Ani-concepting for Venom

DNEG concept artist paolo Giandoso Explains visualising the final symbiote mass-merging of venom AND riot

The shot:

This is the ‘ani-concept’ I prepared for the final fight. It is a shot that appears at the very end of the trailer too. My goal was to give the impression that Eddie, Drake, Venom and Riot are all fighting each other at the same time in a whirlwind of symbiote mass.

The action:

Here the aliens are partially detached from their hosts and directly confronting each other. I wanted the symbiotes to be able to create the impression of human and animal appendages, but at the same time to make clear that there is no human inside them to hold the shape together (without the host symbiotes can only mimic shapes for brief moments).

The concepts:

The ‘structures’ they create are made of ‘strings’ of symbiote mass that would morph constantly from form to form, compress and expand. In the middle of this shifting tangle of tendrils Eddie and Drake would be also trying to kill each other, similarly to being in a boxing ring crisscrossed by hundreds of elastic bands. This was so much fun to design!