#will be the VFX of the film

[humanoidhistory]

Behind the scenes of Alien.

[fleshadept]

HOT LABOR SUMMER

[shesnake]

Spider-Verse Artists Say Working on the Sequel Was ‘Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts’

Why don’t more animated movies look this good? According to people who worked on the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, it’s because the working conditions required to produce such artistry are not sustainable.

Multiple Across the Spider-Verse crew members — ranging from artists to production executives who have worked anywhere from five to a dozen years in the animation business — describe the process of making the the $150 million Sony project as uniquely arduous, involving a relentless kind of revisionism that compelled approximately 100 artists to flee the movie before its completion.

While frequent major overhauls are standard operating procedure in animation (Pixar films can take between four and seven years to plot, animate, and render), those changes typically occur early on during development and storyboarding stages. But these Spider-Verse 2 crew members say they were asked to make alterations to already-approved animated sequences that created a backlog of work across multiple late-stage departments. Across the Spider-Verse was meant to debut in theaters in April of 2022, before it was postponed to October of that year and then June 2023 owing to what Entertainment Weekly reported as “pandemic-related delays.” However, the four crew members say animators who were hired in the spring of 2021 sat idle for anywhere from three to six months that year while Phil Lord tinkered with the movie in the layout stage, when the first 3-D representation of storyboards are created.

As a result, these individuals say, they were pushed to work more than 11 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a year to make up for time lost and were forced back to the drawing board as many as five times to revise work during the final rendering stage.

"For animated movies, the majority of the trial-and-error process happens during writing and storyboarding. Not with fully completed animation. Phil’s mentality was, This change makes for a better movie, so why aren’t we doing it? It’s obviously been very expensive having to redo the same shot several times over and have every department touch it so many times. The changes in the writing would go through storyboarding. Then it gets to layout, then animation, then final layout, which is adjusting cameras and placements of things in the environment. Then there’s cloth and hair effects, which have to repeatedly be redone anytime there’s an animation change. The effects department also passes over the characters with ink lines and does all the crazy stuff like explosions, smoke, and water. And they work closely with lighting and compositing on all the color and visual treatments in this movie. Every pass is plugged into editing. Smaller changes tend to start with animation, and big story changes can involve more departments like visual development, modeling, rigging, and texture painting. These are a lot of artists affected by one change. Imagine an endless stream of them."

"Over 100 people left the project because they couldn’t take it anymore. But a lot stayed on just so they could make sure their work survived until the end — because if it gets changed, it’s no longer yours. I know people who were on the project for over a year who left, and now they have little to show for it because everything was changed. They went through the hell of the production and then got none of their work coming out the other side."

[dean-winchesters-clit]

Gods, can I gush about the CGI in the Percy Jackson show for just a minute??

All of it is so fucking good!

The work was gone by ILM or Industrial Light and Magic, who are an incredible effects house and also one of the oldest effects houses there is. ILM was founded in the 1970s by George fucking Lucas to make the effects for the original Star Wars trilogy. They are the reason the original Jurassic Park had CGI in the first place! They worked with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal and Tobe Hooper on Poltergeist, which has sone crazy awesome effects if you've never seen it. A part of ILM broke off in the 1990s and became fucking PIXAR!!

And Percy Jackson has had just the best looking effects I've seen in a long time. The creature work alone is worth so many awards. The minotaur was amazing.

And the illusion of Chiron is never broken, it's just seamless and perfect.

And don't get me started on Medusa's snakes. They're PERFECT. THEY ACT LIKE REAL SNAKES!!!

And the chimera was beautiful. I loved the decision to give it a cobra's frill.

Also, water is a notoriously difficult effect to do and all the water looks amazing in this show. I bet they pulled some people from the Avatar sequel to help with it.

And Grover's legs never look bad. They're always perfect. I love the decision to keep them exposed the whole time, it adds to the magical feeling of the world while also showcasing how powerful the Mist really is.

And one of my favorite effects HAS to be the way Mrs. Dodds' coat turned into her wings. I saw that and had an out of body experience.

But this most recent episode just blew me away. Specifically with this (these next gifs are by @stevenrogered) :

So, if you didn't know, tracking an effect onto someone's body is incredibly difficult. It's so difficult that CGI artists will often replace someone's body with a 3D model in order to make it easier. That could be what happens here in part, but they can't fake Walker's face.

Props to Walker for sitting as still as humanly possible during this incredibly emotional scene. Him sitting still helps make the tracking of the effect easier since the artists don't have to adjust the effect every frame to account for the slightest movements. Which brings me to the face.

It is so hard to animate human faces and not fall into the uncanny valley, and yes this effect applies to that. Look at the way the gold conforms to the shape of his mouth as he speaks. Look at how it follows the movement of his chin, his cheeks. It's PERFECT. This is an incredibly impressive effect and I wanna just worship whichever overworked and underpaid VFX artist spent hours of their life working on it.

Okay, that's all, rants over, everyone go home!

[cf-12]

location.scouting()

[theabstruseone]

Hey, who wants to see the start of a massive shitstorm?

Considering it seems the AMPTP plan was to use algorithmic generation ("AI") to make scripts that they'd then exploit non-union VFX crews to animate 3D body scans of actors and generative algorithms to voice based on scammy contracts for likeness rights...this kind of fucks that whole plan.

[jazy3]

New BTS! Looks like the VFX Department is hard at work! I’m hoping they do a BTS video for the visual effects this season! I’m guessing the bath stuff and Chardonnay are Karen’s. They appear to be filming a lot at the Wheeler House this season. The props team is killing it as usual!

[assiraphales]

so something I’ve realized is I don’t like film/television to look too realistic, bc then it doesn’t feel as real. HD, where every pore and wrinkle is not only captured but lit by overhead stage lights, will never give the same effect as the hazy softness that film (or a good grain) will give you. I’d rather a puppet that’s clearly a puppet ambling across the set than a cgi counterpart. I’d rather watch a stuntman operate within human limitations or see handmade costumes that wrinkle. I don’t think it’s merely a preference of aesthetic, and while I’m not saying modern tech and computer adjustments do not have their merits, the root of the problem is that something grounded in such stubborn “realism” will never suspend my disbelief the way film did pre mid 2000s

[leematsuoka-art]

✨ WIP ✨

I've made many changes to his proportions since my last post, but I think I finally reached a balance between a more real version of Solas, and keeping his original features.

Next are brows and eyelashes 🤞

[acatwithstockings]

My collection of Crowley's sunglasses so far

[humanoidhistory]

On the set of Alien, as seen in HR Giger ARh+ by H.R. Giger, 1992.

[pocketgalaxies]

"how does it work?"

"well, simply you lay in the tub, and we fill it up with water, and...well, this is where things get a little difficult, but...we fill the tub, and... *pushes the lever*"

"oh it KILLS you."

[contac]

[peaceful-rest-valley]

☆ ÉLEGIE (2023) ☆

dir. by Odelia Laine, Esther Legido, Andréa Martinez, Alissende Masson, Hugo Michalet and Arthur Wong

watch it here

[cf-12]

_power.day/ I — II — III

[stevebuscemieyes]

Behind the scenes of Alien: Romulus