Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/398245
s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 4 c g w 2 5 V I S U A L E F F E C T S hoped. "So, when we set him on fire, it's all Houdini," she points out. "The fire wraps around its legs, burns its body, and the Griever screams in terror." The first time we see a Griever, the animators reveal only its silhouette as they lower the monster down a wall behind Thomas. Thomas leaps across a huge gap from that wall to an- other covered in ivy. The Griever hesitates and then jumps on the wall next to Thomas. "We sell that by having the ends of the pneumatic legs find purchase and friction, but it doesn't work well for him so the legs slide and bring the ivy to the ground," De Boer says. "There was practical ivy on the set, but we replaced much of it with full-CG ivy to prop- erly tangle up our creature and have him tear it away. We also added chipped rocks and dust passes." W A L L S O F I V Y While De Boer's creature ani- mation team wrestled with the Grievers, Rowe's team of visual effects artists constructed the 100-foot walls and covered them with ivy. "We were able to do some live-action shots, but as soon as they moved the camera back, we were off the set," Rowe says. "There were no live-action shots of moving walls; they were fully CG. And halfway through the film, when the kids realize they're in the center of the maze, there is a big reveal of a maze that's fully CG. You see that outside the maze, it's all barren land. In the center, it's green. All the walls are at least 100 feet tall, and they all have vines growing over them. That was something Wes Ball really liked, and it was one of our challenges." At first, the artists used Hou- dini to create procedural creep- ing vines with thousands of tiny leaves, but in the early tests, the ivy looked too procedural. "The main thing about the way ivy grows is that it has tiny fingers that travel into cracks and wrap themselves around CG ARTISTS GREW PROCEDURAL IVY ON THE DIGITAL WALLS AND HAD THE LEAVES TURN TOWARD THE SUN.