Jaykar Arudra, VFX Supervisor, Double Negative, addressed a packed hall on The Making of Venom at the Bengaluru GAFX 2019, held over the weekend in the city.
Aside from a detailed break-up of how the effects were created and what technology was used, Jaykar also showed clips that gave the audience an idea of the work that went on behind the scenes.
He said, “The character has been presented in many different ways in the comics. The symbiote lives on top of the host as a suit but in the film, it is absorbed into the body and oozes out from under the skin and through the clothes. The character’s look went through quite a few iterations. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 70s was one of our inspirations. In terms of what Venom is made of, the words – space goo – was the closest thing we could relate to.”
Speaking of the particular challenges of creating the look of the character, Jaykar said, “When it came to Venom’s skin, the question was should it be oily like tar, smooth like shark skin or wet? Since Venom is basically a viscous creature, we ended up with a surface that is devoid of any wrinkles.”
The next challenge was the chest patterns. “In the comics, Venom has a huge ‘V’ on the chest. We finally settled on a vein pattern on his chest and back. Not only did it tie in with the illusion of a large V, it also tied in with the vein patterns of the symbiotes,” he added.
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As for the iconic facial features, Jaykar said, “ In the comics, the eyes are constantly changing shape which is something we wanted to add to the design. Apart from the eyes becoming big and small, the edges of the eyes were sometimes jagged which we thought was interesting.”
He added, “Venom’s mouth and tongue are his most famous features. We came up with the idea of mouth goo. When Venom starts talking, the (saliva) would stick together and tear apart as his mouth opens. The animation team in Vancouver was falling in love with how the tongue comes out when he talks but they were using it too much. So we had to tell them not to use it as much.”