How Shang-Chi’s VFX Team Made Abomination Look More Like Tim Roth
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings offered an updated look at Tim Roth's Abomination, and a VFX supervisor breaks down how it came together.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings VFX supervisor Dominik Zimmerle explains how they redesigned Abomination to look more like actor Tim Roth. As it stands at this point in 2021, Shang-Chi is both the biggest Marvel movie of the year and the biggest movie of the year period. In grossing an impressive $224 million domestically and $418 million worldwide, Shang-Chi has been a triumphant success for Marvel. It stars Simu Liu as the titular hero, and it's the first time the character has ever been featured in a live-action movie. Though Marvel has kept quiet about his future, it's all but certain Liu and Shang-Chi will be back.
Shang-Chi primarily focuses on its main character and his unique family history, which involves a legendary criminal for a father (Tony Leung's Wenwu) and a skilled underground fighter for a sister (Meng'er Zhang's Xialing). Despite featuring a large cast of new characters, though, Shang-Chi also featured some surprise returns from MCU alums. Most surprisingly, Tim Roth returned to play villain Abomination for the first time since 2008's The Incredible Hulk. In a fun cameo, Abomination fought master of the mystic arts Wong (Benedict Wong) in Xialing's fight ring.
Abomination's surprise return gave the Shang-Chi creative team the opportunity to alter the character's design, which was a point of criticism among fans when The Incredible Hulk first premiered. VFX supervisor Dominik Zimmerle recently sat down with Art of VFX to explain how they came up with Abomination's new look using a mixture of concept art, assets from 2008, and a 3D representation of Roth's face. Zimmerle explained:
We were incredibly thrilled when we first discussed re-creating Abomination for Shang-Chi. We saw this character the last time in 2008 and getting the chance to show our take on it was an exciting outlook. We started with Concept Art from Marvel’s Art Department, the original Asset from 2008 and references of the most recent developments on the Hulk. First of all, we started detailing the information we received from the provided Concept Art: we looked for references to what each part of Abomination could look like. For example, what materials should the horn parts have, how will the plates behave under the skin, what about his fins.
Additionally, we started looking into how much of Tim Roth we could get into Abomination. We played around with different blending levels between a 3D representation of Tim Roth’s face and the original Abomination until we found something that worked. The Associate VFX Supervisor of the first phase of the show and huge Marvel fan Chris Smallfield was significantly involved in this part of the process. I think it was a dream come true for him. We then sculpted a model around this framework and based on Marvel’s feedback, we refined proportions and large-scale shapes until everybody was happy with the anatomy. We then used all of our reference material to add displacement and bump details and worked on the textures alongside. At the same time, our creature simulation team investigated the best setup for the skin sliding over the subdermal plates, which we see around the biceps and calf areas.
Though Abomination only had a small role in Shang-Chi, fans were delighted to see him return with a more distinctive and compelling design. The decision to make him resemble Roth a bit more closely is a clever one. In doing this, the Shang-Chi team gave the hulking creature a deeper personality and some additional humanity. It also was nice to give Roth a bigger connection to the largely CGI character. Roth is set to play Abomination at least once more in the upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk, and hopefully he will get the same design as he did in Shang-Chi.
Between Abomination and the mystical world of Ta Lo, there were multiple opportunities for some unique creature designs in Shang-Chi. Hopefully future installments will allow for the same, particularly if they end up digging more into Ta Lo. Right now, fans are eagerly awaiting more news about what lies ahead for Shang-Chi, so everything remains speculation. Stay tuned for more updates.
More: How Abomination Is Different In Shang-Chi (Compared To The Incredible Hulk)
Source: Art of VFX
