Bringing the nine feet tall creatures to life. An excerpt from issue #58 of befores & afters magazine.
The genetically engineered horned reptilian creatures known as Deathclaws make a couple of appearances in season 2 of Fallout, including in a flashback to the tundra war-time sequence in Alaska, and then in New Vegas. The Deathclaws were realized via a combination of practical builds from Legacy Effects, performed and puppeteered on set by Cary Gunnar Lee and four others, and CG creations by Industrial Light & Magic.
Both visual effects producer Andrea Knoll and visual effects supervisor Jay Worth were excited about the prospect of featuring Deathclaws this season, given their popularity in the video games. “Throughout season 1,” recalls Knoll, “I had, as many producers do, thousands of tabs open on my computer at all times, but I always had different imagery of the Deathclaw from the game and had hoped that, maybe in the finale, we’d get to see the Deathclaw. So, when we got started on season 2, knowing we were really going to hit it with Deathclaws, I was just ecstatic.”
The production tasked Legacy Effects with building puppets for the Deathclaws, which were largely made up of an animatronic puppeteered head, and a full body suit worn by a performer, that was also puppeteered by extra performers. “We would try to lean into the hero head for tighter shots and see how much of that we could utilize,” observes Knoll. “I mean, it was just such an incredibly sophisticated hero head, it even had a liquid source that could create a bit of steam coming out of the nostrils. Those nostrils actually moved and flared. There was a lot of life already in the head. Then there were a variety of different pieces of limbs and other things that we’d block the scenes out with. The goal was always to feel as grounded and anchored in reality as possible in the scene, both for the actors and for camera, because then ultimately it feels very immersive and very real for the audience.”
Adds Worth: “Our method was always, ‘Alright, let’s shoot it with the practical Deathclaw and then pull it out and shoot our clean plate and figure out which piece is going to work best for visual effects.’ The team at ILM just did an amazing job of being able to take that face and build off of it for the entire body. The point is, we’d rather shoot with something that has proper texture, that feels right, that looks right, than just a big grayish green holdout. We found it’s better for the actors. Every now and then we love the fact that we can shoot over the back and we catch a glimpse of a claw and we just leave it because it’s fun that it’s caught in-camera. For example, the shot when the claw swipes through and kills the soldier in the tundra, that’s just the big claw swinging through and then we added the Deathclaw to it.”
From Legacy Effects’ point of view, supervisor J. Alan Scott remembers the initial call received from Jonathan Nolan. “We started doing some research into how to do a full-sized animatronic and I thought, I don’t think what they’re asking for is achievable in a puppet or a suit. But we went into the meeting and Jonah really wanted that classic puppet performance. Actually, the phrase he kept using was ‘primary performance.’ He said, ‘I want to capture the primary performance. I want people to react to it. I want everyone to be looking at the right place. Don’t worry about the skin. We’re going to skin over the whole thing. We’ll use exactly what we can use, but it’s going to inform so much in post.’”
For Scott, this was incredibly refreshing to hear. “It meant that we didn’t need to do a nine foot tall fully-skinned dinosaur, which would have had to have been a hydraulic thing. We could make it look realistic, but we wouldn’t be able to move it like a Deathclaw. Again, Jonah was great, he’d say, ‘I don’t want it fully realized everywhere. I want you to make it as lightweight as you can. Don’t worry about the gaps. Don’t worry that it’s not perfect. I just want the silhouette. I want the shape and we will skin over it. But I want something there on set.’”
“That meant the straps were off and we could really take advantage of doing things creatively,” continues Scott. “We could focus on keeping the Deathclaw light and maneuverable and then just get in there and have some fun. It’s still big, and so as much as you try and make it lightweight, it’s still awkward. And now you’ve got these eight foot arms and these legs that have strides that are impossible. So, we took a lot of notes from shows like Walking with Dinosaurs and a lot of these big shows that are doing large characters, to see how they handle it, but really focus on movement and performance and get as much as we can out of it.”
Legacy Effects’ Deathclaw builds started with a ZBrush design provided by production. Various pieces, including the horns, were then produced via a combination of 3D printing and more traditional mold making and sculpting. “It’s nice with 3D printing because we’re able to take the horns and really make them super lightweight,” points out Scott. “When you go back to the old days of giant fiberglass pieces, well, we’re almost getting that same lightness, but with a lot of strength and integrity and detail that you don’t necessarily get with a vacuum form mold. We’re able to get more complicated cores because we can print them and then sculpt over the details. Some of the scales and some of the horns were actually foam, but we just painted them and treated them and put a coating on them so that they look hard when they’re actually not.”
For the full suit, Legacy Effects built that in pieces so a bluescreened performer could wear it and move around in it. It included a tail, which Scott notes proved to be a good counter-balance to the weight of the suit. “The suit also had a lightweight head. We did simple things for the suit such as carved-in scale texture. We didn’t have to worry about putting skin texture everywhere, but we tried to paint it and get it as close as we could.”
