after recent releases such as Ant-Man and the WASP quantumania black panther wakanda forever and
eternals many MCU fans are complaining that Marvel's films seem to be getting
worse and worse because they're too reliant on CGI Guardians of the Galaxy had a total
of over 2 700 VFX shots this means over 90 of the movie had some sort of digital effect
or another and yet it is one of the highest rated films in the modern MCU era so why do
Marvel's latest films seem like they are failing to hit the mark are Marvel's VFX really to blame
and how did Guardians of the Galaxy Captivate Us despite its heavy Reliance on CGI [Music]
yeah for phase one Marvel released six films over a four year period for phase two they also
released six films but this time in just two years phase three was 11 films in only three
years phase four was seven films and eleven Disney plus Series in a year and a half and phase five
will be at least six films in less than a year so Marvel's movie output continues to increase
every year in order to cover public demand and to continue to increase their profits this means that
Marvel has to have incredibly tight deadlines so that it can stagger its releases throughout the
Cinematic year this puts a tremendous strain on VFX companies to complete an increasingly higher
number of VFX shots before these increasingly restrictive deadlines but that's not a bad thing
is it I mean more work more money you can always just hire more VFX artists right well in theory at
least this is correct that is as long as Marvel is willing to front the bill Ironman was released in
2008 with less than 1 000 VFX shots and a budget of around 180 million dollars Guardians of the
Galaxy was released six years later in 2014 and had a slightly smaller budget of around
170 million dollars but triple the VFX shots Thor Ragnarok was released three years after that in
2017 with a budget like guardians of 170 million dollars and light Guardians over 2 000 VFX shop
and Captain Marvel was released in 2019 with again a budget of around 170 million dollars and over 2
000 VFX shots so it seems that even though these films were demanding more visual effect shots on
an increasingly tighter timeline the budget available for them has remained pretty much
the same or perhaps even gotten worse especially if we take into account that since 2008 everything
else seems to have gone up in price that Robert Downey Jr went from a base pay of 2.5
million dollars for Iron Man in 2008 to 75 million dollars for end game in 2019 so this begs
the question how are VFX companies managing to produce more VFX shots in less time and for less
money and the short answer is that they aren't really yes they've scratched around looking for
workarounds advances in technology and the use of AI and software have made certain time-consuming
processes a lot faster setting up shop in certain countries gives them tax benefits and incentives
and using cheaper labor from countries like India helps them lower the overall cost but these are
just temporary fixes the truth is that the VFX industry is run on such a tight shoestring budget
that when Marvel inevitably makes their last minute changes additions and adjustments there
just isn't the Manpower or time left to perfect them and this leads to visual effects like some
of the goose the cat shots in Captain Marvel some of the Rhino shots in black panther Bruce
Banner's floating head in Avengers Infinity war and perhaps most famously the final fight between
killmonger and black panther but as you may have noticed these poor visual effects appeared in
some of Marvel's most successful movies so why were these movies loved despite their CGI flaws
whilst other movies were hated because of them so you could say this video is proof well that's
why we picked Guardians of the Galaxy for this video because despite having visual effects in
over 90 of the movie and two of the five main Hero characters being 100 CGI it is still loved by the
vast majority of MCU fans getting just one fully digital character to stand out as a main character
in a movie is both a daunting and complicated task but getting two to do so is almost impossible so
how did they manage it well they didn't really I mean yes the characters were great and yes they
were completely digital but no they didn't stand out their movements their personalities and their
backstories were all carefully designed to make them blend in rather than stand out for Rocket
frame store had three main difficulties the first was getting him to look like a real raccoon for
his body the obvious place to start was with a skeleton and proportions from a real raccoon so
they built that using a real raccoon called Oreo as reference material and posed it on its hind
legs of course it was immediately obvious that real raccoons have proportions that don't really
work with an anthropomorphic stance so changes had to be made for the fur well it turns out
that raccoon fur is quite complex from a shading perspective across the whole coat the fur changes
color but it also changes color down the length of each individual hair in different places on the
coat there would be up to three color changes a longer given hair so they had to develop a Shader
to handle this fur mapping so it could be driven by textures to decide how many color changes
happened along the hair and what colors they would be the coat also has two different types of hair
which are referred to as the down hair and the guard hair the down hair was a single color short
and soft looking and the guard hair has much longer less dense and had all the multi-color
shading so they had to use two independent Grooms for these so they could avoid running unnecessary
Dynamics on the down hair the second difficulty was getting him to move like a human rocket for
the most part was a standard biped rig because they based the model on real Anatomy when they
came to building the rig they could be accurate about joint positions pivots and muscle placements
due to him having so much dialogue the majority of the rigging time for Rocket was actually spent on
his face the face rig was blend shape based but extra attention had to be put into the wrinkle
definition to make sure it could be read by the audience due to the face being covered
in fur the third difficulty was getting him to emote like a human but still remain a raccoon
one thing that director James Gunn insisted on was for them to carefully look at what the human
actors were doing he said that actors don't do 20 face shapes in one shot they very often just
do one and hold it so they shouldn't be afraid of making Rockets facial movements more minimal
to help maintain Rocket's raccoon-like nature when rocket talks about something they made it so he's
always playing with something on the table and when he's in the background he's always fiddling
with something this is something you can see with real raccoons they're very tactile so when they
grab something they really play around with it having rocket mimic these traits made him seem
very natural MPC had similar difficulties when it came to developing Groot but with the addition
that Groot couldn't tell anyone he was angry and he couldn't tell anyone he was happy or sad I am
and since his face was supposed to be made of wood he could really emote that well either so
how did they get us to understand and empathize with him well with the only thing they could
really his eyes NPC spent a lot of time designing and building very complex eye Dynamics they put a
lot of detail into the textures and things that would be displaced in his irises and they worked
a lot on trying to break with symmetry when you look at what makes human eyes interesting
it's the imperfections so NPC tried to make it so groot's two irises were not aimed at quite
the same place they tried to make them strange and therefore look more human this gave Groot
a piercing look and therefore a feeling of underlying wisdom beneath James Gunn was the
director of Guardians of the Galaxy but James is also a writer and therefore interested in telling
stories by weaving an intriguing tale about five unlikely Heroes whose in-depth backstories
intertwine with heroes and villains alike not only did James manage to make us forget that two of the
main characters are 100 CGI but he created this scene where we genuinely felt for them [Music]
but recent movies like Ant-Man and the WASP quantumania Thor love and thunder
eternals and other Modern Marvel films that people consider to be over reliant on CGI either failed
to create a story deep enough for the audience to get emotionally invested in or they rush through
the character Evolution to allow more time for fight scenes effectively choosing action over
emotion when the filmmakers put time and Care into evolving the characters it makes us care for them
if they tell a story and have goals we can relate to we can empathize with them and if they then
have to struggle and fight to achieve their goals we end up rooting for them to succeed we as an
audience concentrate on the story that the visual effects are helping to tell rather than the visual
effects themselves but when the filmmakers don't take the time to evolve the characters or tell a
story we can relate to the film just becomes an excuse for massive digital battles CG explosions
as and VFX action and since there's no story for us to invest in we concentrate solely on the CGI
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