VFX Artist Talks About Marvel's 'Bullying Power'

An anonymous VFX artist opened up about working with Marvel, revealing the "bullying power" they have over artists.

"Maybe a month or two before a movie comes out, Marvel will have us change the entire third act. It has really tight turnaround times," the VFX artist told Vulture in an interview published Tuesday. "So yeah, it’s just not a great situation all around."

The artist disclosed that one of the visual-effects companies couldn't finish the number of shoots and reshoots required by Marvel in the specific time because of which his studio was given that work. They revealed that Marvel Studios has "blacklisted" the company from working for them in the future.

"Some of the problems I mentioned are universal to every show and every project," they said. "But you end up doing less overtime on other shows. You end up being able to push back more on the directors."

"When they say something like, 'Hey, I want this,' you can be like, 'This doesn’t make sense,'" they added. "Not every client has the bullying power of Marvel."

The VFX artist explained that one of the problems with Marvel Cinematic Universe is the number of movies they have set release dates for, noting that they are "very inflexible on those dates."

Even though Marvel is not flexible with changing release dates, they still want to do "reshoots and big changes" when they are approaching the deadline for release, refusing to change those dates.

"I remember going to a presentation by one of the other VFX houses about an early MCU movie, and people were talking about how they were getting 'pixel-f--ked,'" the artist recalled. "That’s a term we use in the industry when the client will nit-pick over every little pixel."

The artist shared another problem with Marvel movies, claiming that many "Marvel’s directors aren’t familiar with working with visual effects."

"A lot of them have just done little indies at the Sundance Film Festival and have never worked with VFX," the artist continued. "They don’t know how to visualize something that’s not there yet, that’s not on set with them."

Previously, a VFX artist named Alexis Wajsbrot opened up in May about how difficult it was to work on "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" two-second scene, where they wanted to show dinosaurs.

"It’s a world that exists in the Marvel Universe, so we had to add dinosaurs," he said. "We had to model and texture and render and animate dinosaurs for two seconds, which is extremely not cost-efficient."

Another VFX artist on the team named Olivier Dumont also shared how it is difficult to animate a creature like Gargantos while it is easier to animate a human being.