Image Engine has provided 77 shots for Peter Berg’s Battleship, the epic-scaled action-adventure film inspired by Hasbro’s classic naval combat game. Impressed by the company’s creature portfolio, Industrial Light & Magic appointed Image Engine to create the alien ‘Thug’ sequence on board the Naval Destroyer ship.

Image Engine’s background with Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 was instrumental to the award of the sequence, which required a highly specialized crew to handle the look and performance of the alien Thug. “The folks at ILM were duly interested in our creature work after the success of District 9,” recalled Visual Effects Executive Producer, Shawn Walsh. “Gretchen Libby & Scott Farrar came to Vancouver to meet our group and discuss the future of visual effects, and we had a great dialogue. When the opportunity came up to collaborate on a sequence for Battleship, we all leapt at the chance.”

In the sequence assigned to Image Engine, the Thug invades the ship and wreaks havoc in the engine room, until Petty Officer Raikes (Rihanna) ultimately blows it apart with a 54-caliber deck gun – all of which involved extensive computer generated creature and effects animation, and heavy-duty compositing.

Creating a Monster

At the initial handover, ILM supplied the work-in-progress animated turntables and rig, for Image Engine to take the Thug the rest of the way. “The look development was about 80% there at that stage, and it was over to us to finish the job, as well as handle re-designs that came about as the scene evolved,” said Image Engine’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Chris Harvey. “Initially the Thug was designed for a ‘search and destroy’ mission, which meant that it would smash apart the engine room to sabotage the ship. This mission changed part way through to reconnaissance, requiring a different approach to handling both the design and animation.” Some of the initial changes to the design brief included the anatomy of the Thug, which Image Engine adapted to become less ‘creature-like’, by replacing it’s original claw-feet with a new mechanical boot, and adding bulk to it’s legs and torso as Berg’s vision for the character evolved. “The Thug was originally designed to look like an NFL Running Back, but Berg subsequently asked us to make him look like big offensive Lineman,” commented Jeremy Stewart, Animation Lead. “The new Design brief was intended to make the Thug look bigger and heavily armored. The armor looks great, but unfortunately more armor usually means limited movement because in the real world, armor or even heavy clothing limits a person’s mobility. Animation, Rigging and Modeling really had to work together to come up with a design that looked cool but could also move.” Matching the stunt man’s dynamic performance and range of motion to the rigid armor was a tough balancing act, and the crew had to come up with multiple solutions. “We added a lot of controls to the armor which was rigged to the alien’s skin, some to give us more movement, others to lock it place,” continued Stewart. “During animation, we put a lot of consideration into how the body movements would affect the armor. Although we had motion capture for most of the shots, we had to thoroughly edit it and often completely replace it to keep the armor looking intact. The mocap was also revised give a better sense of weight and timing.”