The MCU series, She-Hulk: Lawyer had been the target of a lot of criticism for various reasons when it premiered in August, and its not-so-flattering CGI was one of them. But a VFX artist who worked on the Disney+ series provided an explanation for that in a recent interview, as he explained the reasons for She-Hulk’s controversial CG look.
Comparing the character of Tatiana Maslany with Josh Brolin’s supervillain Thanos, the Marvel VFX artist pointed out that the main reason why the CG aspects regarding the former might not have been the most impressive was because of the “range of emotions” this She-Hulk’s superhero had to portray on screen, which made things all the more difficult for the digital and technical team to navigate.
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Marvel VFX Artist Reveals Why She-Hulk encountered CGI issues
Head of Animation at Digital Domain, Jan Philip Cramer has worked as an animation director for various hit MCU movies including Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgameand Spiderman: Homecoming. And one of his most recent projects was supervising the visual effects of the Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Lawyer.
When Cramer sat down with Before after to talk about Jessica Gao’s legal superhero comedy, he revealed how their team ran into some issues with the CGI elements of Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk and how it was a much tougher job than it hadn’t been while they’d been working on the Thanos character.
“It’s also important to remember that Thanos was a bald, angry man, and that Tatiana is a bubbly young actress with a huge range of emotions, and she portrays them very vividly on her face.”
Related: ‘Thanos or Hulk…it’s so different’: She-Hulk director defends bad CGI as Jennifer Walters isn’t big enough
Tatiana Maslany’s She-Hulk was developed in such a way that it was imperative that her character represent “a full range of emotions and facial expressions”, which wasn’t the case with the Eternal-Deviant Warlord, as all Thanos had to do was look angry and intimidating.
“It turns out the difficulty was way above what we created for Thanos, because Thanos didn’t need to show a lot of emotion. He just looked great when he was staring stoically at the camera or angry. But now, with She-Hulk, we had to show a full range of emotions and facial expressions, including joy, drunkenness, and laughter, while speaking, and the system still has to maintain and capture that.
Not to mention, the series creator had already admitted to not having a fully structured plan when it comes to CGI effects relating to the character earlier this year before the series was released.
Why She-Hulk Is Different From Other Marvel Characters
As Cramer explained the difficulties they faced with developing She-Hulk’s CGI, Sidney Kombo-Kintombo, another professional animator who worked on the series, mentioned how the character of She-hulk is a “full human” unlike the plethora of other MCU superheroes, which sets her apart more.
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“If you look at She-Hulk, even compared to all the other female characters we’ve done, there’s no question. She’s a full human character. Marvel didn’t even make her a caricature of anything. Even the Hulk is a bit of a caricature, right? He’s got a smaller nose, he’s got a massive jawbone.
This particular aspect of Jennifer Walters was perhaps one of the biggest challenges the showrunners and creative directors faced. And that’s exactly why audiences need to keep in mind the range of things that go into building and developing a character before they blast a show for not doing enough, because it’s all Easier said than done.
Season 1 of She-Hulk: Lawyer is on Disney+.
Source: The Direct