The suit performer originally had arm control of the Deathclaw suit. “We originally put servos on his back,” explains Scott. “We made a clamshell, which was really a fiberglass chest that could support the weight, and then RC’d the head, and then gave the suit performer the ability to do the arms. However, we quickly realized having him do the arms as well just became too much and that he would not have the strike ability. So, instead, we put a rod on each arm. We had made it light enough and buoyant enough that the suit performer could maneuver them, but he just couldn’t have the same control. So we just put a guy on each arm so that we could get bigger movement and get the swipes we needed.”
“Then,” adds Scott, “we had a rig for the head, which is what Cary Gunnar Lee wore most of the time. We had controllers where it would maneuver the head up and down and be able to get it from its nine foot height down to face level height, and then all the RC controls would also come with that. The RC controls gave us eye blinks and brow movement, and then jaw and snarl movement. Then we did some hands as well for insert strikes and swiping.”
“The whole experience was so great,” marvels Scott. “What was interesting was, the first time it was used, they wanted to just keep it in the shadows and not reveal everything, but they got really excited and they just started shooting all this close-up stuff and drool and everything. Everyone got enamored with just shooting a monster. It gives everybody on set something to look at, something to react to, something that’s common so that they’re all framing properly and moving the camera right.”
That work by Legacy Effects established a base for ILM to then craft its digital Deathclaw shots. “The foundation of the digital Deathclaw was built from multiple, high-resolution scans of the on-set practical assets,” breaks down ILM visual effects supervisor Steve Moncur. “Achieving photorealism required integrating these separate scans into one seamless digital model that faithfully matched the physical references. The scanned assets included the Deathclaw head, a hero arm, the full Deathclaw body on a mannequin, and the puppeteer (in a blue suit).”
Achieving a close-up-ready, photorealistic model was paramount, especially for replacing or augmenting the practical puppet’s head and limbs. Says Moncur: “The Deathclaw’s massive, reptilian form necessitated high-resolution texture maps and detailed geometry to convincingly render its large scales, leathery skin and wrinkles. The model had to accurately reflect the creature’s Fallout 4 design while also precisely matching the texture, scale, and lighting reference of the nine-foot-tall physical puppet. The digital skeleton (rigging) had to be extremely powerful to facilitate the creature’s varied, forceful movements.”
“A highly complex rig was essential to bring the creature to life, supporting its massive size and weight, and enabling its unique movement,” continues Moncur. “This sophisticated rig needed to smoothly facilitate the creature’s transition between bipedal (standing/walking) and powerful quadrupedal (charging) locomotion, a key element of the live-action adaptation. Animation supervisor Stafford Lawrence was crucial for achieving this movement fidelity. To convey emotion and realism despite the creature’s monstrous appearance, a detailed facial rig was also required. The team used a Facial Action Coding System (FACS) contact sheet and specific FACS poses to ensure a full range of expressions was covered. A critical factor in achieving the ‘deeply real’ tone was ensuring the animation conveyed the immense scale and weight of the nine-foot creature, making its terrifying, powerful movements feel heavy and grounded in reality.”
While the digital Deathclaw could of course perform any kind of animation, a key decision was to retain the lumbering style of movement established with the Legacy Effects builds and the on-set puppeteering. “As we were developing the CG Deathclaw movement, we grounded everything in the practical reference,” relates Knoll. “Sometimes there’s a temptation in VFX to push things further once you have a fully digital asset, but we deliberately resisted that. The character moves with intention. It’s slow, deliberate, predatory, it’s powerful, and it’s aware of that power. So we focused on weight, restraint and presence rather than speed or excess, which ultimately I think made it a lot more threatening. “
Moncur further notes that the greatest overall challenge was in compositing and digital integration. “The ILM team’s goal was to ensure the final creature felt cohesive on screen—whether digitally tweaking the practical puppet or replacing it entirely with the CGI asset—to maintain the illusion of a single, tangible monster.”
Maximus’ encounter with the Deathclaw is characterized by relentless hacking, slashing and wounding inflicted upon the creature. It necessitated an array of unique damage states, according to Moncur. “To meet this exacting demand, our dedicated Digital Model Shop (DMS Department) crafted a library of over 20 distinct damaged Deathclaw variants. This library was essential for ensuring continuity and realism throughout the extended fight sequence. The detailed damage variants ranged from superficial, yet visible, injuries like a slashed chest wound and a clean shot to the neck, to more crippling blows, including a direct shot to the eye.”
It is in this encounter (and others) we see the practical T-60 power armor worn by Maximus in action. This was, as in season 1, a Legacy Effects creation. “We made a couple of new suits,” remarks Scott. “For the existing ones, we up’d some of the printed materials and then refurbished and repainted them. We had to make them light enough to be able to have the performers walk in them, but they’re still heavy. And, indeed, you want them to be a little bit as if they have some clunkiness to them—you need to feel like there are some big, heavy mechanisms in there that are actually motivating it.”
While the materials the suits are made of are as lightweight as possible, Legacy Effects provides a convincing metallic finish. Scott says this “comes down to really talented painters. Metal paint has really advanced and it’s really convincing. When you add on a good eye about how things age in terms of adding in peel and paint and aging oils, that’s what helps. We do a lot of research into farm equipment, heavy equipment, earth movers and things like that—things that are used to wearing down paint, and then we match to that.”
