Animating deadpool
Alice Pattillo finds out how Weta Digital brought the animated expression to Deadpool, despite his distinguishing disguise
Weta Digital bring humour to a mask
Adding convincing movement and showing character through a mask is a tall order, especially considering the wise-cracking hero in question. Deadpool is known for his animated sense of humour, which needed to be translated through his disguise, and the team at Weta Digital have most certainly managed to pull it off, considering the latest Marvel flick smashed the box office and opened to rave reviews.
The team animated the mask in green screen plates and delivered the finals to other companies to do the rest of the compositing. VFX supervisor, Charles Tait explains the process. “Initially we were sent a Maya file from the client that contained facial blend shapes (modelled at Image Engine) for the Deadpool head. From that file we exported an .obj file for each blend shape and one for the Neutral Pose head. We projected a UV Ramp on each model and unwrapped the result to create texture maps.”
Once they had all these blend shape images prepared, Charles and co built them into a Nuke group, but the process could be quite a challenge, with the change in the mask’s topology not always apparent. “The wrinkles in his forehead were quite detailed in the models, but a warp on the plate wasn’t enough to show off this detail.” So once the animation was done, the team exported their keyframes to a corresponding rig in Maya.
Laughing stock
Weta Digital had video clips of Ryan Reynolds delivering every single line – one for each shot the team were animating – which provided a wealth of visual information for them to use.
“We transferred Ryan’s synchronised expressions to the mask, and obviously had to use a little artistic judgement to make sure the intent came across well,” Charles continues. “Part way through the project, Jonathan Rothbart said that the film makers were all beginning to laugh at it again. Obviously when you’ve seen and heard all the gags hundreds of times they become less amusing, but the expression we applied to the mask brought the humour back to life for them. At this point we really knew we were getting it right.”
With access to these dialogue shots, Charles knew from the get-go how successful the flick would be. “It was obvious that this was no ordinary super hero movie,” he says. “I sometimes think of how few pixels we changed in real terms, but how much of an effect it had. The fact that our work was so well received by the writers and all at Fox, was the most rewarding thing about our involvement in the film.”
FYI
To see more of Weta Digital’s work, go to www.wetafx.co.nz