I’ve never played the Warcraft games. I know I’d get easily addicted and there would be no end to it. I’m not familiar with the lore beyond knowing the humans and orcs fight and there are other fantasy elements as well. I’m also not too high on movies adapted from video games since they never work. It always feels like the gameplay has been surgically removed and all that’s left is a game that you can watch but never play (in the age of Twitch, that may be appealing).

And yet I find myself incredibly enthusiastic for Duncan JonesWarcraft, a movie that looks unabashedly nerdy as it throws itself headfirst into a big, bad world filled with fantastical creatures that have been brought to life with cutting edge technology that represents the next step forward in visual effects.

Earlier this month, I had the chance to visit Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to learn about the visual effects behind the film and was left stunned at the amount of work, detail, and (no pun intended) craft that went into Warcraft. Here are over 50 things to know about the upcoming video game adaptation (I’ve divided it up into the different interview sections for easier reading):

Director Duncan Jones and Visual Effects Supervisor Jeff White

warcraft-movie-images-hi-res
Image via Universal Pictures

- How nerdy is this movie? It’s a movie where a character says, “We must move through the portal when the incantation begins.” That’s how nerdy, and I love that.

- One of the most important aspects of the production was how to make the orcs compelling.

- They also wanted to make the performances authentic to the actors rather than just use the actors’ performances as a basis for CGI work.

- The movie is a “checklist of the most difficult things to do in computer development” since they have to deal with skin, hair, eyes, and get very close to recreating humans with their orc characters.

- As much as possible, they tried to do stuff in camera.

- They built a progam called “haircraft” to deal with the orcs’ digital hairstyles.

- I can’t stress enough how good the skin, hair, and eyes look. The trailers haven’t gotten it across as well as the quieter scenes we saw where you get to sit with the orcs and get a good close-up on them and see the astounding level of detail.

- The reason they went with CGI over prosthetics is because both the orcs and dwarves had special look that wouldn’t work with makeup.

- Additionally, going with CGI allowed them to cast the best actor for the role rather than cast an actor who fit the physicality first.

- They wanted to keep the anatomy of the races in the games, and then tried to find a bridge to what these characters would look like if they were real.

- The actors had a “motion coach” to know their body’s proportions. They built huge sets with giant doorways for orcs.

- There was a huge emphasis on capturing the environment so they could make the mo-cap more real. This allowed them to keep the focus on where the characters were and what they were doing.

- The animators were conscious of not “Frankensteining” a performance. That is to say they didn’t want to keep sewing together different aspects of a performance and instead tried to capture it holistically.

- This movie narrows down the lore to the beginning of the Warcraft story, which helps keep the focus on a first contact story between orcs and humans.

- They made some connections and abbreviations, but always done with respect to Blizzard, the game’s developer.

- They wanted to make sure they kept the visual style of the games.

- Jones designed Gulodan’s robe, and he joked that’s the first and last time he’ll get into costume design.

- The cloth simulation also helps believability with these characters. Again, they’re pushing the envelope on the hardest elements of visual effects.

- They also wanted to manage the hugeness of the Blizzard aesthetic.

- There are shout-outs to the popular cinematics throughout the film, but Jones was careful not to alienate people that have no familiarity with the game.

- Technologically, everything was possible for what they wanted to do, and the only restraints were time and money.

- Jones says it has the spectacle of a spaghetti western. “There’s a lot of hidden [Sergio] Leone.”

- Jones has been working on this film for three and a half years.

- He felt the best way to introduce this universe was to go back to the beginning.

- “Warcraft” is the star vehicle, so they didn’t have to build the film around a particular actor.

- The close-ups took just as much time to do as the wide shots.

- The environmental stuff was tough to nail down because it’s so vast and detailed.

Animation Supervisor Hal Hickel

warcraft-movie-images-hi-res
Image via Universal Pictures

- We were shown the character creation process.

- The big difficulty for the orcs is that they’re not too far off from humans, and that creates the risk of the uncanny valley.

- All the head stuff they wanted on set and to get fidelity to the actor’s performance.

- The more you rely on an actor’s performance, the more real the CGI is going to be because of the actor’s conscious and unconscious decisions.

- Why they were able to mo-cap the faces, they had to animate stuff like the tusk movement, neck stress, breathing, etc.

- They would sometimes push the little things to remain true to the actor’s performance.

- The challenge was balancing the Blizzard aesthetic, which is to make everything big, with a live-action movie.

- Some of the orc actors wore invisiline dental appliances to help make the mouth movements they would have if they had giant orc tusks.

- They needed to use special deformers to get the facial capture to work with the tusks.

- They also need to figure out how to make certain mouth movements like “Ooh” or “W”.

VFX Supervisor Jason Smith

warcraft-movie-images-hi-res
Image via Universal Pictures

- They created more than 100 unique orcs.

- Orcs account for half the movie.

- Durotan presented the same challenges as the Hulk, but with the added challenges of hair and a costume that had various layers of cloth, bones, trinkets, etc.

- The orcs also have a layer of piercings and those piercings each have to move correctly when the orcs move.

- An important thing to remember is that “Bone is not bone, fur is not fur, leather is not leather.” Everything has specificity.

- In order to get the look of the skin right they used sub-surface scattering.

- “Haircraft” let them tangle with braids and furs.

- The hairstylist for the film made them pieces for the orcs to help provide details.

- Imperfections make everything come alive.

- There are a multitude of minor decisions right down to what should an orc eyebrow be or if they should even have eyebrows.

- Every orc was given an orc skeleton, then that was padded with a musculature simulation that understands weight, resistance, and movement. Then there’s a layer of fat and skin on top of that.

- They also considered the geometry of the performance when it came to the size of an orc head to a human head, which is similar, and then orc head to orc body, which is very different.

- Draka was the most challenging orc because she’s closer to human, and she’s very empathetic.

Visual Effects Art Director Christian Alzmann

warcraft-movie-images-hi-res
Image via Universal Pictures

- Again, another sign of how lovably nerdy this film is, on the wall were a listing of the main orc characters, and one of them is called “Grommach Hellscream.”

- There are four orc clans: Bleeding Hollow, Laughing Skull, Frostwolf, and Blackrock.

- They figured out graphics for each clan.

- They also looked a lot of real tribes and examined the ones who live in an “almost prehistoric society.”

- The more fantastical the characters, the more from the real world you need to include in order to ground them.

- They wanted to show the scope of the tribe and provide the details of a real, functional society.

- For example, Frostwolf should wear a lot of fur because they’re from a cold area.

- Artists would design a crowd of orcs, and each orc has little differentiations. For example, there’s one arc who’s lost and arm that’s been both burnt and chopped off.

- Bleeding Hollow clan is lo-tech; Laughing Skull has skull masks; and Blackrock is more metal, technological, and has a red-and-black design that implies fascism. Again, they use the real world as a reference for style.

- There’s a script in the computer that randomizes the arc direction to create different kinds of orcs.

- They wanted to stress the individuality of the orcs, and so for example, they lost individuality when they all wore helmets.

- They also wanted to make sure the orcs had body scars and tattoos, but because the orcs have big hands, the tattoos couldn’t be too detailed.

Final Thoughts

warcraft-movie-images-hi-res
Image via Universal Pictures

Some people seem to be rooting against Warcraft, and I don’t know why. Duncan Jones is a great director who has strong vision, and Warcraft is ideal for adaptation because it’s a world looking for a story. While I don’t know how good that story will be, I’m eager to find out because I’m totally convinced this is a world worth visiting.

Warcraft opens June 10th.  Click here to see side-by-side comparisons of the actors and their CGI counterparts.

warcraft-poster