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Visual effects supervisor reviews 12 CGI movie monsters

Dec 30, 2020, 23:12 IST

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Visual effects supervisor reviews 12 CGI movie monsters
  • In this episode of "Good & Bad Acting," we take a look at the best and worst CGI monsters with Kaitlyn Yang, visual effects supervisor and founder of Alpha Studios.
  • Yang watches and reacts to 12 monster moments from live-action films made possible by digital effects — from Azog in the battle sequence from "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" to the T. rex in the paddock scene from "Jurassic Park."
  • Yang tells us what went right and wrong in each scene, commenting on aspects of the character design, textures, lighting, and scale.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

Kaitlyn Yang: The digital spit and the jowl shaking, that moment really kind of broke realism for me in terms of like, oh, this is a CG creation.

My name is Kaitlyn Yang. I'm a visual effects supervisor. I have been working in the visual effects field for the last decade, and I'm also the founder of Alpha Studios. Some of the shows I had the pleasure to work on, "House, MD," "The Walking Dead." I'm currently working on the latest season of "Grey's Anatomy."

Today we're gonna be talking about movie monsters and the visual effects behind them.

This character became the landmark in which we measure so many other creatures that we're trying to bring back to life. And I think what made it really special is having animatronics on set and using computer-generated graphics later on to enhance.

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It's so key to having actors to react to something and not have it just be, you know, a green ball attached to a rope or attached to a pole or something like that. So, one of the greats, Phil Tippett, you can definitely see all the attention to details him and his team put in, in terms of the texture, how the skin glistens in rain.

The beauty of having an animatronic on set is you don't have to really necessarily guess the scale, right, that's a given for you. You're getting the scale of the T. rex's head and the teeth in relation to the kids and to the car, even to the flashlight with the eyes, you're really getting the weight of it.

If I had to guess, there's probably wires to make the car flip over. This is a great example of a seamless blend of practical and CG, where you're not really sure where things start and where things ended.

But I think it's a great handoff. The pacing and the editing and the framing, each composition is just so masterfully done.

So, this scene with the troll, it did try to do a blend of practical and visual, like some of the other films that we saw, right. So, the cutaways, the three characters, whenever you're seeing part of the troll, right, whether it's leg or it's wooden bat, those were practical, but then whenever you see the troll in its full frame, that is a computer-generated creature.

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There's lots of kind of boundaries, right, that the digital artists have to take into consideration. You have the height of the bathroom stalls and the height of where the sinks are. And then you have these kids that you have to take into relation with how tall and wide this troll is. And you have the really complex issue of adding Harry on top of a CG creature.

So, right, this scene is very challenging, especially in the early 2000s. I think what was missing that might have sold this shot a little better is the amount of detail in the skin, right. We just saw in "Jurassic Park," you know, the scales, it has the sheen that we're really missing from this character right now. It's too monochrome in terms of the bumps and where the skin begins and where the jacket starts.

I also think we are so used to seeing humans, and one of the tricky parts about this scene is when Harry jumps on the troll. And you can tell that it's not Harry as played by Daniel Radcliffe, but it is a computer-generated Harry. And having two complex characters on screen, relying all on postproduction, I think they did a great job for the time that it is, but there's definitely an evolution of the creatures within this franchise.

Harry: Ugh. Troll bogeys.

Kaitlyn: Again, we're at nighttime, which gives it just enough of a wiggle room to hide any imperfections. But I think the lighting on this is superb of just kind of how it highlights the silhouette just as you're seeing the tips of the fur of the bear, right. You just get enough details in the right places to really feel the weight of this bear, the size of it, and I think they did great work in terms of character design, really putting themselves into the realm of this movie, where everything is a little bit mutated within nature.

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I love the sliminess, the patterns on the skin, like we're not sure what's eating away at the skin. The animation on the bear was done particularly well, paying attention to the main and secondary animation, right, with the limp that the bear has, where the eyes is looking, where is its gaze?

When the bear opens its mouth, right, the tongue just kind of has that one-second hesitation whether it wants to attack or it wants to explore. I think you can feel the breath coming onto the characters.

The cherry on top of great visual effects is sound design. When the bear says, "Help me," in this humanlike way, you're almost getting the sense that, is there still a human in there that it may have absorbed from the past that is trying to come out?

With the design of this bear is what's kind of really selling how crazy these mutations are happening in nature, which ties really well within the story.

