Hello there Mr. Orloff! Thank you very much for your time and being here! Hope that you and your family continue to stay well during this time.
FX does seem to be very demanding given the time that shows have on their schedule from week to week. They all have been beautifully rendered by you and your studio given those circumstances!
My question is, do you get to listen to any music during your sessions working on all the great FX work you and your studios produce to lessen the stress of the timely schedule you follow (if not what type of music do you listen to)?
It is a pleasure to be able to speak with you. I love Stargirl! Such a great show! I have heard that season 2 of the show will be on CW. I was wondering if that will put any restrictions on making the show or change the quality of it at all, because I love the quality of the show right now!
Hello Mr. Orloff
Thank you for taking some time to answer our questions. My question is this, giving that you guys are quite established do you guys get creative freedom for coming up with the VFX for the show your working on or do they tell you guys what they want first and you guys have to work with that input. Just wondering if the better a company is at VFX do they get more trust creatively or are they always being told whats expected of them???
Sorry didnât quite know how to word my question hopefully it makes sense lol.
Hello! Thanks for all the hard work you put into these shows. Is there a special effect that we may have seen on one of the CW shows that we may not have realized was a special effect? Maybe an arrow being shot in Arrow or a part of Barryâs suit in The Flash?
Hello everyone, thanks so much for having me canât wait to chat with yaâll about Stargirl and the work ZOIC Studios has done for the Arrowverse and other projects over the years.
Thanks for the question Justin. Yes Iâve been a huge comic book fan all my life! I started collecting in 1977 and havenât stopped since. Stargirl has been my favorite series to work on so far. Collaborating directly with Geoff Johns has been a dream come true. I was a big fan of the work he and James Robinson have done in the past for DC. It was a unique opportunity to work with great DCU characters that have never been seen on screen before.
Canât say too much about the new season yet. But it is going to be VERY cool. Keep an eye our Easter eggs in the last few eps of S1 for some cluesâŚ
This was a big part of the show. Geoff Johns the creator of Stargirl really wanted the staff to be âcharacterâ in the show. We had a design from the props department but quickly realized that the staff was so active we needed to replace it with a computer generated version in almost every shot. We had the actress holding a glowing tube for most of shooting and ended up doing about 1000 shots of the CG staff. We did tones of testing in animation and lighting to get the look dialed before the show even shot. It was a fantastic experience to get a chance to define such an iconic part of the DCU.
Iâve always been one to listen to music when I work. A lot of our artists do too. When we are in the office we have a strict headphones only rule so we donât disturb each other. But one of the benefits of quarantine has been being able to listen as loud as I want whenever I want! Iâm a Vinyl guy so I moved my record stash to my office so I can listen more.
Grundy was a HUGE challenge to bring to life. Canât say too much about him without spoiling anything but we worked on the character from initial designs to final execution. Making his, skin, hair, muscles and expressions work in a realistic and engaging way was tough but a lot of fun. That type of works takes a ton of collaboration from lots of talented people. Sculptors to make the body and facial expressions, animators to make the performance, lighters, compositors just to name a few. Keep your eyes out for more Grundy in upcoming episodes!
Great question. The way that we handle re-usable CG elements for shows is a big part of making VFX Budgets work for TV shows. We call re-usable characters, sets, vehicles etc. âasssetsâ. The largest asset we built for Stargirls was STRIPE. We used him in nearly every episode and he was really fun to create and bring to life. It took our team moths to work out all the details right down to the âMade in Detroitâ emblem on his boot. The coolest part about stripe is we sent our 3d files to a company called Legacy Effects and they built a 16 ft full scale version of STRIPE from our 3d files. You can see that amazing prop in scenes in Patâs Garage.
Hi, Andrew! Thank you so much for joining us today!
