How a raccoon and a tree became the human heart of Guardians of the Galaxy

Five films are nominated for an Academy Award in the Visual Effects category this year, and they each offer a nice look at the amazing tricks filmmakers and their effects teams can pull off on the big screen. In recognition of these films and one of our favorite Oscar categories, were putting the spotlight on one Visual Effects nominee each day leading up to Sundays broadcast and taking a closer look at what made them stand out.

Previously, we looked at the face-mapping effects in Captain America: The Winter Soldierand the (literally) groundbreaking effects in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Now, we get the scoop on the digitally created duo that were the breakout stars of Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy.

Marvel Studios has made a habit of breaking box-office records with each addition to its rapidly expanding cinematic universe, but it has yet to bring home an Oscar despite multiple films nominated in the Visual Effects category over the years. The studio doubled-down in 2014 with two films earning Oscar nominations, Captain America: The Winter Soldierand Guardians of the Galaxy, but only one of them features a heavily-armed, talking raccoon and a massive, sentient tree with a limited vocabulary.

Possibly more than any other Marvel movie so far, Guardians of the Galaxy proved that the team at Marvel has an uncanny ability to turn any characters whether lesser-known or in this case, barely known into box-office gold.

The team at Marvel has an uncanny ability to turn any characters into box-office gold.

When it comes to the success of CG (computer generated) creatures Rocket Raccoon and Groot, Marvel Studios owes thanks to the talented visual-effects studiosthat brought their supporting characters to life. With these particular characters, Marvel took the unusual step ofdividing the work between two separate VFX studios: Framestore, which developed Rocket Raccoon; and MPC, the studio tasked with creating Groot.

MPC did early tests for both characters and did a good Groot. Framestore did tests for a very good Rocket, recalled VFX supervisor Stephane Ceretti in an interview with StudioDaily. So we decided to use the two companies to balance the load. MPC created Groot and Framestore created Rocket and then they shared.

For its part, Framestore was tasked with finding the balance between the silliness of a walking, talking raccoon that hasan affinity for oversized weaponry and the serious elements of his role in the film and Bradley Coopers voice performance for the character.

If you exaggerate his performance and make him too cartoony youve lost the audience but if you go too real youll end up with something that isnt entertaining or doesnt do Bradleys voice justice, explained Framestores animation supervisor, Kevin Spruce.

Once they settled how to find that balance and had a good visual reference from director James Gunn and the Marvel Studios team, Framestore set about bringing Rocket to life every single hair of him.

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How a raccoon and a tree became the human heart of Guardians of the Galaxy