Say what you will about the rest of Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie, it did a pretty incredible job of bringing the creatures and vistas of Blizzard’s gaming series to life. But looking at this new breakdown video from ILM, there were definitely some very disturbing steps in the process.
ILM dropped a bunch of new featurettes on their work in the movie on YouTube last night, and they’re all well worth a watch, as they show how ILM created the massive orc characters that dominate much of the film’s cast.
Considering half of Warcraft’s story is about these creatures, the need to make a CG creation that both fit into Warcraft’s OTT fantasy aesthetic—where orcs are huge, hulking slabs of muscle—and could convincingly project the nuance of a human actor’s performance was one of the biggest challenges facing the movie. The fact that they did (and that honestly, the digital orcs gave better performances that most of the human cast) is still kind of incredible.
That said, there’s something incredibly disconcerting about the very human head of Durotan actor Toby Kebbell is put on top of the very unhuman body of an Orc, only to quickly “melt” into an orc face, as seen in the gif up top). You can check out the rest of the VFX breakdown vids below.