Just what the alien symbiote ordered: a closer look at our work on Venom: The Last Dance!
Learn how our DNEG team helped bring the action of this epic finale to life.
Dig out your dancing shoes for this closer look at our team’s work on 'Venom: The Last Dance'!
After working as lead VFX partner on the first two films of Sony’s hit anti-hero trilogy, we were thrilled to return to the franchise this year to help bring the epic finale to life!
The Last Dance gave our talented teams the chance to flex their character building, animation and FX simulation skills, delivering just under 500 shots across 11 key sequences. In a series of recent interviews, VFX Supervisor David Lee has been sharing detailed behind-the-scenes insights on the work our amazing global crews delivered on the film.
Read on for a closer look at our work!
Wraith Venom
In The Last Dance, Venom couldn’t become his full form without attracting the Xenophages, which meant Wraith Venom, the version of the symbiote that comes out through tendrils attached to Eddie, played a much larger role.
This, coupled with the scenery we find them in during The Last Dance, provided an interesting challenge for our team. Venom’s lighting is driven primarily by reflections, which, in the previous films, typically consisted of dark, moody settings. In contrast, the desert environment with only the sun as a single, direct light source meant that the team had to adapt Venom’s lighting so as to not lose any intricate detailing.
To do this, they added a sense of iridescence to his skin to give an additional layer of complexity in the light. In an interview with Digital Media World, David said, “We started adding multiple, smaller light sources, but biasing them towards the key light direction to keep to the lighting on the plates. This gave us the improved form and detailing, allowing him to keep a similar aesthetic to the previous films and not just losing him to one large, hot reflection coming in from the Image-Based Lighting. The increased specular points of interest gave us nice, tight highlights to illustrate the wet, fluid nature of Wraith, which we combined with a soft subtle bounce to help him form without flattening him out from broad, bright sky reflections.”
Venom Horse
Developing the Venom Horse was another key challenge for our team to overcome. Referencing the filmed performance of a real horse on set, the team built a full CG asset, rather than use a tracking model, in order to keep the movement looking natural while incorporating Venom’s additional size and muscle mass.
“Venom is always a much larger character than the characters he has inhabited, but Kelly Marcel really wanted to emphasise the size and power of the Venom Horse, so we ended up even a little bigger than our references on set,” David told Digital Media World.
The decision to keep Venom Horse’s strides longer and stronger than a normal horse emphasized the symbiote’s power and speed – and allowed our team to play around with other elements of his personality. Speaking with Post Magazine, David shared, “We leaned into accentuating the comic nature of the horse in performance – such as the tongue flopping out of the mouth and hitting Eddie as he rides!”
It was also important that the design of Venom Horse incorporate aspects of the original character, creating one cohesive look across the symbiote’s different physical forms. For example, the mane and tail are a mass of tendrils that mesh together when they collide, giving a liquid-like behaviour and look similar to the Wraith’s tendrils that attach to Eddie’s back.
Xenophages
Our crew also developed the look of the fearsome Xenophages, drawing inspiration from a variety of animals – from praying mantises and crocodiles to snakes and porcupines!
Because development started from a visual point of view before being passed over to our Build and Animation crews, the Xenophage’s movements could only be designed once the base look was more defined – one of the primary challenges that arose when developing these creatures, particularly when it came to the leg articulation.
“How it moved was a fun challenge for the animation team, led by Chris Lentz, which spent a lot of time playing around with different movement styles,” David shared with Digital Media World. It became an important step in the development process to run the asset through animation as quickly as possible, so adjustments could be made to avoid biomechanical issues while trying to limit changes to its look.
David shared with Art of VFX, “We settled on a variety of insectoid type movements to give us a staccato motion, with limbs and head movements that were almost mechanical, as evident in some larger beetles and spiders. As the animation team worked through their motion tests, we fed this back into adjustments to the model itself to ensure everything worked correctly, before updating to a fully functioning rig for the final asset.”
Another signature physical trait of the Xenophages is the mouth full of rotating teeth, which came to life through a combined effort between our Build and Effects teams. Speaking with Animation World Network, David said, “We would have our build department construct the external teeth, which were rigid. Our effects team would populate the interior of the mouth with these rotating teeth that pop out through these little gummy slits. It’s almost like a conveyor belt and then they come back down again.”
Green Symbiote
Of the new symbiotes the film introduced, our team worked on the the Green symbiote bonded to Officer Mulligan. Director Kelly Marcel wanted a distinctly different look and feel for this symbiote. Leaning into the concept of a translucent type appearance that showed aspects of the internal structure and vascular system, our team added complexity to the design with a rougher exterior surface, dialling iridescence onto the torso to produce a cyan-ish shimmer as it catches the light, and finished it off with a subtle, almost frosted quality to the exterior.
To compliment the symbiote’s unique look, it needed a distinct style of movement. David told Art of VFX, “The addition of a tail that split into multiple lengths allowed us to lean into a more smooth, hypnotic type of motion. Similar to a snake’s movements, it’s calm and slow, and belies the power he could unleash if he so wanted.”
Aeroplane Fight
Our work also included the aeroplane fight between Venom and the Xenophage, which consisted of extensive environment and skyscape build, creature animation for both characters, and complex FX work for the cloudscapes and plane damage.
Despite some of the sequence being shot in the studio with a section of a real plane, the final scene ended up being a fully CG sequence – save for Tom Hardy’s face and arms, which were taken from his performance in the studio, where he was shot on wires on the side of the plane.
“We had a lot of fans going when we were shooting, but it just didn’t have the terminal velocity that is so fast.” David explained to Digital Media World. “Given the extremity of the environment we would be adding in post, we would require the greater control working digitally would give us over such aspects as reflections, lighting and the character interactions as they fight.”
Driving home the speed and drama during the battle on top of the plane, additional cloth simulations were added to Venom to enhance the sense of him being liquid at his core. “His entire body, head and skin start to get this flutter like a dog hanging out a window of a fast-moving car!” David told Animation World Network.
Dancing Queen
Our team put on their dancing shoes to create another first: the iconic Venom and Mrs. Chen dance sequence! This light-hearted scene also featured work from our DNEG 360 team, who provided mocap services on set.
One of the challenges of this sequence came again from Venom’s size. When filming the choreography with the stand-in, the distance between the performers had to allow for the symbiote’s true stature, which was achieved with extendable forearms as a guide for his reach, and a large head piece to account for his height and provide an eyeline for Peggy Lu’s Mrs. Chen.
Another consideration was how Venom’s size would impact the way he moved as a dancer. David told Digital Media World, “Initially, we thought we would have to apply a much greater sense of weight and slower speed for Venom’s character compared to our dancer’s performance, but it became apparent looking at reference material of dancers that these big guys can be pretty light on their feet. So we kept Venom a little bit pacier than anticipated, and let the contrast between his normal style of movement compared to his dancing add to the humour of the situation. We just made little adjustments where required to prevent him from feeling too light – it was a fine balance.”
Sharing his thoughts on the film as a whole, David told Animation World Network, “It was fun for me to work on this kind of film because if you’ve got an idea about how something can be more exciting or might help the narrative then everyone is open to those types of ideas, which is fantastic.”