My latest article lands over at ILM.com as I sit down with ILM Visual Effects Supervisor Chad Wiebe to discuss his teams work on Marvel Studios Thunderbolts*, and the challenges of bringing something visually different to the screen as the New Avengers face a challenge unlike any before – Bob*.
One of the most striking elements of Thunderbolts* is a new character in the MCU, Bob, and his dark alter ego, Void. Both thematically and visually, his soul-sucking powers are a powerful addition to the film, taking inspiration from both the comics and the film’s director, Jake Schreier. The task fell to the artists at ILM to bring these concepts to life.
“It was a unique challenge to visualize Void’s powers without leaning into anything too typical or too magical. The way Void turned people into shadowed silhouettes being a prime example. It needed to feel like a subtle but impactful event,” says Wiebe. “There were a surprising number of iterations that we went through to figure out that look. We spanned the full spectrum of ideas, going from something that felt like a single frame flash, to longer, drawn-out versions showing detailed shadows projected onto surfaces in a variety of different ways. We tried different aesthetics before we arrived on a quick but impactful effect that had a complexity to its simplicity, which also relied on the audio design to sell it as this somber but impactful moment.”
The process from concept to completion required numerous iterations and refinements.
“We started shadow dev with Jay Cooper all the way back in May of 2023, and that wasn’t too dissimilar from what we continued to do all the way up to the final months of the show,” Wiebe explains. “With a pivotal character such as Void, getting it to a 90% or 95% point of completion is the easy part, relatively speaking. It’s dialing those nuances in the last 5% or 10% that’s a very iterative and collaborative process.
- Sentry
