3D World

FEATURE
Black Panther

other rhinos that are running
through. They’re a bit bigger. The
facial features are like a white
rhino which have these wide
lips, while the black rhino has a
beaked lip structure that they use
to eat leaves, so ours became a
hybrid.” Each rhino has distinct
characteristics. “They are different
in their structure, size, colouring
and horn design.
“We took a lot of guidance from
Rachel Morrison’s photography
and she likes a shallow depth of
field. There was a lot of, ‘What is
the story of this shot?’ Anything
that is a distraction from it would
usually go or would need to be
pushed to the background.” A
lot of dust was generated by the
combatants. “You have to make
sure that you clear out the areas
that you want to be seen. When
the Dragon Flyer is firing and
creating explosions we were timing
those with the animation of Black
Panther running through them.
All of that is choreographed down
to the beat so that you don’t lose
the audience in what you’re trying
to do.” Method Studios created
the Talon Fighters and Dragon
Flyers. “There’s a section in the
Wakandan bible which talks about
incorporating designs from nature
into the vibranium technology,”
states Perry. “The Dragon Flyer

has an x-wing pattern like a
dragonfly. If you [stand] the Talon
Fighter up and spread the wings
out it resembles an African tribal
mask. Everything fit into place
appropriately and things would
move out of the way to make
clearance for other things that
were articulated. There was a lot of

attention put into the functionality

of these models.”

A problem emerged when the

final battle was being assembled

in editorial which required a fix

late into post-production. “Agent

Ross helps out by remotely piloting

the Royal Talon Fighter to try

to stop the vibranium weapons

from getting out of the country,”

explains Perry. “In order to provide

a sense of danger to him, they came

up with an idea of a Dragon Flyer

starting to blast its way to the lab

as he is piloting. That shot didn’t

get conceived until December

and our first animation pass was

in mid-December, so we had four

weeks to put that whole sequence,

and it wasn’t just us. It was

shared between us, ILM, Cantina

Creative, Ghost and RISE because

we all had different components

that contributed to the shot.”

A practical seat was built for

Martin Freeman who portrays

Agent Ross. “Everything else

was made up in the sequence.

We already had the lab built, the

mineshaft and Dragon Flyer were

also ours but the heads-up display

of Ross flying through Golden

City was ILM. ILM had to render

the cameras and provide them to

Ghost which put them inside this

hologram of the ship. That ship

would be put in our environment

and Creative Cantina created the

heads-up display graphics. RISE

did a number of the shots too. All

of that had to come together to

deliver the final shot. That being

said it makes the movie better and

more exciting.”

FYI

Find out more at

methodstudios.com

Houdini culled the

environment based

on the position of

the camera when

determining what

would be high and

low resolution

Custom Houdini

scripts were written

for the sphere

blasts of energy

emitted from the

Black Panther and

Killmonger suits,

and the gauntlets

worn by Shuri

“We used lots of atmosPherIcs

to PIck out the sIlhouettes”

Andy Brown, VFX supervisor, Method Studios