Within the jaw-dropping visual world of Avatar 2, Spider star Jack Champion has revealed a small, mind-blowing use of CGI you probably didn’t notice.
Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s epic sequel to the highest-grossing movie of all time, is here, and it’s already making waves at the box office.
In our review, we said it “may be the 21st century’s single-greatest visual effects accomplishment… it almost feels like a peek into an era we’re not ready for – if only because we’ll never want to leave.”
From the underwater motion capture to the seamless integration of Champion’s Spider with the Na’vi, its VFX defy belief – but there’s even more to it than meets the eye.
Avatar 2 star reveals insane use of CGI
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Champion spoke about his experience shooting Avatar 2, and how Cameron and the movie’s effects team navigated the challenges of Pandora.
The actor then revealed a facet of the movie’s CGI we’d never noticed: for the majority of the time, the glass on his mask was CGI.
“Most of the time, it was CGI glass. There was never a glass in there,” he explained.
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“They did have a ‘hero mask’ for certain real shots, but we rarely used it. For the underwater stuff, they built a real face mask that I was in for hours at a time and for months on end. It was a scuba mask that you could breathe in, so that obviously had real glass.”
Champion didn’t do “as much underwater performance capture… as the rest of the cast, but I still did plenty of underwater performance capture.”
“I also did scuba in live action. So I definitely did a lot of underwater stuff. There’s also Avatar 3, but I can’t talk about that for obvious reasons,” he added.
In the same interview, he teased Avatar 3 to be “shocking” and a “hard left turn” compared to what fans may expect.
Avatar: The Way of Water is in cinemas now. You can read our review here, find out the best way to watch the movie here, and check out the rest of our coverage here.
