You will be surprised to know how much efforts did all the people behind the CGI 3d animation of the 2007 Beowulf movie. Let’s first start with the director, “Robert Zemeckis” who was also the director of the popular animated film, “The Polar Express”. With his previous experience from The Polar Express, he also incorporated then same visual effects which is through the use of “motion capture technology” to create GGI 3d environment and characters for his Beowulf film.
“Jerome Chen” was his close partner since he was the visual effects supervisor of this movie. He was also the same guy who made huge contribution in the success of The Polar Express. Thus this time, both of them had the goal to produce an animation that focuses on a very realistic details in all aspects of the film.
Perhaps, the most surprising fact about the creation of the Beowulf CGI film is that, there were over 450 graphic designers hired to work on this project. This gave them the record of being the largest team who worked on “Imageworks” back in 2007.
Since Imageworks’ old graphic tools cannot meet the director’s expectation, they actually created much better animation tools that can produce realistic body features. They even incorporated elements of keyframe animation which is a technology that can accurately copy the facial expression of an individual.
Unfortunately, the entire team came across a problem when they were at the scene creation of Beowulf and Grendel’s battle at the Mead Hall. There were so many props that resulted in slowing the team’s computer equipment. So the team stopped for five months to solve the issue through “cached data”.
As they continued their project, data resource was still the main issue. There were so much data that got accumulated where the studio was forced to finally make the decision to upgrade their equipment into a much powerful computers.
All human characters from the movie may not had given the designers much of a challenge because there were already human actors and actress on the side as their basis. But, they might had a little bit of challenges when it came to the creation of the monsters.
There were four monsters on the movie:
Grendel was the first monster featured on the film who brutally attacked the people from Mead Hall during the night of their feast. Reworked had to be done because of his features that wasn’t human form.
Second monsters on the scene were the giant one-eyed flying fishes and a mermaid. The concept is taken from a flying fish but the designers gave the creatures horrifying look by putting a one large eyes on their faces with numerous sharp teeth. As for the mermaid, there wasn’t much of a problem because she was half-human and a fish.
Angelina Jolie or Grendel’s mother was the third monster revealed on the film which was a giant golden snake. The giant snake might not be a challenge since the appearance of the creature is nothing different from the ordinary reptile.
The final creature featured on the movie was the dragon. They actually used a combination of bats and flying squirrels as an inspiration to create their own dragon concept.
“Jerome Chen” was his close partner since he was the visual effects supervisor of this movie. He was also the same guy who made huge contribution in the success of The Polar Express. Thus this time, both of them had the goal to produce an animation that focuses on a very realistic details in all aspects of the film.
Perhaps, the most surprising fact about the creation of the Beowulf CGI film is that, there were over 450 graphic designers hired to work on this project. This gave them the record of being the largest team who worked on “Imageworks” back in 2007.
Since Imageworks’ old graphic tools cannot meet the director’s expectation, they actually created much better animation tools that can produce realistic body features. They even incorporated elements of keyframe animation which is a technology that can accurately copy the facial expression of an individual.
Unfortunately, the entire team came across a problem when they were at the scene creation of Beowulf and Grendel’s battle at the Mead Hall. There were so many props that resulted in slowing the team’s computer equipment. So the team stopped for five months to solve the issue through “cached data”.
As they continued their project, data resource was still the main issue. There were so much data that got accumulated where the studio was forced to finally make the decision to upgrade their equipment into a much powerful computers.
Designing the Characters
All human characters from the movie may not had given the designers much of a challenge because there were already human actors and actress on the side as their basis. But, they might had a little bit of challenges when it came to the creation of the monsters.
There were four monsters on the movie:
Grendel was the first monster featured on the film who brutally attacked the people from Mead Hall during the night of their feast. Reworked had to be done because of his features that wasn’t human form.
Second monsters on the scene were the giant one-eyed flying fishes and a mermaid. The concept is taken from a flying fish but the designers gave the creatures horrifying look by putting a one large eyes on their faces with numerous sharp teeth. As for the mermaid, there wasn’t much of a problem because she was half-human and a fish.
Angelina Jolie or Grendel’s mother was the third monster revealed on the film which was a giant golden snake. The giant snake might not be a challenge since the appearance of the creature is nothing different from the ordinary reptile.
The final creature featured on the movie was the dragon. They actually used a combination of bats and flying squirrels as an inspiration to create their own dragon concept.
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