Like all Marvel Studios films, *The Fantastic Four: First Steps* relies heavily on visual effects. This 2025 reboot of the classic superhero team faced the challenge of creating complex animated characters, using actors’ performances captured on set, and building animation from scratch using reference material and voice recordings. Combined with the film’s setting – a retro-future alternate Earth – this required a very long post-production process.
As a huge movie fan, I was really excited to see this exclusive VFX reel from Framestore – one of the teams behind the visuals for *The Fantastic Four: First Steps*. It’s fascinating to see how they brought Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to life, but even cooler is getting a behind-the-scenes look at how they created what they consider the film’s standout sequence: the incredible chase with the Silver Surfer through hyperspace! It really shows off the work that goes into making these scenes happen.
Jay Murray, a compositor at Framestore, came up with the idea for the film’s warp drive by blending his love of cocktails with science fiction. In a case study about the visual effects, Framestore explained that Murray initially imagined traveling *through* the stem of a martini glass.
He explained that he got a glass, then used his phone to browse space-related pictures on his TV, trying out different visual filters.
VFX Supervisor Rob Allman explained their innovative approach to depicting space travel in the film: instead of showing the Fantastic Four’s ship moving *through* space, they created the effect of space itself moving around the ship, keeping it stationary.
The video breaks down key scenes from this sequence, highlighting how much of the movie relied on post-production visual effects rather than being filmed directly. Surprisingly, a real baby was initially used to portray Franklin Richards, but was later digitally altered. The video also reveals that the ship’s cockpit set was quite small—everything behind the actors was just a blue screen used to create the rest of the ship later.
Let me tell you, the visual effects work on this movie is *intense*. They really dove deep with the character ‘The Thing,’ and it wasn’t just a quick digital creation. Actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach was practically *inside* the character, wearing a motion capture suit and having his facial expressions recorded. It was so complex, multiple animation studios had to collaborate to bring him to life! Marvel was holding calls *twice a week* with everyone involved, just to make sure all the details were right and everyone was on the same page with this incredibly detailed, blue-eyed character. It’s a testament to how much work went into making him believable.
I was really surprised to learn how they created Julia Garner’s Silver Surfer! Apparently, they didn’t use any motion capture at all. There’s a quick shot of a stand-in, but for the most part, her performance was built entirely through keyframe animation. It sounds like a tricky process because they actually had to *tone down* her expressions, making them more subtle than how she naturally acted. And, of course, making a character that’s completely reflective was a huge challenge – Allman said it took way longer to get right than any of the other effects in the movie!
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2025-10-10 20:50