Having worked on several Netflix projects, DNEG delivered yet another visual marvel – The School for Good and Evil which has been streaming on the platform since 19 October 2022. The official synopsis of the movie reads: Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they’re swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between good and evil.
Even though DNEG got involved with the film later on at the post-production stage, it has worked on 436 shots which include effects, interiors and picturesque environments among other things. A huge team of 706 people from DNEG Mumbai and London have worked on the film.
To get an in-depth insight into DNEG’s work in the film, Animation Xpress had an interview with VFX supervisor Anelia Asparuhova.
The school for good and evil
The film has an interesting concept of distinguishing between the people and segments of the school belonging to the good and evil sides, respectively. As the parts of school are divided into good and evil wherein the people belonging to the good side wear colourful clothes and people belonging to the evil side wear dark clothes, to match that and create an impact, the DNEG team also created the same environment while working on the set extension.
The team at DNEG worked on the interior of the school where they added the logo of the School for Good and Evil on the wall and lowered the ceiling to give a look of enclosed space. They even added the volumetric rays (sun rays) coming in from the windows. Adding the volumetric rays was a technical challenge for the team as there were lots of layers in those shots and the team wanted to make sure that there was consistency in all the sequences.
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Transforming into the evil
It is one of the scenes where the leading character transforms into evil and starts to sort of peel off the character. Asparuhova said, “The director wanted the transformation magic to look as if the evil energy peels off the skin of the character. The tricky part here was to integrate the particles and make them look like they were coming directly from the character’s body. We used some tricks in comp and effects to blend the colour of the clothing and skin into the particles to make the effect more congruent.”
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Cyclops facial animation
In one of the battle scenes which took place in school, an evil character starts exhibiting an enormous amount of rage and showcases his magic. DNEG used facial animation to show the emotion of the evil cyclops. “This was quite an interesting challenge because normally when you have someone expressing emotions of rage or anger, you rely heavily on the movement of both eyes and eyebrows and the coordination between them. In this scene, we had a very angry character with only one eye and one eyebrow, which didn’t make things easy. We had to treat the single eyebrow as two eyebrows connected in the middle in order to get a believable furrow shape. We did quite extensive tests on the range of facial shapes,” said Asparuhova.
She added, “We did some still expressions and presented those to the director to make sure he was happy and the style was in line with what he expected to see in the final movie.”
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
The film has many intricate scenes and the team had to face several challenges while working on it. One of the major challenges was to create different effects/magic for different characters. Added Asparuhova, “The director wanted every character to have their signature magic. For Sophie, we created a range of magic to portray her emotions, from super subtle liquid and smoke simulation coming off of her finger to a full blast of blood magic that obliterates the whole main hall in a shockwave. For the shockwave, we used a lot of comp integration as well as liquid and particle simulations, and had to re-light the set for better integration. We kept all other characters’ magic quite light and playful to contrast with the darkness of Sophie’s magic.”
For DNEG, this movie has been a feast of different effects simulation and they also had a positive experience while working with director Paul Feig. Asparuhova concluded by saying, “Paul and Erik are great with giving creative direction, as well as being open to suggestions and creative solutions. We had an amazing experience working with both of them.”
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Image Courtesy of DNEG © 2022 Netflix, Inc.