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726 days ago
Creating CG Cityscapes for Spider-Man™ 3 As digital effects supervisor for Spider-Man™ 3, Peter Nofz had primary responsibility for many astonishing effects including the creation of the alien symbiote, both in its sinister goo form and when it takes shape as the terrifying Venom. He also led the teams whose task it was to create believable locations for some of the most dramatic scenes in the movie. Peter describes the process of creating CG cityscapes that can be used from any angle and in any light: One of my favorite scenes is the alley sequence, near the very beginning of the movie, when Peter Parker is ambushed by the New Goblin. Even before we get to the alley a lot of those shots are full CG background shots, and they took a lot of work. We needed to find buildings that looked the way Sam [Raimi, the director] wanted, and then we needed to capture them digitally from every angle. Neil Spisak, the production ...
735 days ago
Last time we heard what Scott Stokdyk had to say about using digital doubles in Spider-Man™ 3. Here's what Spencer Cook thought. Spencer Cook - Animation Supervisor Spencer said the techniques and technologies for creating digital doubles improved significantly over the course of the three Spider-Man movies: The alley fight between Peter Parker and Harry Osborn as the New Goblin and the Bell Tower scenes were big ones for blending animation and CG characters to get convincing digital doubles. The New Goblin relies a lot on his Sky Stick, so we spent a lot of time on previsualization to make sure it looked believable. We studies tons of reference of snowboarders. We had reference of them jumping up in the air, twisting and flipping, and we used a lot of those moves for Harry on his Sky Stick. We also looked at skateboarding reference. Then we re-created a lot of those snowboard and skateboard moves in our animation. Venom was ...
736 days ago
One of the most complex technical accomplishments in Spider-Man™ 3 is one most audiences aren’t even aware of – for the first time, Peter Parker fights using his superhero powers but not in his Spider-Man suit. That was an incredible challenge, since having Tobey Maguire’s face visible required an exceptional blending of CG and live footage in the same shot. But it also meant showing more of the actors’ performances, capturing more of the reality. Here's what Scott Stokdyk had to say about it. Scott Stokdyk - Visual Effects Supervisor Scott said the most spectacular scenes in Spider-Man 3 preserved as much of the actor’s performance as possible, using digital doubles to fill in the rest. It was important to Sam – and to me too – that we incorporate as much live action into the animation as possible. If anybody is sitting in the audience marveling at the visual effects, that means we’ve taken them out of the movie. The reason a ...
739 days ago
Venom was brought to life using the absolute latest in technology and techniques, some of which was developed specifically to put Raimi’s vision on the screen. Scott and Spencer discuss the challenges of creating the Venom Symbiote. Scott Stokdyk - Visual Effects Supervisor Scott remembers Venom as both a technical and artistic challenge: In Spider-Man 3 the villains have an extraordinary element to them that we had to fight very, very hard to make look believable. We wanted our villains doing heavy effects with an emotional impact and still look rooted in the real world. And we had to bring in alien components for Venom – the kind of abilities we don’t normally see. The symbiotic goo didn’t move like anything in nature, so to make it believable required an unusual combination of CG tools and animation. Spencer Cook and I worked closely with [costume designer] Jim Acheson. We decided that, as much as possible, we wanted the action to be ...
741 days ago
Spencer Cook – Animation Supervisor Spencer explains how complicated it was to retain Thomas Haden Church’s performance in the ever-changing shape of Sandman: The challenge of Sandman was really interesting because he required such integration between character animation and effects animation. The sand, the way sand moves on and off his body, and the way he moves are all intimately tied together. We always tried to base Sandman's movements and body language on Thomas. For the birth sequence we animated the entire sequence before anything was shot, to work out poses and timing. Once Sam was happy with it he would use it on the set to show Thomas and the camera crew what he wanted to achieve for each shot. Whenever possible we would set up two high-definition cameras on Thomas, in addition to the film cameras, so the Imageworks artists could have all of those angles to animate the character. If the original photography didn’t have Thomas in it, we ...
