X-Men: First Class VFX Breakdown by Digital Domain

VFX Online June 2, 2019, 5:48 am 1.4k Views

X-Men: First Class VFX Breakdown by Digital Domain

Digital Domain, Check out this VFX breakdown from Director Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class” (2011).

In the fifth installment of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men franchise, Digital Domain’s artists focused on Kevin Bacon’s Shaw character. Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Barton and his team worked closely with the filmmakers to establish how Shaw’s energy-absorbing/releasing superpowers would manifest, then created the ‘kinetic echo’ effect involving muscle ripples, extra arms and effects to the surrounding environment. They also created a digital version of Shaw that was indistinguishable from the live-action Bacon, even in extreme closeup, using Digital Domain’s Academy Award winning digital human synthesis techniques. The work also included the creation of complex digital environments that artists then destroyed using extensive CG fire, explosions and debris. In the case of the ‘Mirror Room,’ the task was made more challenging as the shots included projecting and reflecting digital doubles of the Magneto and Shaw battling through the sequence.

Digital Domain, Who remembers the awesome stadium sequence where Magneto lifted an entire stadium? Check out this short breakdown for a peek at how we did it.

Digital Domain, Enjoy our VFX breakdown for X-Men: First Class from 2011.

Directed By: Matthew Vaughn
Visual Effects Supervisor: Jay Barton

X-Men: First Class (stylized onscreen as X: First Class) is a 2011 superhero film based on the X-Men characters appearing in Marvel Comics. The fifth installment in the X-Men film series, it was directed by Matthew Vaughn and produced by Bryan Singer. The film is set primarily in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and focuses on the relationship between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and the origin of their groups—the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, respectively, as they deal with the Hellfire Club led by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who is bent on world domination. The film co-stars Rose Byrne, January Jones, and Oliver Platt, and also introduces Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence, who, like McAvoy and Fassbender, reimagine popular characters from the franchise (Beast and Mystique) already established in the original trilogy.