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[Divvy]

I always knew Ottawa had an unusually high Shawarma restaurant density. Every other store in the downtown area is a shawarma place.

 

[LiK]

The ending of Incredible Hulk explicitly shows Banner able to control his transformations.

Loved that shot of Norton.

 

[Parallax]

Why do people have such a hard on for Ant Man.
He has never been an interesting character to me, and the only interesting things he had was when he was a wife beating douche.
Avengers have Stark and Banner as their token brains.
Pym just does not strike me as someone who would be interesting on film, even if it may lead to Ultron.

While I disagree with your point, I do think it's odd that hank is the only one noted as a wife beater, when reed Richards has done the same thing and doesn't have the black cloud hanging over his head. And pym with the the right actor could be more than interesting. The growing/shrinking mechanic is still cool, but people don't want to touch him.

 

[marrec]

My reaction was something like: "yep, that's hawkeye".

I couldn't help it, every time Hawkeye 'cocked' his bow I burst out laughing.

 

[Slayven]

I couldn't help it, every time Hawkeye 'cocked' his bow I burst out laughing.

Korna laughed too.

 

[StrikerObi]

The staff was the key to many parts of his plan.
2nd it was there to rile up all of the Avengers. When they are all arguing before the explosion there are shots of all of them acting as if something is wrong, eye rubbing head shaking, like they are all surfing from a migraine.

His plan was to build up distrust and he knew that coming attack would lead to the Bruce hulking out from the impending explosion.

But the staff wasn't the reason he couldn't control the Hulk. If it was the staff causing his lack of control he would have changed while holding it. He didn't he put it down checked the computer and before he could tell them the location of the cube the attack started.

So the staff, in this way, is similar to the pink ooze in Ghostbusters 2. It amplifies negative energy, and caused a fight that resulted in Banner transforming into the Hulk.

Edit: LOL at schwarma search volume.

 

[LosDaddie]

While I disagree with your point, I do think it's odd that hank is the only one noted as a wife beater, when reed Richards has done the same thing and doesn't have the black cloud hanging over his head. And pym with the the right actor could be more than interesting. The growing/shrinking mechanic is still cool, but people don't want to touch him.

I don't believe Ant Man is a popular enough superhero to justify the expensive budget it would take to do his movie right.

 

[Hawkian]

I always knew Ottawa had an unusually high Shawarma restaurant density. Every other store in the downtown area is a shawarma place.

this is so great

 

[Solo]

Avengers Domestic Total is 207.1!
http://www.deadline.com/2012/05/avenger-update-205m-record-domestic/

Still not actuals yet though, right?

Great googly moogly though.

 

[Parallax]

I don't believe Ant Man is a popular enough superhero to justify the expensive budget it would take to do his movie right.

Being a founding member, that's a damn shame

 

[marrec]

Being a founding member, that's a damn shame

It's hard to sell a guy who's first power was shrinking down and controlling ants. His growth didn't come till later and most people don't know about it.

 

[The Technomancer]

Honestly, I think the shrinking thing alone could make a good movie and an appealing character. The single biggest hurdle is that his name is fucking Ant Man

 

[ultron87]

I'd love it if they did a whole movie with Ant Man where he only shrinks himself and then at the very end he finally gets gigantic and wrecks some faces.

 

[watership]

Why do people have such a hard on for Ant Man.
He has never been an interesting character to me, and the only interesting things he had was when he was a wife beating douche.
Avengers have Stark and Banner as their token brains.
Pym just does not strike me as someone who would be interesting on film, even if it may lead to Ultron.

Henry Pym is a pretty interesting and complex character imo. He's had such ups and downs, huge guilt issues, and mental illness. And he has had like.. 8 super hero identities. I'd love to see him in the next film. Shrinking and growing in a live action movie tho? That crosses a line in some people's minds. Even if they accept the Hulk.

 

[Solo]

$38M CLEAR of the second place OW of all time.

WOW.

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

Honestly, I think the shrinking thing alone could make a good movie and an appealing character. The single biggest hurdle is that his name is fucking Ant Man

In Edgar Wright, I trust.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Honestly, I think the shrinking thing alone could make a good movie and an appealing character. The single biggest hurdle is that his name is fucking Ant Man

They can get over that name if they can make and market a good movie like they did with Iron Man. Who would have thought Spider-Man would have taken off, everybody hates those mothafuckas, lol.

Of course, since Edgar Wright is directing it nobody will see it but us Edgar Wright fans.

