What It Took to Bring Red One’s Ultra-Realistic Creatures to Life

While the holidays are behind us for another year, that doesn’t actually mean it’s taboo to talk about highlight films which came out during that season. After all, everybody knows ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie, but when has that ever stopped someone from watching or talking about it outside the month of December? Fun movies and good craft deserve to be celebrated all year round, especially when there’s a cool story behind them that people may not have yet heard.

Case in point, Rodeo FX asset supervisor Philip Harris-Genois has a lot to say about the recent festive comedy blockbuster, ‘Red One’. In a film headlined by the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu and J. K. Simmons, he and his team made their own splash, designing the various denizens of the North Pole and thereby bringing the environment to life. From flying reindeer with glowing horns to a bipedal talking polar bear, elves (called pixies) and ogres tasked with heavy lifting, each was designed with love, care, and the utmost attention to detail. Embodying the intersections between realism and fantasy, these creatures were undeniably stars in their own right – a testament to the lengths artists are willing to go to guarantee that on release day, audiences enjoy a seamless and immersive viewing experience.

To learn more about the process, and just what it takes in general to create beautifully authentic assets, LBB’s Jordan Won Neufeldt sat down with Philip for a chat.

LBB> From the top, what sort of brief did you receive for working on ‘Red One’? How did you get started on an undertaking of this scale?

Philip> Brief-wise, it was super simple. The studio knew exactly what creatures it wanted, had a bunch of guides for what it was looking for – both for costumes and the overall look – and then we were to try and make it happen as best as we could. Honestly, we were given quite a lot of creative freedom – we had a few cues for what the custom characters should look like, and then we were allowed to just go ahead and get to work.

LBB> In a movie about Christmas, of course, the reindeer would be super important. What went into the creation of these?

Philip> This was probably our biggest question mark at the beginning, but was honestly amazing to work on. Originally, the reindeer started out as these small deer-like things, but we eventually decided to make them super big, like those bulky, thick-legged workhorses you see on the farm. I vividly remember going out for dinner with some colleagues at one point, and seeing some horses pulling a carriage right outside the window. We were like, ‘We need to make workhorses to pull the sleigh!', and it turned out super well. If you look closely at the anatomy of these creatures in the film, you’ll see what I mean.

The antlers and face were similar endeavours. While we wanted the texture and characteristics to be anchored in reality, we knew we could make the shape fantastical. So, we used some reference images of deer and moose to give us cues for the musculature, skeleton and colour of the fur, and then we just changed the proportions. In the end, what we created is almost like a cow’s face. It’s very much a creation straight out of fantasy; you know it's a deer, but it's like nothing you've ever seen before.

With that said, the most challenging aspect was getting the details right. The mane stands out – if you look super closely, there's randomness in terms of hair colour, which we had to blend in. That's not a big ask when it’s short-length fur, but when you get those long strands of hair, that’s where it becomes tricky. We also added things like teardrops in their eyes leading to wet fur below, as well as an accumulation of holes in the fur from scratches and scars. In short, a lot of attention was given to these creatures!

LBB> Speaking of animals, you also had to create a polar bear, and penguins. What went into bringing these assets to life?

Philip> Similar to what we discussed with the reindeer, the penguins were just real penguins with changed proportions to make them look more fantastical.

However, the polar bear was a different story altogether. We knew it needed to look like a polar bear, but changing the proportions to make it bipedal was complicated. A lot had to be done in terms of the eye distance, their placement on the skull, and the neck. Smaller bears are quadrupeds, of course, so their necks are horizontal, whereas our guy needed to be vertical. This posed the big question we asked ourselves repeatedly, ‘how do we put the bear’s neck at a 90 degree angle, when bears aren't normally like that?’.

Detail-wise, we once again made sure to put in the effort here as well. The bear has a scar on his face, wet fur around the eyes, and a lot of drool on his nose. Also, when you look at him, it looks like a bear, but you realise it's an intelligent bear – it has a soul of its own. And that really was the focus for this: making it look like a human, but still having all qualities of the real animal.

(Fun fact, internally, we called the bear ‘Boris’. His name is Garcia in the film, but I have a son who every time he sees a bear, calls it Boris. We have many teddy bears at home and they all share that name! So, internally, we affectionately referred to him as that, or B. Garcia.)

LBB> You’ve mentioned the importance of a fantasy element across these animals, but how did you also ensure they felt realistic enough to truly immerse viewers?

Philip> We’ve talked a little about fur, but something that cannot be overlooked is the importance of eyes. These are vital for selling the believability of a character, especially how we wrap the eyelids around the characters’ eyeballs.

As humans, we spend a lot of time looking at other humans, so we’re super used to seeing eyes, even if there’s some variety in how they’re set, the colour, etc. Because of this, it’s very easy to tell when things look out of place. You don’t really need to understand CG or VFX to know when a face looks wrong, and eyes are usually the culprit. So, we put a lot of time in here to make sure these characters felt alive, and not like weird, taxidermied caricatures.

With that said, taxidermy was actually a really useful reference point for creating realism as well. What separates a good taxidermy from a bad one is the way the fur or skin is set. If the shape underneath is not good, it’s going to look super weird, and that carries over to VFX. We could not afford to skip out on the modelling process, because that was the base upon which everything had to be built. It doesn’t matter if you have the coolest fur in the world – if your structure is poor, it’s going to end up looking terrible.

