REPOSTED FROM PRESS RELEASE
Visual effects facility Artifex Studios had the opportunity to create a fully-digital creature for the upcoming feature film Scourge.
Artifex worked on several intense scenes requiring the creature. With such an integral role, a great deal of character needed to be built into each VFX sequence. Scourge has a definite personality; a calculated attitude had to be conveyed in every movement. Details such as 3D drool were also added during Scourge’s transfer from human host to host.
“Creating a creature from scratch was a terrific opportunity for us,” said Adam Stern, VFX supervisor and president of Artifex Studios. Together with director Jonas Quastel, Scourge was designed in-house then taken to full 3D. The work involved some complex rigging including a dynamic tentacle system which was created separately.
A custom system was created that allowed animators to control everything from the speed of individual tentacle motion, to how they were affected by forces (i.e. gravity), to how they collided with other objects in the scene including other tentacles. ‘Hero‘ tentacles were keyframe-animated for specific directed action.
Additional VFX work for the film included tentacles bursting from actors and being shown underneath skin, 3D prosthetic augmentation, and a full CG exterior church set. The film starts with a dramatic camera move down the church tower, then continues on a stormy night in 1871 where barely a glimpse of Scourge is revealed. Later in the present day the creature is let loose and afflicts an entire town.
Scourge was modeled in Maya utilizing ZBrush for sculpting. All animation was completed in Maya, with 3D rendering handled by RenderMan and compositing handled in Nuke.
“We spent weeks developing look and function,“ said director Jonas Quastel. ”There was very little to draw on as far as other films. Instead, we pulled ideas from nature and borrowed from fantasy art. The result is something no one’s ever seen before, a spectacular and frightening creature with natural
movement, texture and character.”
For more information on Artifex Studios visit its official website