 

[KevinCow]

I saw a comment on this video on Youtube:

nathan fillion should definitely play antman... just get him in avengers 2 somehow

And then I geeked out a little bit because that would be awesome.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

FXGuide's podcast covering the Avengers is up:

http://www.fxguide.com/fxpodcasts/fxpodcast-the-avengers/

We talk with Jeff White from ILM about Hulk, digital New York and more in the mega blockbuster hit The Avengers.

They also have a really in-depth article on creating the VFX of the movie, detailing what each vfx house was responsible for creating. There's not as much stuff on ILM in this since a good portion of that is covered in the podcast.

Brief snippet of each section quoted below, but do read the entire article.

fxguide.com/featured/vfx-roll-call-for-the-avengers

ILM was a principal vendor on the film, responsible for creating many of the film’s digital assets – from the Helicarrier, to New York streets and buildings, to digi-doubles of the characters, plus the Hulk and Iron Man. Many of these assets were also shared between vendors.

ILM built virtual body doubles, digital characters and aliens for The Avengers, but to the surprise of many perhaps the scene stealer of the film is the Hulk played by Mark Ruffalo. This is due to the less than fully successful earlier attempts at digital Hulks.

...

ILM’s Jeff White points out that they “did a lot of animation work in terms of selling the weight and that was hard slog to get it right and to get all the pieces working together to make his mass believable, beyond that we did several rounds of simulation as far as the muscle dynamics and the skin – to help make that all work together”, he explains. “Fairly early in the production cycle we had that shot where he (the Hulk) is running behind Black Widow and that felt like the slow motion: ‘Olympics footage’ – where we were going to be able to see everything – see every detail, see the muscles jiggling up and down – everything that would go into a 1600 pound guy running down a hall.”

...

Ruffalo was on location for each actual filmed performance with the other actors, in a mocap suit, which was captured by the hero camera and four extra motion capture HD cameras (2 full body, 2 trained on his face). Once the cut was roughed out, and the shots were staged, “Mark and Joss came back to ILM and we were able to do another capture session on the mocap stage,” adds White.

Naturally there was a range of shots that had to be straight ahead keyframe animation, since Ruffalo could not jump on buildings or leap around as much as the script required. The seamless integration of the motion capture with the keyframe animation is a testament to the outstanding skill of the ILM character animation team. One example of a hybrid shot is the gag doll “puny god” shot where the Hulk slams around Loki in Tony Stark’s apartment. Not only is the scene extremely funny, but it blends captured face and body animation with key frame animation, simulation and RBS. It also involves dialogue lip sync animation for the Hulk.

The vast majority of the New York of Avengers is digital. About ten city blocks by about four blocks was digitally re-created.

...

To rebuild the streets, ILM sent a team into New York to photograph the city. “It was the ultimate culmination of building on the virtual background technology (at ILM),” says White. “We started with the biggest photography shoot I know we have done here, which was 8 weeks with four photographers out in the streets of New York.” The team shot some 1800 x 360 degree Pano-spheres of NY, using the Canon 1D with a 50mm lens – tiled, and as an HDR bracketed set

...

Once all the images were captured, tiled and combined, another team set to removing (painting out) all the ground level people, cars and objects. Then a third team would re-populate the streets with digital assets ready to be seen in perspective or perhaps blown up. ILM came up with complex algorithmic traffic scripts to populate streets and create the sort of traffic grid lock any real world incident like this would naturally cause.

And all of this is before the vast destruction simulations were done, cars flipped or the aliens were animated to flight the heroes. Ground level, is one problem, but much of the action takes place many stories up in the air, requiring entire buildings populated with windows – most with offices or apartments theoretically seen behind them.

Scanline VFX, under visual effects supervisor Bryan Grill, completed early reveal shots of the Helicarrier, from the moment Black Widow and Captain America introduce themselves to Bruce Banner on the carrier deck up to the point where it lifts off as a flying ship. To do this, ILM shared its carrier assets with Scanline, which then relied on its fluid simulation software Flowline to complete the water work.

The deck sequence was filmed on an airfield in New Mexico. “They blocked out the airfield with the set design of the top of an aircraft carrier,” says Grill. “They had a couple of planes and bucks but the area of the tower was just a 40 x 40 set piece. It was only dressed 40 x 10. There were some shipping containers on top to fill out some of the top area, but we needed to fill out the shots with water, sky, jets and parts of the ship.”

The Helicarrier then begins its transformation into a flying machine. “There were a couple of shots where we were looking at the water and you couldn’t tell if it was getting ready to submerge,” notes Grill, “so we took a lot of care to make sure we didn’t give the gag up too early. Once you start seeing it lift out of the water and see the fans, you get what it’s going to be.”

“For this,” adds Grill, “we received ILM’s model and then added more detail where we needed. We would throw it through every one of our cameras that we were going to be rendering. They allowed us to add things in as well and also to keep the scale, so that when we did get to the water sims it did look like a three football fields-long thing. And then our updated models also went back to ILM to Weta for some of their shots as well.”

...

Not only just a flying fortress, the Helicarrier is further revealed to contain a cloaking device, achieved mostly by Scanline as a 2D comp in Nuke with some added element renders out of Max. “We wanted it to look like it was technology that might exist,” says Grill. “There’s a lot of new technology coming out where materials or paints have LED-type of science. That’s what we based it off – a film or paint on the outside of the carrier. It’s out there now in real life – you can print on any material and have it light up with LED lights.”

“We referenced the idea of a Jumbotron at a sporting event which when it activates you see the pixels light up,” continues Grill.

Hawkeye, under Loki’s control, flies up to the Helicarrier and blows up one of its rotors. Part of the sequence that follows features Captain America and Iron Man trying to repair the vessel by re-starting the damaged engine. Weta Digital, using shared assets from ILM, worked on these shots.

...

Weta crafted some specific builds for views of the Helicarrier in the sequence, including the shot of Hawkeye’s arrow penetrating the ship prior to the explosion. Artists also spent significant time working on volumetric clouds for surrounding shots. “There are about 5km of clouds in every direction,” notes Williams. “The clouds have light scattering approximation – you get that bleed through the cloud with the light scattering and bouncing from one surface to another. So if you have a bright light shining on a cloud it will actually indirectly light the other parts of the cloud.”

For that, Weta used isotropic scattering – where the light would bleed along the axis that it entered the cloud. “Light scatters in the direction that it entered,” explains Williams.

...

Captain America heads out to the engine in hopes of repairing it and to fight off the mercenaries. Sections of the damaged Helicarrier where Cap is working were modeled out and passed back to ILM, with a few digi-double additions also necessary. Then, the engine and blade section was also modeled in high detail for Iron Man to attempt to spin it into a re-start. “The model from ILM was so beautiful but it was never meant to be viewed from that close, so we got to go in and show what was inside it,” says Williams. “We took the stuff in the script that called it a Maglev section and embedded a bunch of these copper magnets in the tips of the blades and also along the wall, and then hid them by carbon fiber appliqués that went over the top of them so it still looked a relatively smooth wall, but the damage would blow away an entire section of the panel, so you’d see all these banks of copper magnets.”

Weta’s final contribution involving the Helicarrier involved Thor being tricked into the iso-cell by Loki and being sent hurtling towards the ground. “In every shot he fell through clouds – every shot!,” jokes Williams. “It helped with showing him falling, even though there aren’t that many layers of clouds normally. It was a bit of a cheat but it allowed us to get a sense of travel and scale."

...

A handful of the close-up iso-cell shots were replaced with digital versions, with a real Thor in the plate, to accommodate the fast movement of shadows as it falls. “We also tracked Thor for all the 3D shots and then rendered back a digi double for all the reflections on the glass,” says Wiliams. “And we ray traced the iso cell into the glass so you also saw the proper occlusions of light and sky in the glass. But we sometimes had to turn those off because what looks correct isn’t always correct. But we always set out to do what’s right first, because if you start from there you’re always at a much better point than if you just ignore realism and try to be artistic. You’re still being artistic but you’re basing it on what the eye can see.”

The forest duel follows a vignette that begins as Loki steps outside the museum, transforms into his armour and is confronted by Iron Man et al. “We worked on that all the way through to the Quinjet to the scenes of Thor taking Loki and all the way to the end where the forest blows up and it’s Thor, Iron Man and Captain America saying ‘are we done yet?’, says Weta Digital’s Guy Williams.

...

For the initial fight scene in the car park, production flipped real cars on set in Cleveland during night shoots. “We would send our photographic team out there and took photos of every building within five blocks,” recalls Williams. “And we photographed all the cars and props, just to cover us. We knew we’d put a blue glow into the sceptre Loki carries, but we didn’t anticipate they’d have a stunt sceptre on set for safety reasons. So we ended up replacing that in every fight scene since it was a rubber blade and put the blue glows. There were plasma shots from one of our effects guys that left a nice trail.”

Scenes of Iron Man in the fight were digital Weta creations, using ILM’s model – one of many assets successful shared during the production. “We also had the fantastic suit from Legacy Effects which was really nicely painted,” notes Williams. “It was excellent lighting reference. Then for the CG model, we’ve developed some tools to help migrate things from other companies. We take their texture space and use ray tracing, for instance, to migrate over to ours. And then we start painting what maps are missing, for example. They might use projected textures or procedural textures that can’t be passed off, so it’s easier for us to do the paint work.”

...

Using an ILM model of the Quinjet and a digi-double of Thor, Weta then created shots of the flying God taking Loki onto the mountaintop. “We ingested both of those things into our system, adding detail to the jet and built our cloth sims into that based on our own systems,” says Williams. “We re-groomed the hair from scratch because no two hair tools are ever going to be the same.

...

Iron Man confronts Thor and the two battle it out – aggressively – in the forest. For those shots, again the Legacy suit was used for reference but most shots were digital. The forest scenes were filmed in a reservation outside of Albuquerque. “There was a real thought given to not damage any of the land,” says Williams, “so any kind of destruction was either added digitally or achieved by bringing stuff in and taking it out again. We didn’t hurt any real trees. A couple of prop trees were built that only went up about 30 or 40 feet that had destruction applied to them. There was also a fire ban so all the lightning effects and fire had to be done in post.”

Responsible for on-screen graphics in the NASA JDEM Lab, S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier bridge, and science lab sequences, and for Iron Man’s HUD and some other Stark devices, was Cantina Creative, headed up by Sean Cushing (Executive Producer) and Stephen Lawes (Creative Director) and Venti Hristova (Visual effects supervisor).

Evil Eye delivered multiple shots inside the Helicarrier, including compositing in views from the Wishbone Lab (shot against greenscreen), comp’ig in monitor graphics and adding FX for Loki’s scepter.

“We did the opening ten minutes of the movie, other than the opening set-up in space,” says Hydraulx’s Colin Strause. “Loki arrives at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, then escapes. A black hole forms and the whole base is destroyed, then the jeep and chopper chase Loki, the tunnel implodes and the chopper crashes and Loki escapes by driving off. We also did the last shot of Loki and Thor where they re-activate the cube and blast off at the end of the movie.”

Luma Pictures worked on shots featuring the Helicarrier’s bridge, carrying out both set extensions and compositing in graphic and monitor displays developed by Cantina Creative. Exterior views as the Helicarrier flies also featured volumetric clouds.

Fuel VFX completed shots for sequences taking place near Tony Stark’s penthouse in Stark Tower, including hologram, New York views and extending the CG facade of the the Tower.

A further contributor was Digital Domain, which, under visual effects supervisor Erik Nash, created CG set extensions for the asteroid environment seen as the first and very last shots. The environment is also featured where Loki and The Other meet. DD created an all-CG floating staircase, and also augmented the The Other’s prosthetic makeup.

Method Design, part of Method Studios, contributed the main on end titles for Avengers, a sequence that traverses through the battle-scared costumes of the film’s heroes in super macro.

 

[The Elite]

Was Thanos CG and mo-cap or the actor in make-up?

 

[noah111]

Henry Pym is a pretty interesting and complex character imo. He's had such ups and downs, huge guilt issues, and mental illness. And he has had like.. 8 super hero identities. I'd love to see him in the next film. Shrinking and growing in a live action movie tho? That crosses a line in some people's minds. Even if they accept the Hulk.

I honestly think it's inevitable at this point, probably a summer 2014 release as well, before we see Avengers 2. I can't fucking wait.

 

[Hex]

I'd love it if they did a whole movie with Ant Man where he only shrinks himself and then at the very end he finally gets gigantic and wrecks some faces.

"Honey I shrunk the Super Hero"

 

[Divvy]

Nathan Fillion would have to lose a pretty large amount of weight to play a superhero.

 

[noah111]

Was Thanos CG and mo-cap or the actor in make-up?

Mocapped CG I think, but it could be a mixture. Great stuff, looking forward to listening in when I wake up. Can't wait to see it again tomorrow. Until then, I shall sleep a sleep full of MCU dreams.

 

[Slayven]

For a "wife beater" Pym sure did get alot of chicks to fall for him. And he only had to build one.

 

[Solo]

Nathan Fillion would have to lose a pretty large amount of weight to play a superhero.

Nathamn Fillion would have to be anybody but Nathan Fillion to ever be cast in a billion dollar franchise sequel.

 

[Tobor]

Nathamn Fillion would have to be anybody but Nathan Fillion to ever be cast in a billion dollar franchise sequel.

They used to say that about RDJ, bro.

 

[marrec]

I saw a comment on this video on Youtube:


And then I geeked out a little bit because that would be awesome.

If we have a Fillion Ant-Man then that would preclude a Captain Hammer appearance, I'd rather have Captain Hammer than Ant-Man.

 

[Solo]

They used to say that about RDJ, bro.

RDJ was never money/ratings poison like Fillion (although I guess he's shed that a bit with Castle).

 

[LiK]

Was Thanos CG and mo-cap or the actor in make-up?

Looked 100% CG to me.

 

[Tobor]

RDJ was never money/ratings poison like Fillion (although I guess he's shed that a bit with Castle).

Exactly. I'm not saying it should definitely be him, but is there really an argument at this point that Marvel can't take a guy to the next level? Look at Ruffalo.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Was Thanos CG and mo-cap or the actor in make-up?

I added another line to DD's section to cover it. They didn't specify what kind of "touching up" they did to the prosthetic though.

 

[The Elite]

I added another line to DD's section to cover it. They didn't specify what kind of "touching up" they did to the prosthetic though.

Thanks.

 

[Divvy]

Nathamn Fillion would have to be anybody but Nathan Fillion to ever be cast in a billion dollar franchise sequel.

Well Nathan Fillion would have to lose a Nathan Fillion sized mass in order to play that role. Maybe that mass contains the ratings poison part of him.

 

[soundscream]

RDJ was never money/ratings poison like Fillion (although I guess he's shed that a bit with Castle).

Its amazing looking back at his career, how far he is come. In the 90's I thought he was deffinotly going to die from an overdose. It seemed like every 6 moths he was getting arrested.

 

[LiK]

Nathan Fillion would have to lose a pretty large amount of weight to play a superhero.

not a problem for Hollywood. personal trainers galore.

 

[Hawkian]

Nathan Fillion would not have to lose any weight to play a character that can change size at will

 

[george_us]

This movie made me pick up Thanos Imperative. I love cosmic Marvel stuff so I hope this is awesome.

 

[Divvy]

not a problem for Hollywood. personal trainers galore.

Haha yeah, it was just surprising when I watched Castle recently how much weight he had put on since Firefly.

 

[Funky Papa]

Uh, what about Alan Tudyk? Dude has RANGE and is actually pretty ripped.

 

[Solo]

Its amazing looking back at his career, how far he is come. In the 90's I thought he was deffinotly going to die from an overdose. It seemed like every 6 moths he was getting arrested.

Without living the lifestyle RDJ did in the 80's/90's, he wouldn't be the boss silver fox he is now.

 

[The Elite]

Fillion cannot carry his own big budget film. If Fillion is cast in a small part as Pym in one of the other films than maybe they can build him into something for the Avengers 2.

But it ain't gonna happen. Feige probably has a lot of other options before Fillion.

 

[The Elite]

not a problem for Hollywood. personal trainers galore.

I'd be ripped if I was a movie star.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Uh, what about Alan Tudyk? Dude has RANGE and is actually pretty ripped.

Been saying it for a while, he wold be an awesome Pym. And it would make the Whedonites happy as well. Fillion is wrong for the role.

 

[LiK]

Fillion cannot carry his own big budget film. If Fillion is cast in a small part as Pym in one of the other films than maybe they can build him into something for the Avengers 2.

But it ain't gonna happen. Feige probably has a lot of other options before Fillion.

I dunno, people were worried about Evans and Hemsworth being the leads when they were cast. It's possible.

 

[The Elite]

I dunno, people were worried about Evans and Hemsworth being the leads when they were cast. It's possible.

Hemsworth is one of the few actors in Hollywood who could pull off Thor due to the combination of size and charisma.

Evans has a film career. It may not be a great film career but he was an established film actor before CA.

Fillion has charisma. I'll give him that.

 

[KevinCow]

I added another line to DD's section to cover it. They didn't specify what kind of "touching up" they did to the prosthetic though.

You mentioned The Other, but that was a different character from Thanos. Thanos looked entirely CG to me.

Fillion cannot carry his own big budget film. If Fillion is cast in a small part as Pym in one of the other films than maybe they can build him into something for the Avengers 2.

But it ain't gonna happen. Feige probably has a lot of other options before Fillion.

Well, Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie is gonna be about Hank Pym and Scott Lang. Presumably Scott Lang will be the main Ant-Man, and Hank will kinda serve as his mentor. So he wouldn't be carrying it alone.

I honestly don't know much about Ant-Man, though. I just think RDJ and Nathan Fillion had amazing chemistry in that short scene and it would be great to see more of that.

 

[Manos: The Hans of Fate]

Uh, what about Alan Tudyk? Dude has RANGE and is actually pretty ripped.

All I can ever think of when I see him is The Leader in Strangers With Candy. lol

 

[LiK]

All I can ever think of when I see him is The Leader in Strangers With Candy. lol

I only remember him as the drugged out guy in Death at a Funeral.

 

[Funky Papa]

He played a terrific villain in Dollhouse.