Wētā FX animator Daniel Barrett explains how he and his team created a particular shot in Avatar: The Way of Water.
Much has been made of the downright jaw-dropping technical wizardry on display in Avatar: The Way of Water, and it’s hard to argue against director James Cameron’s decision to wait over a decade for the appropriate filmmaking technology to arrive before commencing work on his subaquatic sequel.
In an exclusive interview with TechRadar, Daniel Barrett, Senior Animation Supervisor at Wētā FX, explained the method behind the magic of The Way of Water’s bar-raising performance capture visuals, and we asked the seasoned animator how he and his team pulled off a very specific shot – one that sent the internet into raptures following its inclusion in the film’s very first trailer. Check it out via the tweet below.
“It’s nearly human,” reads one comment underneath the post. “It could just be a guy painted blue,” reads another. The best response of all: “Pretty sure it isn’t CGI. Cameron actually went to Pandora to film this one.”
For context, the shot in question shows Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully tightening the reins on a skimwing, the Metkayina clan’s sea-dwelling version of the mountain banshees ridden by the Omaticaya. But how much – if any – of what we see in the two-second clip is real, and how much is computer-generated? Thankfully, Barrett has the answers.
