Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/552848
18 cgw j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 5 animator reached back, and by motion-capturing him, we had data for what the skeleton would do. We put that motion on our Yellow Jacket model." That gave the animators a starting point for the motion, but the sequence called for something more horrific. "We wanted his arms and hands to collapse into his body," Harrington explains, "the same with his head and chest, and the stingers with the lasers on his back. We worked out the beats, the key moments in animation. This reaction. That arm collapses. Reaches there. Head collapses. And then we started breaking the model." Once the director and super- visors approved the motion, the animators sent the performance on to modelers, who dented the suit, crushed fingers, and broke the helmet, and then to the character effects team, which added smoke and sparks to take the sequence over the top. D U S T T O D U S T To save his daughter and defeat the villain, Ant-Man had decided to sacrifice himself. When he turned the dial to 11, he set in motion a process that would cause him to shrink forever. So, by the time the villain is van- quished, Ant-Man has shrunk to the size of a dust mote. "He's like a dust particle floating with pollen in the room," Harrington says, "with the every- day things you don't see but breathe in – dirt, skin flakes, stuff like that. We zoom in to find him, and he continues to shrink." Throughout the film, visual effects artists shrank Ant-Man using an effect they called the "disco shrink." "When he shrinks, thin traces of his history – his previous sizes, which are as transparent as onion skins – trail behind," Harrington says. "It's a nice vi- sual cue that tells the audience he's shrinking. A lot of times, the effect happens in six to eight frames, and the effects group handles that. But when we're doing the animation, we have to think about what his silhouette looks like because he leaves a history in the shape of his body as he shrinks." I N N E R S P A C E Ant-Man continues to shrink until he enters the molecular world. He's still in the room – he can hear sounds around him – but he has le the larger world of dust and pollen. "The world around him is visually similar to what you see in textbooks to describe mole- cules, but it has an outer space feel to it," Harrington says. "One SPACEY Understanding the world that the shrinking charac- ter occupied could become mind-boggling for the crew animating the CG character and camera. "In one wide shot, he shrinks toward an origin, and the world grows out from that origin," says Harrington. "That can totally mess with your head. In some shots, he doesn't change and the cam- era is almost static. But the world is still growing around him. You have to think, 'Am I in Ant-Man space or in world space?' In Ant-Man space, the world is growing around you. In world space, Ant-Man is traveling across the frame and getting smaller." ANT-MAN CAN CONTROL HIS SIZE BY USING BUTTONS ON THE HANDS OF HIS SUIT. VISUAL EFFECTS SOLD THE ILLUSION.