Thorin: Azog.

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Kaitlyn: Whenever I see large armies like this, I automatically think of the large army of digital artists, right. Especially since the main character used to be an actor in prosthetics, and in postproduction they decided to make this into a full CG character.

Azog: [in Orkish] The scent of fear?

Kaitlyn: Even though the scene is set at night, I'm not sure where the light source is coming from. I'm seeing an inconsistency in the lighting coming from the sky and how each characters are lit. I also feel a shift in pixel definition.

I feel Azog and his orcs, they almost feel too soft, their fur and their textures, whereas we get really detailed facial expressions from other characters. I think the juxtapose is what is adding to the inconsistency of the scene.

I think this is a tricky visual problem to solve, of how to keep a human's skeleton, skin, and movement but adding just enough reptilian properties to it, with a tail and with the skin. I think combining the specific actor's facial expressions in this reptilian, scalelike creature design, something about the eyes being so humanlike, I'm not sure if it's selling how menacing this character is.

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Within this interior lighting as well, we're really seeing the subsurface scattering of the reptilian skin. I think sometimes it's a little bit too detailed, and I think it's making it stand out that this is a CG character.

Lizard: There's no need to stop me, Peter.

Kaitlyn: I really love the design of this character. It's whimsical in the scariest way possible. Especially in the facial feature, there's such detail to it. There's so many different clusters within the eyeball itself. The number of shots that we see this monster and all the different environments that are run through, I think this is really impressive for the early 2000s. I think it's particularly impressive that we get to see the full body of the monster so early on in the film, especially in daylight as it interacts with so many extras without being hidden by anything. I think they did a great job of mimicking the surroundings, you know, with the shadow. I love the reference of size and the scale and the movement in relation to all the other characters in the scene. It plays together really well. [dramatic music] [monster shrieking] [Hulk growling]

Talbot: Take it easy there, buddy. [Hulk growling]

Kaitlyn: This Hulk is really reminiscent of the Hulk imagery that we're used to from the comics. We're in early 2000s. This is the beginning of motion capture.

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I think the facial elements right now are not as detailed as they need to be to sell this character as a main character in the movie. I don't think we're getting that human likeness coming through.

Right now, the color, it's this very green-screen green, if you will. I think the strong green saturation is overpowering the frame, right, where you can't really pay attention to anything else because there's nothing else like it in terms of the color palette.

I do notice some inconsistencies in terms of scale, like the height of the box in relation to the Hulk's physique. Are the boxes coming up to its knees, right? This is a challenging character, with the size, with the speed that he needs to travel. I think it's especially challenging to keep real physics and specific proportions.

What's also really challenging with this scene is we're going from an interior to an exterior, where there's really nothing in frame that's gonna hide this CG character. And it's tricky to have photorealism outside in plain daylight. I call it Baby Hulk, right. We're seeing Baby Hulk in the evolution of Hulk in the Marvel Universe.

In terms of color, we definitely see the Hulk gets muted down more and more. And I think as the Hulk evolves, we really see more facial features from the witness cam that the actors are wearing, giving it a reference for the animators to really mold this larger-than-life-size character and give them more personalities, in addition to the sheer volume and size.

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They really get to see how this character thinks before he acts, as opposed to just attacking everything on the scene.

Cage: Hey, hey!

Kaitlyn: The textures within this character, it's metallic enough for me to really believe that this is an alien from another planet. And the way that it moves with all the tentacles and the randomness, how it spawns part of its body as it's moving, the shape-shifting nature of these creatures, I can't help it but think what their rigging systems were like for there to be enough controls to give it specific design and animation movement quality but to be technical enough where it doesn't take hours and hours and hours for this character to go from one spot to another.

Working so well with all the other CG elements in the scene, right? The smoke, the sand simulation, the dust. I think all the other simulations, the sand, the debris, they're all helping this character to be grounded in this scene.

Filming in the daylight will make it difficult for a CG character to fully kind of pull its weight, but having all of the additional simulations I think is what's kind of disguising it just enough for it to kind of visually sell that this character has these particular movements, and it's really their tentacle that's kicking up all the dirt.

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You're just seeing enough of the character for you to want to see it more.

Lex: Your doomsday. [monster shrieks]

Kaitlyn: What they did well is the contrast between Superman and how he has this steadiness about him, and then you're getting something completely opposite in his archnemesis in the way you're seeing this sliminess.

