Digital Makeup Effects in a Photoreal Environment

An in-depth discussion on the challenges of creating digital makeup-effects in a photoreal environment. Focused heavily on the creation of the character “Vision” from Marvel’s Avengers films, we’ll analyse the development of a character from concept art to the screen. We’ll examine the advantages and disadvantages of digital vs practical makeup effects, detail-oriented workflows, and avoiding the dreaded uncanny valley.

Trent Claus is an award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor with Lola VFX in Los Angeles, CA. He has worked on over 120 feature films, including 18 Academy Award nominees for Best Visual Effects (4 winners), 10 nominees for Best Picture (1 winner), and with a cumulative worldwide box-office of over 44 billion dollars.

Trent is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the Visual effects Society. In 2012, he was awarded the Visual Effects Society (VES) Award for Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture for his groundbreaking work on “Captain America: The First Avenger”. In the film, Trent digitally altered the appearance of the muscular actor playing the title character so as to make him appear as a “90-pound weakling” for the first third of the movie.

Over the course of Marvel Studios' history, Trent has contributed to 19 out of 22 films, most recently as a VFX Supervisor on “Avengers: Endgame,” “Captain Marvel,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” “Doctor Strange,” Captain America: Civil War,” “Ant-Man,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

In 2008, Trent received media attention for his work on the film, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in which the lead actors were dramatically aged and de-aged to suit the story. Other notable films on which he has worked include: “The Social Network”, “Prometheus”, “Star Trek”, “Life of Pi”, and “Blade Runner”.