Mandibles, missing legs and a whole lot of creatures

Behind the scenes of ‘Predator: Badlands’ in issue #46.

Issue #46 of befores & afters magazine is out, and covers the visual effects of Predator: Badlands.

If you’re a DIGITAL MAGAZINE member, you’ll be able to download the digital edition from the shop post. Or, head to the shop post to buy the digital mag directly.

The magazine is also available on Amazon (details below).

Predator: Badlands, from director Dan Trachtenberg, drops the long-running franchise into a new hostile terrain, following a young Yautja warrior Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who forms an uneasy alliance with a damaged Weyland-Yutani Corporation synthetic Thia (Elle Fanning). The pair meet a myriad of creatures, sometimes even battling them, mostly while Thia is without her legs.

That fact—removing Fanning’s lower limbs—immediately provided the film’s visual effects team with a range of challenges, as did the approach to Dek’s mandibles, which would be achieved completely digitally. In addition, the central creatures Bud and the Kalisk, and a host of other exotic species, needed to be generated in CG.

Overseeing the visual effects work were production visual effects supervisor Olivier Dumont and production visual effects producer Kathy Siegel. The lead vendor was Wētā FX (visual effects supervisors Sheldon Stopsack and Erik Winquist, and animation supervisor Karl Rapley). Additional vendors were Trixter, Industrial Light & Magic, Framestore, Important Looking Pirates, The Yard and Perception, with The Third Floor handling visualization.

In this special issue of befores & afters, we go in-depth on the visual effects of Predator: Badlands, which reached 1400 VFX shots, breaking down the key visual effects challenges with Dumont, Siegel, Stopsack and Rapley.

Here are the print magazine links to various Amazon stores:

USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Japan: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Sweden: https://www.amazon.se/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT

Poland: https://www.amazon.pl/dp/B0G6WLZ2KT