Over at VFXWorld they have some more information on Synthespian Studio’s contributions to Surrogates, with some great detail on how the “uncanny valley” isn’t always a bad thing.
They assigned the work to Synthespian Studios, Jeff Kleiser’s company. They scanned a digital double of Willis and Synthespian built a CG model from Eyetronics’ scan and original cleanup work. But most of the work was done in 2D in Shake. “There’s a lot of matchmoving and roto patching,” Stetson continues. “A lot of it was simply to make him look 20 years younger or so. Beyond that, there’s a certain level of perfection that we were dancing with. If we had done everything that Jonathan had asked us to do, we would’ve ended up with something that looks like bad visual effects work. But when you think about it, that look is actually what the movie was asking for. We just couldn’t go all the way with it in the visual environment that we’re in.”
via Surrogates: Definitely Not More Human Than Human | AWN | Animation World Network.