We're in the dead of night. You're having this dark, moody color palette. I'm not sure, though, with the sliminess of the skin and the way that it's lit, if it's really selling as this menacing character.

I think it's always challenging when you have a monster that has more of a humanlike facial expression next to another human, right, maybe the perfect human, who plays Superman. The contrast of that is a little bit hard for the eye. There's still something about it that's not reading photorealistic in the scene that it needs to play in, compared to other characters.

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The height, the weight, and the scale of this particular character, I think it does change from shot to shot. Also, as they were fighting over the sky, going in and out of these sets, there are times where it's just all CG, and I think our eyes are picking up that these are CG characters on screen, right? We kind of left the world of realism for a little bit.

And I think it's because of the small inconsistencies that we're really seeing this character as a CG character, as opposed to a character that's in the realm right now fighting Superman.

I believe they were animatronics made for this character to really study the interaction of light. It is especially fitting seeing the two characters right next to a car, as a lot of R&D went in to studying how car paints work in relation to its environment. Essentially, the paint and the texture of the metal becomes a mirror of whatever environment that they're in. All of this was made possible by image-based lighting, where you're taking a high resolution of the surrounding to use as a reference, to light these CG characters. We're at nighttime, and it's especially crucial for us to feel that the characters are grounded in this environment, and image-based lighting is helping us get the lighting and reflections accurately within their suits.

I do like the subtle differences in terms of the textures between our hero and our villain. Iron Man does have this shiny quality to his suit, whereas the villain has more of a dull, kind of worn-down-metal look. The design of the villain is working especially well, taking in consideration his sheer size and volume and mass, but he's still able to move with this fluidity that's able for him to keep up with Iron Man. Having small light sources as eyes, the lighting source within the character design is working great for eyelines as well.

Iron Monger: Where do you think you're going?

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Nass: Whosa this?

Kaitlyn: "Star Wars," for many people in visual effects, right, this was our kind of starting point. So, the one thing that's tricky for me right now to believe that this character is really standing in this scene with all the other characters, is the texture within his skin. I think it's too monotonous right now.

The amount of detail we have in his skins and in his folds, and also how it interacts with his clothing, right, his robe, right, his shoulder pads, it's so rich in costume design as it stands next to other characters with equally detailed clothing. I think the juxtaposition is making us realize that this is a CG character.

I'm seeing in particular with the wide shot of everyone bowing, you can definitely tell a clear divide of CG and practical elements. We're seeing this character standing next to this tree trunk for the majority of the scene, and the similarities in terms of the textures, the details in the tree matching the detail of the skin, with how they're framed next to each other like that, it's not really selling it for me either way, for the character or the forest that they're in.

With the design of this character, my eyes are not going straight to its eyes, right. I can't look away from its mouth and its jaw and all the bounciness. There's so much movement in the mouth of this character, and it's giving it so much life, but the eyes are not really giving it as much emotion.

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The digital spit and the jowl shaking, I think that moment really kind of broke realism for me in terms of like, oh, this is a CG creation. All the muscle movements feel a little too unison. The rubberiness of the entire lower face moving, I think that gets refined in later movies, as we see other characters where you see more of a muscular structure in a way that makes sense to that particular character.

Nass: Meesa like these.

Kaitlyn: So, we can't talk about good or bad CG without bringing up The Rock from "The Mummy." In this particular scene, I can't imagine what the production was going through, whether it be a time budget or production restrictions. Because we know what The Rock looks like, seeing The Rock's face in this low-res, kind of plasticky feel on this character, how smooth his skin is and how all of his hair kind of moves in chunks within one another, the lack of facial details mixed in in this rich environment where everything else has so much detail, I think that's what's making this painfully obvious that this is not The Rock.

In my opinion, the pinnacle of computer-generated work is when we can get close-ups of CG human. And this was made in 2001, right? This was the very beginning. My buddies over at Corridor Digital actually did a breakdown of this job, where they're attempting to fix it and make this character look more like The Rock.

As VFX artists, we're constantly running against time and budget. Sometimes we don't have time to make other iterations or really explore another way of solving this visual task. I think it's really easier for us to sit back and judge all these jobs, but I do wanna point out that these jobs were made by people, right.

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I think it's important to be kind and thoughtful, especially when we don't know the circumstances they were in, that they had to make these difficult artistic decisions.

Nass: Being friends.

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