At SIGGRAPH 2017 there was a panel called The Making of Marvel Studio’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. For anyone who is passionate about MCU movies this was a must see. For me the VFX artists are the unsung heroes of why we love Marvel movies so much. So it was nice to see the team get some credit and facetime from a convention hall packed with people. Sorry no photos or videos were allowed during the panel but here are some notes I took. The panel featured Victoria Alonso, Damien Carr, Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Nordin Rahhali, and Simone Kraus. By @SteveSievers

The first challenge was to make Baby Groot cute which was easy for the VFX team. However making him move was another challenge. They tried many different walk cycles. Including matching a toddler walking cycle. However when they showed us Baby Groot walking that way in test VFX it did look very weird. It took many different test to come up with the one we see and love on the big screen. For the iconic opening title dance sequence we learned that the VFX team completed one to another song but turns out they couldn’t;t use that song in the movie. Song had to be changed and the animation didn’t fit the new song. So director James Gunn recorded what he wanted Baby Groot’s moves to be….on an iPhone in the cafeteria room on the Disney lot. How cool is that? It turns out James Gunn recorded a lot of references on his iPhone that he sent to VFX team around the world. Here is picture of James tweeted that shows his dance moves.

The biggest talk on the panel was the battle over the fountain. In a deleted scene we see EGO form in his mind a statue of what his son and GOTG look like in celebration of their victory over Ronan. While all the VFX artists loved how this came out, Director James Gunn wasn’t a fan. Instead he wanted a fish fountain. VFX artists weren’t a fan of it. In the end the director wins.

EGO’s planet went through a lot of changes throughout the process of making the movie. Originally had more of a red surface. The columns were arches at the begin of the process. Slowly more green was added to make it less desolate. However if you notice seeing the planet from space it still looks very red. You can see it look more red like in the deleted scene below. As for the inside of the planet core we learn that just under half a trillion polygons were used in it. Original the VFS artists thought it was one trillion as they said “be careful what you tell a director who talks a lot of social media.” After James Gunn was telling everyone that it was a trillion they went back and counted to learn that it was just under half a trillion. Still its a lot!

VFX artists had a challenge of EGO getting shot by Starlord. Originally EGO head’s was more gone but then it was bordering a rating R for decapitation. Crazy huh? It was difficult for the team to match up Kurt Russel’s performance with David Hasselhoff since they didn’t match up 100%. So each character was created a digital version of each other. This help to bridge the cap of when they transform into each other and back.