Eaglewing Enterprises — Eagle's View Report

Cinesite's VFX work on Clash of the Titans amounted to a small part of the show, but it included the creation of massive scorpions for one of the film's centerpiece action set pieces. Cinesite's work included scouting the real locations where photography would take place to get a grip on their environment as well as designing the "scorpiochs" themselves — and making sure the audience had enough visual cues to tell the different types of oversized beast — ranging from 15 feet to 65 feet in length — apart.

Cinesite VFX supervisor Simon Stanley-Clamp estimates that his facility worked on close to 280 shots, although only 176 of them made it into the final cut. The scorpioch battle comprised 97 shots. The rest of the company's work included the transformation of Perseus' batton into a sword, replacements for one of Calibos' arms, the transformation of Calibos' hand into a scorpioch, and also scorpioch travel sequences across the desert, volcanoes, forests and other locations. For this Q&A, F&V asked Stanley-Clamp to provide a rundown of Cinesite's work on the scorpiochs, plus some information on how certain assets were handed over to Prime Focus for the last-minute rush to convert the film into 3D.

FILM & VIDEO: When did you start work?
Simon Stanley-Clamp: Back in December 2008 we did tests based on a really loose description [in the film's script]. We’ve done eight-legged creatures before — spiders — so it wasn't difficult to rig a rough rudimentary scorpion and use a digidouble we already had just to do a formative fight sequence of about eight shots. We were awarded the sequence virtually on Christmas Eve and hit the ground running January 5, 2009, working with [the film's visual effects supervisor] Nick Davis

[Character designer] Aaron Sims scanned out five drawings we were given. They were not dramatically detailed, but they showed the scorpiochs in their environment. We got an idea of this palanquin on their backs that people could sit in. They showed that the armor was quite plated, that the stinger was slightly exaggerated and oversized, so it was a beginning for our designer. We worked up about 10 or 12 designs in Mudbox and presented those in various stages over the course of about three sessions with the director. I took the Mudbox models, posed them, rendered them, and did flat Photoshop boards for presentation. The director could say, “I like the claw on that one, the tail of that one and the legs of that one.” We kept remodeling until we locked the design for the middle-sized scorpioch, and then we went through the same process for the mother, the biggest of all. We had two sizes, and we extrapolated for the ones in between.

Next you had to turn those designs into 3D models.
The Mudbox models took us to about March, and at the same time we were working on animation rigs and walk cycles. We were fine-tuning the outward look, but the underlying skeletal rig wasn't going to change — it has eight legs, claws and a tail, and an undulating body. So we were able to rig the scorpioch and start work on our initial animation. We did quite a few scenarios, and built up a little library of movies: a scorpion that would jump; a scorpion that would run; a scorpion that would stab its stinger through a figure and throw it away. Louis wrote those back into the previs, or "beat sheets," which were these descriptive, blow-by-blow accounts of how a fight would work. We then took the Mudbox models into Maya and started to do the full build on those. Texturing was going on concurrently.

How did you steer the texture decisions?
It had to be organic. We had to be careful not to make it too shellfish like. Early designs leaned toward a lobster or a crab, so we backed away from making it too shiny and mollusk-shell like. We built up a library of textures. In March 2009 I got some more reference from the location, and the tone of the rock, the cragginess of the rock, was something else that we built into the textures of the scorpiochs. They are a combination between the hard shell and the softer, muscly bits – a bit rhino skin or elephant skin, with gnarly and very deep textures.