Giant Killer Robots Delivers Fantastic FX

San Francisco-based vfx shop Giant Killer Robots (GKR) played a lead role in bringing 20th Century Fox’s latest superhero extravaganza, Fantastic Four, from the pages of Marvel comics to the silver screen. As the film’s primary vfx vendor, GKR delivered nearly 200 shots, including all of the fire effects associated with Johnny Storm’s transformation into the Human Torch, as well as Dr. Doom’s power to absorb and re-direct electricity. The crew also went to great lengths to create a virtual New York City, which provides a backdrop for much of the movie’s action.

“Bringing the classic comic-book superheroes and their arch-rival, Dr. Doom, to the big screen was a Herculean task a long-time in the making,” says Pete Oberdorfer, Fantastic Four‘s vfx supervisor and founding partner of Giant Killer Robots. “We knew that the legions of Fantastic Four fans would hold us to an exceptionally high standard and we did not want to disappoint them.”

For the Human Torch sequences, the GKR team invented an effect to capture the organic properties of fire and generate natural-looking flames by simulating the laws of fluid dynamics. The effect was then applied to a digital double of actor Chris Evans, which was generated from a 3D laser scan.

With so many superheroes using the Big Apple as a battleground these days, you’d think the city would be completely trashed by now. That’s where effects wizards like those at GKR come in handy. Using thousands of photographs and aerial footage shot from helicopters, GKR artists authentically recreated parts of the metropolis so characters to fall from the sky, shoot down city streets and wreak havoc in downtown Manhattan without leaving the producers with hefty repair bills.

Giant Killer Robots has won both Oscars and Emmys for its digital effects and animation work. The boutique’s credits include New Line Cinema’s Son of the Mask and Blade Trinity; Warner Bro.’s The Matrix: Reloaded, The Matrix: Revolutions, Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the Oscar-winning What Dreams May Come; 20th Century Fox’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; and the Emmy-winning Hallmark TV mini-series Dreamkeeper.