Grimm Morphing Effects

One of current television shows that I enjoy is NBC's fairy tale retelling known as Grimm. While the rival fairy tale show Once Upon a Time from Disney focuses on a retelling of its trademark characters, NBC's version focuses mostly on a retelling of The Brother's Grimm tales in a detective format. The main aspect of this show that I have come to enjoy are the morph effects the various characters go through into their various wessen (fairy-tale creature) forms. In each episode there is is always a guest star brought on for the episode that is usually a new type of wessen we haven't seen before. The part that I have always found fascinating is analyzing types of creatures these actors play, and seeing how well their wessen forms blended with the human forms.

According to HIVE FX the process for creating these character forms is usually some thing like this: "Most creatures begin as photos of the actors taken from every angle. Next, the photos are used to create 3D replicas of their heads using tracking points as a reference. Pixologic's ZBrush is used for 3D sculpting, and models are rigged and animated in Maya. Cinema 4D is used for hair, surfacing, lighting, and rendering"(Maxon). "Most creatures begin as photos of the actors taken from every angle. Next, the photos are used to create 3D replicas of their heads using tracking points as a reference. Pixologic's ZBrush is used for 3D sculpting, and models are rigged and animated in Maya. Cinema 4D is used for hair, surfacing, lighting, and rendering"One innovative thing that this show has done as far as visual fx, has been the way the artists blend their human and wessen morphs by moving the various shapes that make up both versions of the character's face and adjusting the individual layers with each difference in between forms to match the displacement between forms.

As of this point, if the session this week is any indication I am light years from even being ready to touch this level of animation and graphics. But this is an aspect that I would like to touch on given the chance. The things that appeals to me the most the idea of designing a various species for this world. While my drawing skills are currently need improvement, I could see myself working the concept design of some of these characters. (after several how to lessons of course)