By TREVOR HOGGEstablished in 1966, the Ultraman franchise remains alive and well in its ongoing battle between extraterrestrial supernatural beings and kaiju, with ILM entering into the cosmic fray to make a career ambition for American animator/director Shannon Tindle a reality for him and Netflix. The concept gets turned on its head for Ultraman: Rising as a baseball phenomenon struggling to accept and execute the responsibilities of Ultraman becomes the guardian of a baby kaiju hunted by an unscrupulous government agency. Having previously worked on Lost Ollie for Tindle, where a digitally-animated toy rabbit had to be integrated into live-action plates, Visual Effects Supervisor Hayden Jones found himself in the middle of a CG animation feature narratively driven by some serious parental angst.The way that Art Director Sunmin Inn depicted the moon and stars in the concept art resembled a crib mobile, which was retained for the final image.The toughest challenge on Ultraman: Rising was being true to the artwork created by Production Designer Marcos Mateu Mestre and Art Director Sunmin Inn, which had a beautiful style that merged manga and anime techniques. We have to be able to light our characters in any way possible but still keep the look. What we have to do is play off of shape, form, shader design and baked-in textures. We have a lot of filtration on the image that creates this slightly marker-pen watercolor feel. Its about balancing all of these things together to find something that feels like the original artwork but gives you the flexibility to introduce elements of cinematography and animation.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMAfter a 13-year-long lull. ILM has gotten back into feature animation with Transformers One and Ultraman: Rising. Because so many live-action films now are becoming so large, and having such a large amount of environment and character work being brought in, theyre almost getting to the stage where the pipeline has to deal with them like animated features, notes Jones, who partnered with ILM facilities in London, Vancouver and Singapore. On an animated feature, youre obviously building the whole world, so theres the sheer volume of objects that you have to build, especially when its stylizing the world as well because you cant take objects off the shelf. Then there is the complexity of having the world built, bringing the camera in and layering in animation. There are so many stages, and youre in control of everything. Its a huge logistical challenge to make a feature animation.When Ken Sato starts to connect with Emi through baseball was one of the first scenes that demonstrated to ILM that the animation style was working.Growing up in the U.K., Jones was not familiar with Ultraman, so Tindle provided DVDs of the original animated series to familiarize him with the franchise. I remember watching them and realizing the cultural importance of Ultraman. We had a responsibility to make the Japanese culture feel as authentic as possible. We had a cultural committee who was onboard from the beginning to help us get the details right. There were some amazing things like the way Ken and Ami break apart their chopsticks and pick up the food; every single detail has gone through multiple layers of people to make sure thats exactly the way it would happen in Japan. Tokyo is a character in its own right. Were creating a stylized version of Tokyo that is not photoreal but has Tokyo Tower, Tonkatsu Tonki is a real restaurant where you can eat the best tonkatsu in Tokyo, and the bookstore that Emi walks up to and shatters all of the windows really exists in Yokohama.Tiny details were worked into the glowing eyes of Ultraman to indicate his emotional state and the direction of his gaze.The toughest challenge on Ultraman: Rising was being true to the artwork created by Production Designer Marcos Mateu Mestre and Art Director Sunmin Inn, which had a beautiful style that merged manga and anime techniques, Jones states. If you look at the illustration, the lighting is baked in to perfection for that one frame. We dont have the luxury of that when creating a movie. We have to be able to light our characters in any way possible but still keep the look. What we have to do is play off of shape, form, shader design and baked-in textures. We have a lot of filtration on the image that creates this slightly marker-pen watercolor feel. Its about balancing all of these things together to find something that feels like the original artwork but gives you the flexibility to introduce elements of cinematography and animation.Even though Tokyo is stylized, if one looks carefully, actual landmarks were incorporated into the urban layout.There were some amazing [authentic] things like the way Ken and Ami break apart their chopsticks and pick up the food; every single detail has gone through multiple layers of people to make sure thats exactly the way it would happen in Japan. Were creating a stylized version of Tokyo that is not photoreal but has Tokyo Tower, Tonkatsu Tonki is a real restaurant where you can eat the best tonkatsu in Tokyo, and the bookstore that Emi walks up to and shatters all of the windows really exists in Yokohama.