Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 | VFX Breakdown | Framestore

For Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 we delivered 1200 shots of what James Gunn has described as “some of the best VFX work ever seen.“ This show-and-tell reel highlights some of the film’s incredible character animation, photoreal creature work, stunning environment builds and FX-laden action sequences. As the film’s heart and soul, Rocket Raccoon was very much front and centre. While we’d given Rocket his big screen debut and worked on him several times since, Vol. 3 demanded a very different approach. Each phase of his life from kit and adolescent to the his grizzled modern-day incarnation called for a different looks and physiologies, as well as subtly changing character traits, emotions and behaviours. His transformation from quadruped to biped required a very literal evolution, while nuanced character animation was required to show an arc from youthful joy and innocence to suspicion, wariness and cynicism. Similarly, space dog Cosmo required utter photorealism, but also a deftness of touch that would allow the team to imbue a non-human character with a wide range of humanoid emotions and performance traits. Rather than anthropomorphise Cosmo, the team looked to real canine behaviour that could be used to approximate human expressions and sentiments. Groot returns in his ’college ball player’ form, and the reel shows how the team perfectly captured James Gunn’s most excellent dance moves and animated them by hand so the energy of the performance could be transposed onto a bigger, weightier frame that is made of bark, vines, twigs and roots rather than flesh and bone. Elsewhere, characters like Lylla, Teefs and Floor were based on concept art provided by James Gunn and his team, and as you can see the initial previs (courtesy of Framestore Preproduction Services) helped lay the foundation for the final film. Find out more here: