Last year, Scott Stokdyk detailed the VFX of Borderlands. Today, he opens up about his journey into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with The Fantastic Four: First Steps — a project full of creative and technical challenges.
How did you get involved on this film?
After getting a call from Marvel, I met with the director Matt Shakman. We ended up having a two-hour conversation about VFX that marked the start of a great collaboration, where I learned as just much from Matt as he did from me!
How did you organize the work with your VFX Producer?
Cyndi Ochs setup the VFX vendor makeup and shot distribution to optimize for our short post schedule… it involved sharing major assets but gave us a lot of VFX resources for the final push. She oversaw the VFX production team through the end of principal photography until Lisa Marra came for post-production after a break from Deadpool & Wolverine. Lisa organized the VFX editors, and rebalanced work between vendors as the film evolved.
How did you choose the various vendors and split the work amongst them?
All the main vendors (ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain, and Framestore) had to all be able to have a clothed Thing asset. Other major assets like Galactus and Silver Surfer were shared as needed. Those companies were picked for their strong animation teams.
The world-building of New York required a whole other paradigm, which included a massive sharing of CG NYC between ILM and Sony Pictures Imageworks… of course, both companies have a great history of CG NYC architectural artistry and were able to step up to the challenge!
Other vendors were brought on for specialty skills… RISE did some great world environmental work, and we also used the skills of Stereo-D, Capital T, Lola Visual Effects, Barnstorm VFX, Cantina Creative, and an in-house team.
Each of the Fantastic Four has a very distinct power set. How did you approach the design language and visual identity for each of their abilities to ensure they felt cohesive yet unique?
Our conceit was for the FX part of the VFX to look 1960’s period wherever possible… so our first question was how this look would if someone had tried to do the VFX in the 1960’s optically.
For Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, the trick was introducing optical prismatic lens elements. The idea was to add art-directed real and CG elements, then distort the background to help show the force/direction/effect. The goal was to look like a digital optical effect, so that there was a 2D look/feel to it.
For Ben Grimm, the Thing, we started from a look of a person in a suit with prosthetics (we had an on-set person in a suit with prosthetics for reference and occasional in-camera use) and then pushed the facial performance to be more nuanced and reflect what Ebon Moss-Bachrach was doing on set.
For Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, we used real SFX fire elements on a black torso buck as a guide… basically trying to see what it would look like if we had a stunt-person on fire and optically combined that with the actor.
For Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, the drive was to use Pedro and his body performance wherever we could. We didn’t want to just stretch limbs, so we had Pedro move a lot of his torso when stretching, and that gave us a basis for naturalistic distortion that seemed motivated. Patterns in each of his costumes were designed to emphasize the stretching, and shot design and composition were pre-planned to keep the action period-feeling when possible.
What were the biggest challenges in bringing Reed Richards’ elastic transformations to life, especially in maintaining anatomical plausibility and emotional performance?
This was one of the biggest VFX challenges for us, and early on I wrote up a “Reed Stretch Bible” to lay down rules for the VFX stretching. Matt Shakman wanted to avoid “noodle arms” and respect human anatomy where possible.
The first goal was to try to have a nod toward preserving volume when he stretched… this mostly involved tightening the cloth and skin around stretched bones and muscles where possible. Wrinkles along the axis of stretching also helped the illusion.
The second mandate was to keep heroic poses & sculpting of the body. We were trying to counter-balance the body pose when it stretched to respect our movie physics to some extent, but the artistic concerns were the most important. We met with comic artist Alex Ross early on, and he gave us a lot of hints about how to get poses that showcased Reed’s stretching while still making him look strong and heroic.
Sue Storm’s invisibility and force fields often interact with other elements and characters. How did you balance subtlety and visibility in her effects, especially in action sequences?
Sue’s FX were more about art direction than something technically tricky. We mixed in real prismatic footage and CG 2D elements with 2D directional refraction. The idea was to have it look like a retro optical 2D effect. Multiple exposures on the edge of affected items in the frame were used to draw attention to them, and we would dial up and down the effects in different areas to compositional taste.
The Human Torch and The Thing involve complex simulations—fire and rock. Can you walk us through the technical and artistic process of developing their looks, especially how they evolved during production?
For the Human Torch, different vendors handled simulations on their own. Art direction wise, we were matching to SFX reference fire in hues and scale. Static Johnny’s flames were easier because we could even split in real 2D FX in areas if needed. For flying fire, we had to deal with speed, wind, blurring, and attachment point issues that were per-shot. At that point we diverged from what was more physically accurate to what was aesthetically more pleasing, i.e. how edges broke up and when/how the tail dissipated in screen space. This was very different than the Excelsior launch, for example, where we just matched very strictly to archival 1960s Apollo XI launch footage.
For Ben Grimm, each Thing vendor made up a lot of controls for the rocks in the face, so that they would not intersect, and could hit key face shapes smoothly. It was like a jigsaw puzzle to not have cracks getting too big or deep, and to have the rock pieces to move to quickly to hit phoneme shapes.
The Silver Surfer is such an iconic character with a sleek yet otherworldly aesthetic. How did you modernize her look while staying true to her comic book roots?
Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding from Marvel experimented with a lot of different looks in preproduction, and the VFX team led by Sony Pictures Imageworks tried to stay true to this look while making it look as realistic and integrated as possible in our movie world.
One key design element was the white eyes, which evoked the silver-age comic design by Jack Kirby. The VFX team decided to emphasize the eye’s darker limbal rings, to bring a little more humanity and beauty to her face.
