See How Visual Effects for Malgosha & Other Characters from A Minecraft Movie Were Made by Wētā FX
Enjoy the befores & afters podcast.
Wētā FX shared the magic it made for A Minecraft Movie, sharing its VFX work on the befores & afters podcast. Its visual effects supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and animation supervisor Kevin Estey explained how the characters, including Malgosha, were created.
Malgosha was inspired by Mama Fratelli from The Goonies, Aughra from The Dark Crystal, and Sheev Palpatine from Star Wars.
Her cloak was almost a character in itself, and would be even more if the team had its way and more screen time. As it is, Malgosha is a memorable character, and the scene when she tries her stabbing attack one last time was largely improvised, it turns out, with the chemistry between Jack Black and Allan Henry, who was her motion capture actor.
Another scene the podcast mentions is the one where a piglin shows her a "terrible" drawing of a house, and she makes pork out of the poor creature. The picture was actually created by Stopsack's daughter as part of the internal contest where the children of Wētā FX's team could contribute to the production.
Apparently, the initial idea was an image of Malgosha and the piglin holding hands "and being very happy," which would also work nicely, I think. But maybe a bit cruel, considering the end of the scene.
Minecraft is famous for its blocky style, and the VFX team had to navigate between respecting the original game and working with motion in real life, combining realistic and stylized images.
Wētā FX "took liberties in places" to have some fun but wanted to keep the sense of believability, and this was a whole other challenge.
"We did end up developing tools and mechanisms that actually serviced a little bit those needs to adapt a Minecraft aesthetic. Credit [goes] to our models team that was dedicated and associated with this movie, but we developed a toolset called Blocks. And it was really a mechanism and a toolset built within Houdini that allowed us to approach things akin to what you would do in the game."
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