LBB> As part of this, you also created some fantastical characters like ogres and elves as well. Can you tell us more about what went into making these?

Philip> The non-animal characters were left up to our interpretation, even more so than the animals. For the pixies (the movie's version of North Pole elves), we had a mock-up of what was actually 3D printed on set – the actors needed a placeholder of some kind to act against – and so all we really had was the height, and the portion of the head and limbs.

Surprisingly, having free reign actually made things more complicated, because we didn't have an obvious reference point to draw from. However, after some searching, what we realised was that cats, especially sphinx cats, were the perfect models for designing the skin. If you look closely at the final product, that pinkish colour and the saturation around the eyes and nose those cats have is very much present.

The other thing we looked at, surprisingly, was kids – specifically, children with very light hair and freckles. Not only did we emulate these qualities, but things like the lips use human patterns, the noses have nostrils and human-like pores on them, and even the fur is human. It’s like the peach fuzz you see when looking in the mirror – just longer, in larger quantities, and a bit more animalistic. Those small details really sold the entire thing.

As for the ogres, the creation process was especially cool. We knew they were the slightly-dumb heavy lifters of the North Pole, and that's what drove the entire thing. We started by giving them rough skin, which was inspired by elephants and rhinoceroses, and for the face, we placed an emphasis on this lack of intelligence.

(Fun fact, whenever you want to make something give off this feeling, you just have to reduce the proportion of the cranium. Not only does this make ears look bigger, which really sells the feeling, but the eyes end up really high while the jaw takes up a lot of the face. In the case of our ogres, doing this sort of gave off this dumb but cuddly teddy bear vibe – something that wouldn't be super angry – which is just what we wanted.)

LBB> Throughout all of this, were there any creative themes guiding your approach to bringing this unique setting to life? How did you keep all your assets consistent in terms of feel?

Philip> From the start, we knew that the easiest way to make everything blend together would be the costumes. All the outfits were to be the same colours – red and green to represent Christmas – and so we built everything with that spectrum in mind.

Something we also considered was the material each outfit was made of. We had permission to change things up, so for the guys in the army squad, we gave them more leathery outfits, whereas the pixies and the ogres received a more textile, cotton-like material.

In turn, messing around with this aspect actually proved super useful for also giving our creations a sense of scale. The pixies’ outfit stitches are much bigger than the ogres’, for example. Meanwhile, while every uniform has a zipper, for the ogres, these appear much smaller because they have such large hands. But, to really drive this sense of height difference home, we gave each character a vambrace. It’s a device you see Cal (Dwayne Johnson’s character) use in the movie, and depending on the size of the creature, the pattern on it will appear either smaller or larger.

All in all, the effort we put in here was important both for scaling, but also just helping viewers feel that all the characters live in the same universe. Every outfit says ‘E.L.F.’ – the in-universe acronym for ‘Enforcement. Logistic. Fortification.’ – the colours match, and you can imagine them all going to the same shop to suit up.

LBB> Detail-wise, were there any especially tricky things to bring to life? What were some of the biggest challenges you faced on this project?

Philip> The biggest thing for us across all creatures was getting the skin texture and colour right. Skin is very complex in terms of how it lets lights penetrate. Think of what happens when you put your fingers on top of a phone flashlight. They become red, because our skin partially lets light pass through, but also because we have blood vessels. Every single living creature faces that same reality, so to try to sell the idea that what we made were living entities, we knew we'd need this effect… which is the hardest thing to do in CG. You can’t afford to go ‘uncanny valley’; as soon as there's something wrong, people will notice.

Believe it or not, this challenge even extended to our furry friends. You can't really see their skin directly, but if you look at a teddy bear, for example, you'll instantly know it's not a real bear, and that's because of the fur, and how it moves on top of the skin underneath. There's a lot of complexity with the real life animals in terms of clumping – how the fur sticks together and forms little tips because of sweat, oil and everything else – and we needed to emulate that flawlessly.

On top of that, we had to factor in the need for gradation. The fur is obviously longer on the neck and cheeks, but whenever you go closer to the nose, the mouth and the eyes, it must become shorter and less dense, revealing the skin. On top of that, the way it flows is super important. Look at the eyes of our polar bear, and how the hair moves around them, before dipping down towards the cheeks. The reindeer, the pixies – we did this for every character. There’s always a direction in terms of hair flow, and if you’ve got a pet at home, you’ll see what I mean. You need this aspect to sell your creatures, but, of course, it takes a lot of work.

LBB> Finally, is there a part of this project you’re especially proud of?

Philip> For me, it's all the details you can observe in the close-ups. As asset creators, everything we make is static, but it all adds up to create what you see in the movie. Sure, the lighting might not showcase it perfectly, or it may go by quickly, but when you look at the screenshots, it's telling. I remember showing these to the client and them being really happy. That was very rewarding.

Aside from that, this project was just a lot of fun. It pushed us in some interesting ways, and I think it was a nice experience for everybody. It’s the type of movie where we can look back and say, "at Rodeo, we do this.” I’m very proud of that fact, and see it as a big win across the board!