James Gunn didn’t need a motion capture costume to make baby Groot dance
The director served as a model to animate Groot.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 will return this evening on TMC, and if you liked its opening scene, you will undoubtedly appreciate its behind the scenes? In March 2020, James Gunn revealed his method for making baby Groot dance to the tune of “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra.
A making-of of Hulkby Ang Lee, resurfaced recently and caused a sensation: we see the director in a motion capture suit turning green with rage and destroying everything in his path… It was in fact the filmmaker himself who had “plays” Hulk for this version, and his gestures were recorded to be able to animate the character digitally. The director is not the only one to have served as a model for a key character in his superheroic blockbuster: Taika Waititi, for example, plays Korg in Thor Ragnarokand James Gunn is Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Well, not exactly…
Thor Ragnarok: Taika Waititi makes fun of his Korg costume
If Vin Diesel lends him his voice (“I’m Groot!”), the giant tree is actually animated from several different people: Kevin Michael Richardson and Krystian Godlewski slipped into blue costumes “erasable” to play him as an adult in the first part of Guardians of the Galaxywith a “Groot’s head” hung above them in order to have the right size of the character and to serve as reference points. We see it for example in this filming photo, where the same process is used for Rocket, animated using marks made by Sean Gunn, the director’s brother (seen here crouching).
For Avengers Infinity War, when Groot is a teenager, it’s Terry Notary, an actor expert in performance capture (who notably worked alongside Andy Serkis on the trilogy The Planet of the Apes), who played him, in a mo-cap costume. He was able to shoot the action scenes and his movements were digitally captured to animate Groot afterwards.
On the other hand, to animate it “baby”, there was no performance capture actor in costume. The animators were simply inspired by the movements of the director himself. James Gunn details on Twittersupporting video extract, that he did not need a mo-cap combination: “I get asked a lot about Baby Groot’s dance, so here’s a video. They set up a dozen cameras around me in a recording room, to capture me from all angles dancing to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.“
Guardians of the Galaxy: “Groot is dead. Baby Groot is his son.”
Then, it’s up to the animators to take inspiration from his dance to bring the little hero to life. And this is how the opening scene came about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B67TuUwghqE
The evolution of performance capture as told by Andy Serkis
