Review: Hellboy: Golden Army

Hellboy 2 was an amazing film with nice visual effects, i wouldn't rate it better then the first but it defiantly reached for a more ambitious final pice were the CG is concerned.

From the very beginning this film is already packed with effects, it starts with an animated history lesson about the truce between mankind and the demons and moves quickly to the secret home of hellboy were agents wrestle giant berserker onto gurney while another carries a baby troll down the corridor.

For the scene at the auction house Double Negative used there own swarm technology to choreograph thousands of fairies swarming out of the wall, floors and ceilings. each individual fairy was capable of 17 distinctive flying cycles, 9 distinct crawling cycles as well as take-off, landing, eating and idle cycles. even with this swarm technology many faries had to be hand animated for specific action that had a physical effect on the actors e.g. clothing being torn e.t.c

For the fire created by Liz they used a combination of there own fire engine and Pyrotechnic imagery artist blended in.

The goggles worn in this film to seen the true nature of thing were actual not physical props they were makers that were later rendered in CG so that the automatic movement of the lenses could be animated. The cat carried by the bag lady/ troll was green screened in afterwords and there was a 3d double made of the bag lady for when she was punched by hell boy.

Another effects heavy section was the troll market, featuring a range of creature from trolls, pixies, striders to bogarts. All the creatures interact with the environment perfectly matching the actual photography. There is a character called Wink for this characters fight scenes a full CG body double was needed as well as smaller cg parts for his ejectable fist.

There is a beautiful cg scene were some sort of Forrest spirit burst though street of New York. this means not just a cg environment but cg cars, debris, water. the destruction was actually based on real Iraq bomb footage.

The second part to this scene is the death of the spirit, with flowing goo that grows moss and flowers across the street, the creature itself becomes a giant flower and sprays pollen into the air.






one of the main characters is a sort of spirt gas in a suit, in one scene Hellboy brakes the suit and the gas form escapes into a set of lockers witch he uses to beat Hellboy. The smoke is the most impressive part of this scene although the CG can and glass were well done and easily overlooked.

There was a scene supposedly filmed on the cost of Ireland though it was actually Hungary and the cliffs and sky were changed later. Rising from the earth was a giant CG strong gate keeper blocking the way to Bethmoora the abandoned city were the golden army sleep.

the Angel of Death creature was amazing and even with a physical actor in and amazingly crafted costume CG was used to add blinking eyes



Finally we have the Golden soldiers, amazingly detailed CG as well as the models them selves they have glows, smoke effects and small moving cog elements. Another imperssive thing about the army was they way they could be destroyed and rebuilt, not an easy thing to do with rigged 3d modles i know from experience.