,” Bigi said. “For the body, we received a scan of the beautifully-constructed costume, but at the end of the day, ILM replaced it with CG in all of our shots because of its need to appear metallic.”
His scale was determined, and cameras had to conform.
“Galactus’s body had to be covered with thousands of tiny lights, which couldn’t be done realistically with prosthetics, and he’s so large that the amount of detail necessary to set the scale was tremendous. We scattered literally millions of tiny pipes, greeblies, and geometric objects to increase the sense of scale. At a distance, our Galactus was the same as the costume, yet it was much more elaborate in the extreme close-ups.”
ILM & Marvel
ILM & Marvel
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