In James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, Kurt Russell plays the role of Ego the Living Planet, father to Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and hell-bent on spreading his influence over the entire universe. At different points in the movie, he appears in a much younger form, he shows off some unusual family dioramas, and he is shot to pieces before re-forming. Here’s how Lola VFX, Animal Logic and Weta Digital handled that work.

YOUNG KURT RUSSELL

They did a ‘skinny’ Chris Evans for Captain America: The First Avenger, a young Michael Douglas in Ant-Man and a de-aged Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War. Now, Lola VFX has done it again for Kurt Russell’s Ego. Their approach drew on this previous ‘youthification’ work, starting with the principal hero plate of Russell on set. Additionally, a face double was filmed mimicking the hero performance as much as possible.

“The time-span traveled with this character was about 37 years, so it was our longest span so far in de-aging, but it was a lot of fun to work on!” —Trent Claus, Visual Effects Supervisor, Lola FX

“We use that take as reference material, particularly for lighting reference on the different structures of the face,” explains Lola Visual Effects Supervisor Trent Claus. “Mr. Russell wore his full costume, including hair, with minimal makeup except for tracking dots. We generally prefer to avoid a lot of makeup as it can blur or hide the natural qualities of the skin that we try so hard to maintain.”

Meanwhile, at Lola, artists analyzed the reference materials for the target age. In this case, the desired look and age was around the time of Escape From New York. “Unfortunately for our purposes,” notes Claus, “Mr. Russell’s character in that film has an eye patch and a permanent 5 o’clock shadow, so it wasn’t ideal. But his film just prior to that, Used Cars, was just perfect. We combed through Used Cars frame by frame to gather reference for particular expressions, angles and lighting.”