With visualization teams in both Los Angeles and London, The Third Floor supported a variety of visualization techniques for Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania. As much of the action takes place within the Quantum Realm, there was a lot of look development for worlds, creatures, weapons, vehicles and sequences that could be iterated on throughout the two-year visualization process.
“Collaborating with the director, editors and VFX supervisor, our team was tasked with solving challenges like: What’s it look like to be pulled into the Quantum Realm? How is Ant-Man’s power different in this world? What do Quantum Realm creatures look like and how do they act? How does our hero family fight against this new villain?” said Visualization Supervisor Todd Constantine.
The “Blight” sequence was especially challenging. This sequence involved trying to visually describe what a convergence of realities could look like and how the world within that would behave.
Previs by The Third Floor, ©MARVEL
Previs by The Third Floor, ©MARVEL
Final VFX shot, ©MARVEL
“The scene was about Scott having to scale down into an epicenter of converging realities, to fix Kang’s broken Time Engine Core. Many ideas were pitched for what challenges Scott would face, Constantine recalls. ” Luckily, we had James Willingham III, our Visualization Co-Supervisor based in London, on the case. After a lot of exploration, it became clear that the scene wasn’t about Scott facing a gauntlet of dangerous Quantum Realm horrors, but rather having him confront himself – thousands of them. Once that was established, the sequence began to take shape. A range of fun gags, stunts and crazy visual techniques were visualized by James and his team. Paul Rudd provided the most amazing unique performances to differentiate the many versions of himself. James and his team were instrumental in making such a complicated sequence work.”
Plate photography, ©MARVEL
Postvis, The Third Floor, ©MARVEL
Final VFX shot, ©MARVEL
Techvis was used to map out the starting and ending positions of all of the Scott versions interacting with each other, which would inform the eye lines and line-ups for the live photography. The footage would later be composited in postvis to confirm how the material worked in the edit.” Constantine adds, “It definitely was one of the sequences that had a high degree of creative experimentation that pays off through to the finished piece.”
Techvis exploring scale relationships for Giant-Man, The Third Floor, ©MARVEL
Previs frame, The Third Floor, ©MARVEL
