Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

GOTG Vol. 3 Highlight Reel posted by The Third Floor, Inc. on YouTube. This video is a representation of the entire creative team, not exclusively my work.

Guardians of the Galaxy was always my favorite cast of Marvel characters, so when I learned it would be my first assignment upon being hired at The Third Floor, I was over the moon. I started work on the project in July of 2021, and wrapped up over a year later in September 2022. My existing generalist skill set lent itself well to this project, as I took on the roles of both Previs shot creator, and Postvis artist.

During this project, I learned how to apply motion capture, work with shot codes and shotgrid, camera and geometry tracking, compositing, background replacement, rotomation, and collaboration within a large creative team taking direction from supervisors and leads. One highlight of this experience was animating the abilisk - the pink toothy tentacle creature featured in both the opening of Vol. 2 and throughout Vol. 3. Upon watching Volume 2 for the first time, I was extremely impressed with the level of animation and rendering on the abilisk. I remember thinking to myself "What a massive task for those animators to have all of those tentacles to manage, and executed so well." Subsequently, because the abilisk makes a return in Vol. 3, A few previs animators were tasked with doing an animation test with the abilisk rig, myself included. I performed so well in my animation test that I was assigned a large portion of the shots where they are featured, and built a library of 15+ bespoke preset animations of the abilisk and its tentacles for other artists to pull into their scenes. It really was a full circle moment for me being the go-to animator for these creatures I was previously intimidated by. Another highlight was working on the Groot vs Adam Warlock fight, a sequence that took several weeks to perfect. This was my most complex animation task, as it involved two very mobile characters fighting against each other while grappling onto each other - partnered with each character's respective powers. Under the guidance of the show supervisor, Jim Baker, I learned a lot about animation dynamics, framing, lighting, and overall bringing an idea as complex as this to fruition. This was also the only sequence I did both previs and postvis for, and it was a really unique experience to see the shots I designed in previs shot on real plates, to then fit back into my initial shots with 3D tracking, background extensions, and other respective changes.

One last thing to reiterate about my work on this project is that none of my work is what you see in the final movie. The work myself and the other previs/postvis artists did laid the groundwork for the final VFX to build off of, as previs allows for a high level of flexibility and experimentation without heavy visual and technological investment.