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMA Gigantron hatchling known as Emi gives competition to Grogu when it comes to infantile cuteness. There is a great scene when Ultraman keeps changing between Ultraman and Ken to make Emi realize hes not a threat, Jones describes. Emi goes through a change of personality almost every second, and that actually came from Shannon showing me photos of his daughter literally taken over the space of a minute, and you can see that shes curious, happy and a massive tantrum all in quick succession. An unexpected difficulty was the armor suit worn by Ultraman. We couldnt shade Ultramans suit with a metal shader and expect it to feel like an illustration. We came up with layers of texture work so we could smear the edges so they feel more like a marker-pen reflection.Hair was another important element to get right. The hair is such an intrinsic part of the character, especially for Ken and Ami, Jones remarks. We didnt want it to feel like we were simulating every strand. The hair pieces needed to feel blocky and as sculpted forms that were part of the character design, but then taking that and making it feel like an illustrative version of hair. Its lots of unseen, helping texture passes where we take highlights and smear them down the forms of the hair. It makes you feel there are hair strands, but its actually smearing highlights that creates this beautiful graphic sense rather than a sense of realism.A lot of design work went into the various Spacium Beams to reflect the characters of Ultraman, Emi and Gigantron.Sunglasses are a motif for the protagonist Ken Sato and his antagonist Dr. Onda. Ken Satos sunglasses were a dream! Jones laughs. We placed stylized reflections in the sunglasses in exactly the same way between Ken Sato and Dr. Onda, but the character design for Dr. Onda makes the sunglasses feel quite threatening whereas Kens looks cool. The scene where Ken is having his interview with Ami Wakita and he is leaning back and then forward into the light; we were developing that as one of our look-of-picture sequences. One of our artists came up with the idea of doing a graphic wipe across the lenses. Version one is what you see because it looked so good.Getting the groom right for Ken Sato required modular pieces and smeared highlights to create the impression of strands of hair.There is a great scene when Ultraman keeps changing between Ultraman and Ken to make Emi realize hes not a threat. Emi goes through a change of personality almost every second, and that actually came from [director] Shannon [Tindle] showing me photos of his daughter literally taken over the space of a minute, and you can see that shes curious, happy and a massive tantrum all in quick succession.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMDramatic moments include the parental killing by the Kaiju Defense Force leading to the hatching of the egg containing Emi. Shannon had had this idea for an Ultraman movie 24 years ago, and that death scene was one of the few that has stuck through all of the different versions of Ultraman: Rising, Jones reveals. We saw the storyboards that John Aoshima [co-director] made and were excited because of the fight outside of the baseball stadium and sky chase, not only for the performance but also visually. You have to calm everything down. Its the calmness in the scene that allows subtle animation to play out. We created this bioluminescence look to Gigantron so as she gets angry all of these bioluminescence veins appear across her wings and down her back. It was designed to be aggressive in bioluminescence, but we actually realized what we wanted was to convey this heartbeat that is gradually slowing to the moment where she dies.When Ultraman witnesses the hatching of Emi, it was important to evoke the sense of wonder that a father has when looking at his daughter for the first time. When we saw the concept art from, Sunmin Inn, the Art Director, had created this beautiful piece of Ultraman looking at Emi in the ocean, and the moon and stars were almost hanging on wires above, Jones recalls. I remember saying, This is so beautiful. Why dont we use that as the background? Lets separate the elements out, hang them dimensionally and recreate that painting. Over 50% of that shot is actually Sunmins painting.Footage from actual toddlers of the production team were referenced when devising how Emi would walk and move.Missiles destroy the home of Ken Sato in a scene that resembles the Malibu mansion attack in Iron Man 3. One of the joys of Ultraman: Rising has been rethinking how we do effects work to make the effects