After much experimentation on the surface, we ended up with mostly a mix of two layers – a “brushed metal” underlayer to read expressions & keep Julia Garner’s likeness, and a “chrome” overlay that added shiny reflections for beauty and environment integration. In addition, we also sometimes would restrict unflattering reflections and/or contain them in areas where diffuse light would hit. Our objective was to make her look both beautiful and powerful… when the reflections weren’t behaving, our fallback was to render a 360 wedge of rotated reflections on a still frame, then pick what looked best in the shot!
How did you approach the animation and surfboard physics of the Silver Surfer to emphasize both grace and power in her movement?
The movie Silver Surfer was a little different than a real surfer in the fact that she fully controlled the surfboard, rather than real surfing, where the movement of a wave pushes against the board and the surfer pushes back… she is also often moving in 3D space, and in zero-G!
So, our main body starting point was the performance Julia Garner gave with help from her movement coach Jennifer White and her surf instructor Tehillah McGuinness. Aside from that, it was up to animators to work within the sequences to come up with cool actions and poses that were appropriate for the story. Sometimes the Previs for the shot was working well, and they stayed closer to that, but other times the animators drew inspiration from themselves, surfing videos, and their own ideas.
For the facial performance, a Head Mounted Camera was always used, so that animators could have reference and mocap available… we often found that bigger movements led to weird reflections in motion, so often we were toning down some of the movements, especially around the mouth.
Galactus represents a cosmic-scale threat. What design philosophies guided your team when visualizing a being of such unimaginable scale and presence?
Ryan Meinerding, who designed Galactus for our movie, wanted him to feel like a massive spaceship. To achieve this, we populated his surface with layers and layers of “greebles”, like you would in a miniature, and added internal lighted “windows”.
The costume department took a first pass on the design, making a practical suit for Ralph Ineson to wear, which VFX scanned. Starting with the scan, ILM upped the resolution of the model dramatically to hold up to close-up shots. It almost ended up needing fractal levels of detail for some of the closeups, which needed their own model upgrades.
Were there any particular influences—concept art, previous films, or cosmic phenomena—that helped you and your team define the visual language for both Silver Surfer and Galactus?
Matt Shakman and Marvel were very interested in paying homage to a lot of the original Jack Kirby design elements, so that was always in the back of our heads. Most of the concept artwork was drawn with inspiration from the 1960’s comic books.
For the film overall, the cinematographer Jess Hall pulled references from 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Graduate, and The French Connection. Our lighting and materials for the Surfer and Galactus needed to fit into that aesthetic. The Surfer Naturally reflected her environment, but Galactus had to be adjusted for different environments (dark moody World Ship in Space vs overcast outdoor period NYC).
Galactus’s monumental size must present unique animation and framing challenges. How did you manage the sense of scale in both interaction and movement without losing clarity or emotional impact?
From the start of Previs, Galactus’ size was a constant discussion point. Since we had decided early on to shoot the actor in a costume as if he was a 1/50 scale miniature, we involved our director of photography in previs and consulted with Ian Hunter on how to make miniatures feel large scale. A lot of lens choices and distance/angles were experimented with in Previs shot contexts, so we had a good idea of what worked.
The catch was that his scale was very environment dependent… we ended up having to do “King Kong Rules”, where we would cheat his scale as needed. The one thing we did was try to cheat his scale in sequences, not surrounding shots… so if he was 2000ft tall in the World Ship, he stayed roughly that scale for all those shots… and if he needed to squeeze into Times Square at 300ft tall, we would not stray far from that in adjacent shots.
We also did a test shoot with different frame rates, and after looking at the footage on an IMAX screen decided to go either 48 or 60fps. 60fps felt good for a lot of body movement, but 48fps allowed us to split in 24fps dialog more easily.
The film’s version of New York evokes a dreamlike take on the 1960s. What kind of visual references and tools did you use to create this idealized, almost nostalgic version of the city?
We started current New York and stripped out any buildings that were built post-1960. Those buildings were replaced with either library period buildings, or from a roster of newly created retro-future buildings.
Our production designer, Kasra Farahani picked from real retro-future buildings that have been built around the world plus some original designs. Those architectural designs were often inspired by people like Syd Mead and Finnish designer Eero Saarinen.
How did you blend stylized worldbuilding with photorealistic effects to maintain audience immersion in this alternate, retro-futuristic Manhattan?
Almost every VFX Supervisor wants to shoot as much in-camera as possible, but early on we realized how little we could get in-camera for the scale of the world we were creating. There were two major areas where we could shoot: an almost full-scale NYC Times Square, and real modern New York City.
As extensive as our Times Square set was, it really gave us a great ground floor with period look and design. Everything above roughly the first floor was CG/VFX extension, including animated billboards reminiscent of 1960’s Times Square but with bespoke designs. We also had to extend down the streets with buildings, cars, people, and more billboard designs.
For our New York City footage, anything below the second floor had to be replaced because it looked too modern, and we also had to remove any buildings that were built after the 1960s. We replaced any of the modern buildings with retro-future designed CG buildings.
Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of the collaboration between the separate VFX companies… although ILM took the lead on The Thing and Galactus, and SPI took the lead on the Surfer, everyone shared info and insights. We ended up having joint vendor reviews from the start where we were developing animation up until the final approval process with the director and studio!
How long have you worked on this show?
I worked for about a year and a half.
What’s the VFX shots count?
2015 shots in the Final Cut of the movie.
What is your next project?
I’m taking a break for a while…
A big thanks for your time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
ILM: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on ILM website.
Framestore: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Framestore website.
Sony Pictures Imageworks: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Sony Pictures Imageworks website.
Digital Domain: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Digital Domain website.
RISE: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on RISE website.
Weta FX: Dedicated page about The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Weta FX website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025
