Medusa Deluxe

I was approached by my friends at Time Based Arts to work on 'Medusa Deluxe' directed by Thomas Hardiman. It came with a wild VFX challenge: a close-up of this massive, stunning hair wig going up in flames, followed by fiery chunks gracefully falling, leaving behind trails of smoke and loose hair strands.

Creating CGI fire up close is a tightrope act. I had to rebuild the wig to be able to have it interacting with the flames — burning, shrinking, and lighting up. A substantial amount of animation and simulation work went into creating the fire elements, such as blue licks, wispy flames, and big blazing ones, along with smoke, hair debris, ambers, and heat distortion fields. Finally compositing everything together to produce a hyper-real and believable effect.

Fast forward to the film's premiere — when this was on-screen, hearing the audience going woooow!! felt pretty good.