feel stylized in this stylized world, Jones explains. For that, I was collecting anime and manga references for months to see how stylized we could push explosions, rocket trails, water and smoke. Underneath all of our effects there is an animation element so we can art direct. When the house explodes, we created modular pieces of explosion that we could almost art direct and create shapes to give a stylized form to everything. There is some great work on the rocket trails, which have little smears, streaks and ink lines that give you the sense of motion.To create an illustrative quality, a Copic maker aesthetic was incorporated into the animation style.Fatally damaged during the home attack is the spherical personal supercomputer assistant to Ken Sato known as Mina. We gave Mina color coding so when she gets angry her eye strip goes red and looks threatening. Mina tilts her head down and tells off Ken at one stage, Jones states. Its amazing how much character you can get into something that is essentially a floating sphere. Her death scene is traumatizing. We built this variant where she has been impacted by the explosion and is slowly losing consciousness. I had the effects team simulate little sparks. As the scene progresses and she slows down, the sparks get fewer so its like a heartbeat that is slowing down.Laser beams are part of the persona of the kaiju and Ultraman. We knew that at the end of the movie we were going to have not only Ultraman using the Spacium Beam but also Gigantron and Emi blasting at the same time, Jones notes. We needed to differentiate all of these different styles of beams against each other. Obviously, we had to pay homage to traditional Ultraman Spacium Beams. It was looking at what made the Spacium Beam so iconic in the first place and bringing that into our style. But with Gigantron and Emi we had to make sure that they felt related.Baked-in textures and filtration were key components in emulating what an illustrator would do.Whether we could animate Ultramans eyes was a big question [early on] because in most of the Ultraman series his eyes are completely static. Because Ken is so often in his Ultraman form and has to carry quite a lot comedic and moving moments, we started testing how to give him eye movement. Even though it looks traditionally like Ultraman, actually lots of small details went into those eyes to connect with the character.Hayden Jones, Visual Effects Supervisor, ILMUltraman: Rising was one of the first films at Netflix to be HDR. All the way through the process, whenever we were doing any lighting or compositing, we were always looking at it in HDR, Jones states. We had so much more latitude in exposure and color because you can not only get brighter but way more saturated in HDR imagery. The color palette is huge in this film. There are great moments in the final battle where the sky almost goes completely purple, but with a bolt of lightning its bright. Getting that real dynamism in the lighting and grade was helpful by using the HDR pipeline.Facial movement is not something that can be relied upon for Ultraman. We dont have eyebrows and his mouth is completely static, so its a huge challenge for the animators to bring a character to life when theres so little to animate, Jones remarks. Whether we could animate Ultramans eyes was a big question [early on] because in most of the Ultraman series his eyes are completely static. Because Ken is so often in his Ultraman form and has to carry quite a lot comedic and moving moments, we started testing how to give him eye movement. Even though it looks traditionally like Ultraman, actually lots of small details went into those eyes to connect with the character.Ultraman: Rising marks the return of ILM to feature animation after Rango, which was released in 2011.Ultraman battles a mechanical Gigantron sent to trick Emi into revealing the whereabouts of Kaiju Island.A cool visual element were the sunglasses worn by Ken Sato, which provided the opportunity to have graphic wipes across the lenses.The art department at Netflix designed the gunships. I hope that we get toys of them because I want to own one! Jones chuckles. The gunships we were playing into Osprey planes and helicopters in the way that they move. One of the big challenges was when you had vehicles that could never exist in the real world. The Destroyer at the end is probably the most iconic of all of the vehicles. Luckily, our Layout Supervisor, Kyle Winkelman, had done many Transformers movies, and he had some great ideas about how to break the ship apart, pull it around and create a sense that it transforms in midair, has huge jets that are slowing its descent and switch off at the last minute, and lands with a huge eruption of water. Kyle spent a day or two blocking out these ideas, and I remember seeing them with Shannon for the first time and everyones faces lit up and said, Oh, yeah. Thats our bad guy.