InterviewsVenom The Last Dance: David Lee VFX Supervisor DNEGBy Vincent Frei - 08/01/2025 With nearly two decades of experience in visual effects, David Lee has contributed his expertise to shows including Man of Steel, Avengers: Infinity War, Tenet, and Meg 2: The Trench.What was your feeling to be back in the Venom universe?Venom is a great character, and it was a lot of fun diving back into this world for The Last Dance.How was the collaboration with Director Kelly Marcel and with VFX Supervisors John Moffatt and Aharon Bourland?It was my first time working with John, and it was such a pleasure to work with him over the duration of the show. He is very much dedicated to making sure everything is of the highest quality, and working together to achieve this. Ive worked with Aharon a number of times before, and have always thoroughly enjoyed our collaborations. Kelly was also great to work with and, having been involved in the previous two films, she had an intimate relationship with these characters which was wonderful to be a part of.How did you organize the work with your VFX Producer?I worked closely with DNEG Producer, Fatemeh Khoshkhou, to divide the show into two units in London and Mumbai. We tried to keep similar sequences together so that the two teams could maintain a creative consistency and keep as many workflow efficiencies as possible.What are the sequences made by DNEG?We were responsible for the majority of the first two acts of the movie, following Eddie and Venom as they make their way to Las Vegas, plus where we see Wraith within the helicopter in the last act.Over the course of the three Venom films, how has the visual depiction of Venom evolved? What were the biggest technical or creative challenges in this progression?Venom is a fairly defined character in a creative sense within the context of these films, so we didnt need to make any large-scale changes for The Last Dance. Our model and texture work was able to be ported over in a fairly straightforward manner, however our pipeline had continued to develop over this time, so we did need to rework elements of the asset to accommodate this.We did end up making certain adjustments to try and reduce some of the challenges we had experienced in the previous films, however. For example, we made a variant for when Venom was required to be smaller in frame, allowing for more break up in the spec to avoid broad reflections becoming too overwhelming and affecting the scale.Venoms movements and interactions with his environment feel more refined and natural in this film. What advancements in technology or techniques made this possible?In comparison to the first film we predominantly used motion capture for Venoms performance in The Last Dance, whereas the first film was predominantly traditional key frame animation. Its less that new technologies made this more achievable, and more that Venoms performance in this film spoke more to mocap than a number of the sequences in the first. For example, the dancing scene in Vegas had a very naturalistic feel to it which lent itself well to motion capture.The new symbiotes introduced in this chapter bring fresh dynamics to the story. How did the design and animation of these characters differ from Venom and Carnage?Speaking for the Green Symbiote, which was the new symbiote developed by DNEG, the initial concept was to give it a distinctly different look compared to what we have seen previously with the symbiotes. Something quite striking via a translucent type appearance, which also allowed us to see aspects of the internal structure via a vascular system of sorts. We took this idea and, to avoid it looking too much like a glass statuette, we added more complexity with a rougher exterior surface. We dialled in iridescence onto the torso, which produced a lovely cyan-ish shimmer as it catches the light from external sources, as well as a subtle, almost frosted quality to the exterior. Kelly also wanted to have a different style of movement with this symbiote. The addition of a tail that split into multiple lengths allowed us to lean into a more smooth, hypnotic type of motion. Similar to a snakes movements, its calm and slow, and belies the power he could unleash if he so wanted.The Xenophage is an incredibly menacing creature. Can you walk us through the process of designing and bringing this terrifying entity to life on screen?We started development of the Xenophage early in the post-production process, knowing this would be a major new character within the Venom universe. Having been provided with an initial concept, we then took this as the base and iterated on top of it. Drawing inspiration from a variety of animals, ranging from praying mantises and crocodiles to snakes and porcupines, this evolved into something which could then be passed to our build department to mock up 3D sculpts within Zbrush. This then went through a quick rigging process so that the animation team, led by Animation Director Chris Lentz, could start motion studies within an internal mocked up sequence. Given the unusual physiology we were developing conceptually for the Xenophage, this allowed us to ensure the character would be able to keep a sense of grounded movement that felt organic and realistic. We settled on a variety of insectoid type movements to give us a staccato motion, with limbs and head movements that were almost mechanical as evident in some larger beetles and spiders. As the animation team worked through their motion tests, we fed this back into adjustments to the model itself to ensure everything worked correctly, before updating to a fully functioning rig for the final asset.What role did motion capture play in creating the nuanced performances of Venom and the new symbiotes? Did the actors influence the final design of the characters?We utilised motion capture extensively within this film, particularly for the human-esque characters Venom and the Green Symbiote, separately from the performance on the day. This allowed us to get much more natural performances faster than traditional keyframe animation. For the Green Symbiote, Stephen Graham provided a good sense of movement and pacing that definitely influenced how we approached the performance of the character. Later, when we were on the mocap stage in post, this was an invaluable reference for how Kelly and Stephen had interpreted the character and we did our utmost to keep the feel and pacing of his performance on the day.Were there any unexpected technical or creative challenges encountered during the production?There wasnt anything particularly new that was required for this project on a technical level that we hadnt already established from the first two films, so it came down to taking everything we had learnt from these prior shows, and trying to improve upon it. Standing on the shoulders of the previous films development allowed us more time to finesse looks and performance, rather than having to create the majority of the set-ups from scratch. We did, ultimately, have to recreate a certain amount of each asset due to our pipeline updating substantially between the films, but we knew where we were going which can sometimes be half the battle.Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?The Venom Horse transformation was really enjoyable to be involved with, and it was a lot of fun getting this to work, as was this entire sequence. It was technically quite challenging and the team really rose to the challenge. Plus its always really nice when the audience responds well to the work, as Venom has a very active fanbase who can be very vocal about what they see.How long have you worked on this show?I came onto the show a couple of months before we began shooting in May 2023 and finished in October this year, so about a year and a half.Whats the VFX shots count?DNEG worked on around 500 shots.What is your next project?Something will be happening in the New Year but, for now, Im just enjoying a slower pace and enjoying life.A big thanks for your time.WANT TO KNOW MORE?DNEG: Dedicated page about Venom: The Last Dance on DNEG website.John Moffatt and Aharon Bourland: Heres my interview of Production VFX Supervisors John Moffatt and Aharon Bourland. Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025