(Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa)

Hi, I'm Mike Seymour from fxguide.com for Wired.

Deadpool's wise-cracking, dark, mutant hero Wade Wilson

is directed by Tim Miller, himself a founder of Blur,

an animation and effects house.

So it comes as no real surprise that this film

delivers some loud and in-your-face visual effects.

Now for us, one of the most interesting characters

is Colossus, who was primarily done by Digital Domain.

It's often been said that VFX

is a collaborative effort, and this is really borne out

by this metallic X-men character.

To capture the motion of the character,

there was a motion capture studio session done,

but there was also a separate six foot nine inch performer

filmed on locations in a classic gray tracking suit.

Although, he still wasn't tall enough,

and had to wear either platform shoes

or an extra head-piece for height.

But Colossus' face was modeled on a third performer,

with a much more chiseled jawline.

A fourth performer, actually then,

redid all of the dialogue lines,

but even then, the actual facial animation of those lines

was delivered by somebody else:

Digital Domain's Greg LaSalle,

who was filmed using their proprietary Mova rig.

The rig works using ultraviolet light,

to pick up special spattered paint which,

produce incredibly accurate facial models.

Though of course, those are incredibly

accurate facial models of Greg,

who doesn't look anything like Colossus.

So, Digital Domain has to then re-target

this performance to the metallic facial model.

For this, Digital Domain uses their new

Direct Drive system, which as the name implies,

allows Greg's performance to drive the CG face

while still maintaining high frequency subtle movements.

Finally, the animators get to tweak and refine this

performance and adjust it for the kind of

deliberately solid, metallic look.

This is particularly important for Colossus,

as he has metal ridges and lines,

which are intended to be even and perfectly straight,

which is impossible to maintain

in an animated action sequence like Deadpool,

so Digital Domain invented something new again,

called Live Tech Stream, which allowed them to adjust

the metal work just right no matter

how he moved in any particular sequence.

Well, for more behind-the-scenes action,

please subscribe, I'm Mike Seymour, for Wired.

[Deadpool] Have you seen this man?

Wait, did I leave the stove on?

(car metal crunches)