Those surprised by the success of Runaway Box Office “A Minecraft film” would do well to remember which director Jared Hess (“Nacho Libre,” “Napoleon Dynamite”) and his screenwriter always understood: the universal appeal to explore a fun, open world. Or in this case worlds. They could translate the appealing to film And give it a compelling focus. “A Minecraft film” Leaning into the game’s ingenuity and the timeless desire to seek freedom versus oppression.
In this latest iteration, it is the fight against the villainous Malgosha (expressed by Rachel House and performed by Mo-Cap actor Allan Henry), the Piglin ruler in Nether Underworld, which was created specifically for the film. But Malgosha, like everything in the movie, needed to convey the game’s iconic blocky aesthetics, or “A Minecraft movie“Would have fallen into pieces.
“The biggest challenge for all of us was finding that line between working with (live-action) photography and working with actors (led by Jason Momoa and Jack Black) who would have to live in the same world with these characters,” Production Vfx Supervisor Dan Lemmon told IndieWire. “But also respect the game and the fans’ expectations of what these characters should look like.”
But managing such a low-fi animation was brand new for Lemmon, who previously worked with the innovative “Planet of the Apes” and “Avatar” franchise on Wētā FX when he was hired there. “The characters needed to not only be shown as if they were in space, but move and appear in a way that could join an audience at an emotional level,” he added.
Fortunately, Lemmon was reunited with Wētā (led by VFX supervisor Sheldon Stopack and animation supervisor Kevin Estey), which made all character and world building for the expansive and organic appearance overland and the dark and lava-filled netthere. (Assets were handed over to Digital Domain, which focused on the climatic battle and to Sony Pictures ImageWorks for their work at Midport Village Battle.)
“Everything you see in the picture is essentially a built asset: shaded, illuminated and made,” Wētā’s Stopack told Indiewire. “So with that in mind, we had to find out technical ways to do it based on the idea of” Minecraft “, where we have everything mounted out of blocks in one way or another.”
The aesthetic demanded the creation of a new “blatz” tool that helped to “block” all geometries in Houdini with full Atlas instancing. However, characters came first, having to be modeled in cubic way and keyframe animated with tactile photo realism. Their movement was helped by Fauxcap for a smaller footprint on the set, with large dolls and actors such as stand-ins.
“We looked at many different things,” Lemmon continued. “Carl from ‘up’ was a very interesting character design that pressed the general direction to be very square. ‘The Lego movie’ was another. We watched it, but we didn’t want to emulate it. We really wanted to embrace a live-action world where ‘Minecraft’ is a parallel dimension that is as realistic as our but another type of different rules.
Wēta’s art department worked closely with director Hess on the appearance and feeling of all CG characters. For the Piglin Army, they designed and created 12 different variants, all with individual characteristics and personalities. They also made the sheep, bees, pandas, zombies, skeletons, iron golem and lovable wolf Dennis. However, there was some redesign for better articulation because characters in the game are straight.
“We needed to explore their movement, their body language, their performance,” spent stop stack. “We explored a wide range, from much cartoon to something that is very true to realism. We needed to find out where these personalities are.”
The most challenging character was the tall, green Creeper, which originated as a deformed pig because of a coding error. Creeper contains green blocks stacked on top of each other with a stretched neck and a head with cut eyes and a wrinkle.
“When we talked to Mojang (Studios) about what a Creeper is, they said they really didn’t know,” Lemmon said. “We actually underwent a number of design studies. Some were much more turtle-like or creature-like, and others were where we got pretty much closer back to the game. We were just trying to stick to the pixelated type of face in particular, and some of the Mojang people said they referred to the fixed mask from Miyazi’s’ Spirred Away
But the midpoint was Malgosha. She acts as a successor to the game’s great antagonist, The Great Hog, and is influenced by several characters, especially the Emperor Palpatine from “Star Wars”, which is obviously obvious by her dark, boring face, threatening voice and coat. Like Palpatine, she is also a magician who seeks total dominance.
For Wēta’s stopsack, Malgosha also channeled a little Mama Fratelli (Anne Ramsey) from “The Goonies.” “If you think about it, this is already a pretty strange mix, but the goal of her was really to try to find a threatening character that is also comic and tragic at the same time.”
Like the other pigts, Malgosha’s nose was shortened to make her more expressive and to also accommodate the house’s voice game. But Stopsack also credited Henry for creating his physics as proxy on the attitude. “He gave us a very good understanding of where he and Jared wanted to take the character with his very unique movement,” he said.
But thanks to some major improvements at the end between Jack Black’s Steve, the Master in Minecraft, and House’s Never-Say-Die Malgosha, the villain goes out with a better finish than what was written on the page. “This desperate attempt and tried to throw this knife in a” sneak attack “, came in many ways and was not necessarily script,” dedicated to stops.
“I remember being on a set in Auckland,” he “continued,” and Jared and Alan and Sarah and Jack worked on this, and it was essentially a moment of beauty. The whole crew stood around there, and everyone really had to keep it together because it was so fun. And Sarah ended up very unique in her own right. “
