Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies | Tagged: film, marvel, Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok VFX Supervisor Talks Creating Korg

It takes a lot of work to bring a character to life through special effects. As the Marvel movies get crazier and really dig into the aliens side of the universe they have to create bigger and crazier looking creatures. One of the new creatures that Thor: Ragnarok brought to life was Korg played by director Taika Waititi. Cartoon Brew spoke to overall visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison about bringing a guy made of rocks to life.

"Taika likes being in his films," said Morrison. "These are always a little bit more than the Hitchcock walk-ons, I think it's fair to say. He likes a cameo, but he also likes a speaking part. With the mocap of it all and the freedom to perform as someone who didn't look like Taika Waititi, it was something that really interested him – the idea that you could actually disappear into the character."

Morrison revealed that there was a specific inspiration when it came to Korg and that was Polynesian bouncers at nightclub.

"These guys are huge, and then when you talk to them, they're much more gentle than you might think, and they might say something like, 'Nice to see you mate, do you want to get in?' They've got that light sort of lilt in their voices against type. I think Taika loved the idea of playing against type for that one."

Waititi wore a motion capture suit but the character they were creating was much taller. So Waititi had to put a head on a stick behind him similar to what Alan Tuydk has to do with K-2SO in Rogue One.

"This meant that when Chris Hemsworth was actually riffing with Taika he would know where the eye line was, because that's the important thing," said Morrison. "You don't want the eye line to stray down to Taika's real eye line."

There has been a lot made about how much Waititi had people improvising on the set but when it came to Korg it made things a little harder for the VFX team. Everything is very specific and even small things like "how many steps does this character take to get from point A to point B and how does it change because he's larger?"

"You can't just slow everything down to allow that extra movement on set," noted Morrison. "What it does mean is that you have to take the spirit of that capture for, say, the legs, and then you've got to have Taika take five or six steps to go from A to B, and in cg it's actually three or four for Korg. Then because Korg is made of rocks, there's a definite snap and a thud to every time he puts his foot down."

It also made that not every aspect of Waititi's performance made it on screen. The movements of a human are much different from the movements of a giant pile of rocks.

"We began the animation process by studying Taika Waititi's onset footage and motion capture data," said Luma Pictures animation supervisor Raphael A. Pimentel. "By focusing first on Taika's performance, animators were able to study subtleties unique to him and essentially extract what would be the essence of Korg throughout the film. The first animation pass on all Korg shots were mirrored versions of Taika's onset performance."

"Taika is lighter and essentially his gesturing is faster than Korg's," added Pimentel. "During Taika's performance, there were certain timing beats that were difficult to replicate during the animation process. We ended up picking the strongest beat during the performance and animated around it; essentially keeping the punchline mannerisms, while slowing the remainder in order to hit Korg's slower and weightier pace."

Korg was a hard character to animate because he is a character made up of a bunch of small parts. All of those parts move just a little differently as the character moves and making rock like characters look like rocks is difficult. (Morrison notes that past attempts at rock-covered creatures wearing suits sometimes looked exactly like that – as if the character was wearing a Lycra suit).

"Korg was a complex character to animate because he is made up of 1,334 individual pieces of rock," explained Pimentel. "Since rocks don't deform, every piece of rock needed to adhere to the ones next to it, all while keeping gaps from forming, especially in articulated areas. To achieve this, we started with a body mesh that contained helper muscles to keep volume. Although Korg is not made of muscles, his anatomy behaved as if it did, bulging and contracting depending on his motion. There was also a layer of set driven keys that allowed animators to control individual rocks, if needed."

The process became even more difficult when it came to Korg's face. The face has lots of micro-expressions, it's one of the reasons lifelike animation is so hard to get right, but this is a face of rocks. How do you give rock those micro-expressions?

"This is the stuff that you want really to be Taika, when you look at that face and you look at a raised eyebrow here or a tilted head," said Morrison. "You can't ever deform any of the rocks, but at the same time never let it look like it's clockwork or technical."

"Korg's arms are also so bulky," continued Morrison. "It meant he has that thing that big bodybuilders have where they can't bend their elbows, and they can't put their arms straight down by their sides because the muscle mass gets in the way. So we added that detail in."

Two studios worked on Korg, Luma Pictures and Framestore, and Morrison is glad the character works as well as it does.

"It's comedy; you're delivering lines to people that are genuinely laugh out loud moments, and if they're taken out of the character for just a second and you look at it and you think, 'Oh, it's just a cg character,' then you've lost that laugh. I think it's safe to say both Luma and Framestore really aced it with Korg."

A comedy isn't just about delivery of jokes but also about body language and nuance. The fact that a CG character like Korg, or other such characters like Groot or Rocket in Guardians of the Galaxy, can get real laughter is a credit to the hard work of the animators bringing them to life.

Summary: Imprisoned, the mighty Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must fight for survival and race against time to prevent the all-powerful Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.

Thor: Ragnarok, directed by Taika Waititi, stars Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Idris Elba, and Mark Ruffalo. Check it out in theaters now.

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