The gulper from ‘Fallout’. A new excerpt from befores & afters magazine.
At one point in season one of Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout streaming series, the characters encounter a mutated gulper creature. Its distinctive feature is the presence of human fingers inside its gaping mouth.
Earlier, other characters have a run-in with the bear-like yao guai, also a mutated product of a nuclear holocaust.
Both creatures were crafted by Framestore, working with production visual effects supervisor and supervising producer Jay Worth.
Here, Framestore visual effects supervisor Joao Sita and animation supervisor Thiago Martins break down the gulper for season one.
Where those fingers came from
The production brought on Framestore’s art department to help with concept designs for the gulper. The team took ideas of a human hybrid, salamander and axolotl body and brought them together. When Framestore was later awarded the visual effects work (its FPS team had also carried out postvis for the gulper sequence), they had already built the creature, including its mouth, when a design change was instigated.
“The inside of the mouth initially had these appendages, which looked like little lumps of flesh,” advises Sita, who shared Framestore VFX supervision duties with Laureline Silan. “As we started doing the sequence there was this need to create more tension when it was swallowing someone. At some point we presented a turntable, and then Jay and the showrunners looked at that, and I think [executive producer and director] Jonathan Nolan said, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be rad if we had fingers inside the mouth?’”
“Well,” adds Sita, “the first thing that came to mind was, how do we execute that brief? What are the rigging implications? How that’s going to animate? But we thought it was a great idea. We then worked on how human they should look like, would you see all the joints and all the knuckles? Would you see nails? Would there be fingers that have no nails? It spiraled into this other, completely unexpected questioning.”
In terms of animation, Framestore had developed a rig that allowed for controllers for different layers of the mouth, which were adapted for the fingers–this aided in delivering gulping action, too. “When we ultimately added in more and more fingers,” details Martins, “these were motion driven with some specific fingers able to pull someone inside.”
Finding a performance
On set, a full-sized puppet was employed to aid in interaction with the actors, for eyeline and for framing. “It was rigged so that it could move and open and close its mouth, which could make it feel like it was swallowing,” says Sita. “Special effects also added this goo for when a head is pulled out of its mouth.
Framestore then referenced the movements of salamanders, axolotls and larger sea creatures for final animation of their CG creature. The gulper is, of course, seen in the water and leaping from it, necessitating an approach to animation through fluids, as well as adding in water simulations for both in and out of the water shots. “I would split the gulper into two areas–the body and mouth,” outlines Martins. “So that meant we would do a swimming cycle, then something more drastic for his attacks, and then the gulping.”
The CFX department also played a large role in adding movement to the gulper, notes Martins. “We had a complex muscle system and skin sliding and fat system, which is a combination of rigging and CFX. Then there was the flesh deformation, and of course the fingers and the mouth. For his frills, we had one base pass of animation that would drive the frills, but CFX would come on top to put more dynamics and weight on the pieces to react to the movement.”
Read the full story in issue #18 of befores & afters magazine.
