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Behind the visual effects for the mutated Hollow Men in the film.In Scott Derricksons The Gorge, the characters Levi (Miles Teller) and Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy) descend into the mysterious depths of the chasm they had been put in charge of surveilling, only to soon encounter a wealth of unusual creatures and atmospheric landscapes. These Hollow Men, other creatures and a toxic fog were visual effects realized by Framestore for the film, working with production visual effects supervisor Erik Nordby.Several parts of Framestore contributed, including Framestores Art Department, its pre-production team (FPS) and VFX studios in different locations around the world. Here, befores & afters finds out from Melbourne-based Framestore visual effects supervisor Joao Sita about some of the specific creature challenges (Framestores other VFX supervisors on the show were Pete Dionne and Jonathan Fawkner).The main Alpha of the Hollow Men featured in the movie was one of Framestores principal challenges. Production filmed a stand-in performer, actor James Marlowe, wearing make-up effects prosthetics. The characters are depicted as mutated humans who have merged with nature, often with tree-like branches and foliage growing out of them. Framestore took that on-set practical make-up and costume as a base and ultimately generated a fully CG character that could then be used to selectively add to the existing performance. The result, observes Sita, was something even scarier and creepy.We ended up having to replace most of the performance, really. We kept, most of the time, one eye and one cheek, along with the mouth. On the prosthetics they had a third eye, but the location was on the side of the head. When we were building the CG asset, we realized that we would get a stronger reading of the eye if it was actually lined up with the face and the other two eyes. It allowed us to see the three eyes always looking and gazing at something.Body tracking was a key component in making this character possible, identifies Sita. We focused on the features where the blend would happen. We would do very tight tracks for the face, shoulders and hips, making sure that those rotations and proportions were right. We even went right down to getting the body track artists to track certain expressions, since the blend would happen sometimes between areas of the plate that had a lot of performance, like the eyebrows or the side of the nose. The body track artists would do some specific shapes for us to then go into animation and drive the refinements of that.We use something here at Framestore which I think is a pretty neat workflow, continues Sita. From an initial body track version, well swap to the asset and the proper asset rigging, and there we do an animation review already. So before animation goes in and starts altering things, before that, well just look at what the base motion from the body track would be with the new asset. It helps us to more accurately be able to tell animation to focus on certain things like the hips or the ways the hands are moving, for example.One of the specific challenges Framestore faced was how much human anatomy to retain in the face of the Hollow Man. It comes down to the specifics of it, says Sita, in terms of working out how much human anatomy you need to read human performance. For example, wed ask ourselves, Could this branch become a human eyebrow? Would it move like an eyebrow? Is it stiffer? Does the third eye have some sort of impaired function, or does it have the same movement as the other two eyes of the actor? Another VFX aspect of the character involved adding in even more branches that stick out of its body. We wanted it to feel like there was this negative space in the forearm and in the shoulders, advises Sita That was another interesting piece of work because we started purely with a rotomation of the character, but as soon as we swapped to the digital version of his body, it had a bulkier, bigger stance, so we had to animate it to serve serve the performance, but now in a different body shape.The Alphas branches, foliage, clothing and the unique quill on its head required a close collaboration between animation and CFX (character effects). There were all those intertwined branches deforming and sliding against each other, explains Sita. So, CFX was a key component on the show to get the costume looking right or the quill reading dynamic enough without looking distracting. We used CFX for something else, too, adds Sita. When he is angry, there are these branches on the side of his body that expand and splay. Instead of going through the traditional route of taking that back into rigging and then rigging doing a first-pass animation test, we said, lets get CFX to work with those and find out creative ways to portray this idea that his mood would affect the branches on his body.Then there was the snake. It actually lives inside the Alphas body. Initially, remarks Sita, it was a much bigger character, in so far as it goes through the body and, at some point, it reveals itself. In the final cut we ended up just with a reveal of the snake in a shot, where it mimics what the Alpha is doing and is trying to protect him.At one point, Drasa faces off against the Alpha. The fight scene involved stunt doubles for both characters. Interestingly, says Sita, the prosthetics were different between the main Hollow Man performer and the stunt double. Also, with the stunt double, the prosthetics might sometimes fall off or break. So we had a few continuity challenges that werent straightforward or linear. We had to look at all this and make calls on where to go full CG. We ended up replacing things with a unified CG version that we made, which was based off of the prosthetics worn by the main actor.Drasa uses a fiery torch to fend off the Alpha during the fight. For that moment, Taylor-Joy held an LED light prop for interactive lighting, with Framestore adding in CG fire and more interactive elements on the CG character. Earlier, Drasa and Levi encounter all kinds of wild creatures (more Hollow Men) and plantlife that has been mutated by toxic fog. Hollow Men on horseback were realized on set as stunt performers in gray suits on horses that Framestore used to start its visual effects process. We did so much work on the horses, marvels Sita. Just all this tiny vegetation and vines growing over them. The mane was changed to vines and the skull was made to have a wood-like mutation that was really neat. In addition to those creatureswhich are also glimpsed previously attempting to escape the gorgeFramestore was responsible for a range of environments as Levi and Drasa traverse the lower gorge past biochemical facilities and mutated vegetation. Different colored and always moving toxic plumes were a large part of this work. Scenes of the characters escaping vertically in a Jeep up the gorge wall pursued by the creatures were filmed against bluescreen with a vehicle mock-up, and then also handled by Framestore. The post Crafting the creatures of The Gorge appeared first on befores & afters.
