Go behind the scenes of the visual effects of ‘Death of a Unicorn’, and see a detailed video breakdown.  When Elliot (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) accidentally kill a unicorn on the way to the estate of Elliot’s boss in Alex Scharfman’s horror-comedy Death of a Unicorn, unusual things start to happen. The ‘dead’ unicorn’s blood and horn appear to have healing qualities, while Ridley’s encounter with the creature causes her to have cosmic visions. Eventually, the animal’s parents arrive to taunt–and kill–those at the estate trying to take advantage of the unicorn’s magical qualities. Behind much of this mayhem were visual effects supervisor Andrew Orloff, visual effects producer Jeremy Newmark, and Zoic Studios. CG unicorns were the centerpiece visual effects, while environments, set extensions, blood and gore and the cosmic visions also became key components of the 600 VFX shot film. Rob Price was Zoic Studios’ visual effects supervisor and Danica Tsang was the Zoic visual effects producer.  When Orloff came on board, he helped put together a number of decks, reference and mood boards for the creatures, working closely with concept artist Paul Mellender (Wētā Workshop had also done some preliminary designs). “The director, Alex, wanted it to be prehistoric,” recounts Orloff. “Like a real cryptid that the legend of a unicorn was based on, but as if that was a real creature that had been existing in our world, just hidden from human view.” “That idea that it had been around for so long took us away from the modern show horse with a horn on it into more of a predatory, apex predator kind of a feel,” continues Orloff. “We were looking at prehistoric horses, we were looking at lions and tigers and putting them all together to create a unique creature.”  To help establish the movements of the unicorns, Orloff oversaw a motion analysis exploration period with Zoic, relating to horses. “At one point, we were going to do some mocap’d horses, but we found that we couldn’t really get the motion that we wanted exactly. The body mechanics of the creature evolved in a way that we were going to have to step on the mocap so much that we decided to do it all keyframed. Patricia Binga was the animation supervisor and was amazing at putting together tests as part of the creature design process. This period also involved fur dynamics testing to see how thick the fur should be, and what fur patterns worked.” Death of Unicorn filmmakers and cast review a scene. What was further explored early on was the methodology for shooting scenes that included unicorns. Says Orloff: “We explored prosthetic pieces on real horses. We looked at just shooting real horses and manipulating them. Where we ended up with was CG unicorns, of course, but shooting with a combination of prosthetic puppets made by Filmefx, mostly for the foal. Filmefx took our designs and made a latex mold with a little bit of armature inside of them. We ended up building a full version of the foal that was on the ground and on the table. Then they built a head of the adult unicorn that had an articulated jaw and also a somewhat articulated neck. The horns were built as separate props from our 3D files.” To film scenes that involved close interaction between the unicorns and the characters, Orloff says ‘every trick in the book’ was utilized. “For example, there’s a scene where Téa Leoni’s character is impaled through the shoulder by the horn coming from behind a bookcase and then it slams her all around. That was a stunt where we had a plant-on for the back of the horn coming out of her back, and some prosthetic blood. And then we had a separate plate of the stuffy coming through. We ended up doing a CG version of it, but we kept as much as we could. We kept the plant-on, we kept some of the on-set special effects stuff of the books falling, and the dust, and we added to that with more books falling out and more blood. We also re-timed it in VFX so that the stunt looked more violent.” “Later in that same scene,” adds Orloff, “her character’s innards are being ripped out by the unicorn. There is a puppet in that shot that is pulling out some prop guts. We just left the stuff that’s on her torso that’s interacting with her, but the stuff that’s in the creature’s mouth was CG gore matched to the other gore.” A scene from the film. A principal challenge with the unicorns was their colorings. They are a mix of white also darker sheens, which, Orloff states, needed specific considerations. “We talked about the color of the unicorns extensively. I made it clear after doing white creatures before that a white creature isn’t white. It’s going to be the color of whatever the environment is. At the very beginning of the shot, we did do some experiments in rendering the fur to more of a mid-gray with a very strong ambient occlusion pass to ‘grab’ the details out. If it gets too dark, all the detail goes away and if it gets too bright, everything mushes together.” For the moment when Ridley experiences her cosmic visions (a phenomenon that Elliot also later encounters), Orloff says he discussed with the director a wealth of space film reference. “The idea was to keep it in the realm of the Stargate from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Contact’s space travel, where it’s not really clear what it is you’re seeing because what you’re seeing is something that you can’t really fathom. However, we also knew we wanted it to have some realistic space imagery, like something out of the James Webb Space Telescope nebula imagery.” Orloff designed the cosmic scenes via ripomatics and animatics. The final imagery by Zoic Studios involved generating renders in Cinema 4D. “What we were trying to show was that they’re journeying into the source of the unicorn’s power,” continues Orloff. “We put some Easter eggs in there; one of them was when they shoot through the eye and they are jettisoned out. If you look at it, the Nebula there is actually derived from the model of the horn of the unicorn.” The post Creature feature: the art of a CG unicorn appeared first on befores & afters.