Making of Pacific Rim by ILM

Making of Pacific Rim By ILM

Creating the Kaijus for Pacific Rim

 

When director Guillermo Del Toro conceived the battle between the Kaiju monsters and human-controlled Jaeger robots, he knew the best possible VFX facility to bring this vision to reality would be Industrial Light & Magic, the company that pioneered CG creature-creation. In an unusually close collaboration between director and VFX facility, Pacific Rim gets up-close-and-personal with organic and metallic creatures that are both believable and thrilling.




Guillermo Del Toro is the original fan boy. The director who has been behind an amazing variation of creatively powerful work, from Hellboy to Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro is passionately engaged in the worlds of fantasy and sci-fi. So much so that he acknowledged his own obsession by dubbing his latest effort, Pacific Rim, “robot porn.”

Robot porn it is. The terrifying Kaiju — huge monsters from the depth of the ocean, each with its own physiognomy and personality — meet the 250-foot high Jaegers, man-made and man-directed battleship-like robots. The immensity of these main characters (who play alongside a cast of human actors with their human dramas) can’t be over-stated. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a pioneer in all VFX, brought this all to life.

ILM hard surface modeler David Fogler enumerates some of the stats: The Jaeger ‘Gipsy Danger’ is so large that the Statue of Liberty would only reach its knees. It is 10 times taller than King Kong and its feet are as long as two city buses. She (in the tradition that battleships are referred to as females) takes only two steps to cross a football field.


(L-r) The United States' Gipsy Danger and Australia's Striker Eureka in a scene from the sci-fi action adventure Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures PACIFIC RIM, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES. © 2013 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND LEGENDARY PICTURES FUNDING, LLC.
(L-r) The United States’ Gipsy Danger and Australia’s Striker Eureka.

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Making of Gravity by Framestore

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The Bafta-winning visual effects behind Gravity, Watch Making of Gravity by Framestore Studio built an astounding 2,200 models for Gravity, from large structures such as the International Space Station to the tiny props floating within it.

Gravity: CG sets and suits

It was a remarkable number of asset builds – far more than in a traditional VFX-heavy film. “The number of assets to manage was more akin to that of a CG animated film, but this is on a different scale of complexity entirely as it’s all photo-real. I definitely wouldn’t classify this as a CG film, but it is certainly comparable in terms of the number of assets” says Gravity lead modeller, Ben Lambert.

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