Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Mandelbulb 3D

[haltenny]

About fourteen months ago, the supervising art director for the Marvel film, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2" contacted me asking if I would like to do some visual consulting work, possibly as a conceptual artist on the film.

My first reaction was that it simply couldn't be true. So I cautiously replied to the email, explaining the limitations of what I could and couldn't do with Mandelbulb 3D. A dozen or so emails and a few phone calls later, I signed a non disclosure agreement, (plus a few other agreements) and promptly began work.

One of the agreements forbade me of even mentioning any involvement whatsoever with the project unless given express permission. I never even asked them for permission until some of the trailers for the movie started coming out, and then some people in the fractal community started spotting some fractal elements in a few of the scenes.

I'm still bound by the agreements I signed to not provide any specific details on the work I did nor reveal any artwork I contributed. I really can't talk much about it at all in detail yet. But I did ask for and received permission to tell my family and friends that I did indeed work on the Marvel film, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2".

It was such an honor to work with all the very kind people on the film, and on such a huge project. At first I felt like I was in so far over my head! I was nervous as hell. But the people I dealt with were very nice and made it easy for me to feel like I fit in, and was an integral, contributing part of the project. It really couldn't have been a better experience.

I also wanted to thank everyone on Deviant Art, Fractal Forums, (specifically Jesse and all others involved with creating Mandelbulb 3D, Luca for formulas and Christian Kleinhuis for hosting the forums) and Facebook that have been kind and generous enough to encourage me by faving, commenting and liking my artwork. All of that gracious support is what drove me to try not to be better than anyone else, but to be as good as I could possibly be at creating my own visions, and making my own style of art. "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" Release Date: 5 May 2017

[cKleinhuis]

nice to hear, it is in fact tremendous news, part1 was already using many many fractal elements that originate here in the forums, i personally find it very good although fractals dominate film making in general like clouds and landscapes generated through them seeing the new 3d ones used like that is awesome and certainly leads to a wider audience wanting to know what is all about them

[haltenny]

Thanks Christian~ Some of the imagery should be very recognizable as coming from Mandelbulb 3D. They (Marvel) are so secretive about the film, that even though I worked on it, I have no idea how much will be seen, or how the images are going to be used, other than a few concept images I saw.

[knighty]

Cooooool!
Congratulations haltenny! 

[haltenny]

Cooooool!
Congratulations haltenny! 

Thanks very much!

[trafassel]

Very cool story. 

[haltenny]

Very cool story. 

Many thanks~

[Fitz]

Cool stuff. I remember a thread a while ago pointing out some sort of Apollonian Gasket-style 3D fractal in the trailer and speculation that someone on this forum was working on the movie. Also seem to recall that Kali had been contacted about it but couldn't get involved in the project due to personal reasons.

Not sure how much you can really reveal, but I'm wondering how they went about incorporating the render into their movie. From what I've seen from Julius Horsthuis's instructional videos, M3D is extremely limited in terms of how it interacts with other programs. You only have the main render and a Z-buffer to work with, no transparency layers or any other things to work with. Did you do a relatively basic animation render and then have Marvel get their own team to do all the fancy post-work special effects, or was a lot of it actually done directly in M3D? One thing I notice a lot is that the better animation makers don't even use the depth of field in M3D because the z-buffer can be used in After Effects or another program to create much more impressive work.

[haltenny]

Cool stuff. I remember a thread a while ago pointing out some sort of Apollonian Gasket-style 3D fractal in the trailer and speculation that someone on this forum was working on the movie. Also seem to recall that Kali had been contacted about it but couldn't get involved in the project due to personal reasons.

Not sure how much you can really reveal, but I'm wondering how they went about incorporating the render into their movie. From what I've seen from Julius Horsthuis's instructional videos, M3D is extremely limited in terms of how it interacts with other programs. You only have the main render and a Z-buffer to work with, no transparency layers or any other things to work with. Did you do a relatively basic animation render and then have Marvel get their own team to do all the fancy post-work special effects, or was a lot of it actually done directly in M3D? One thing I notice a lot is that the better animation makers don't even use the depth of field in M3D because the z-buffer can be used in After Effects or another program to create much more impressive work.

Thanks Fitz~ I saw that thread, and I'm not certain Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is the same project Kali was contacted about. There's no way for me to know. I can say I was not contacted by Luma Pictures. I was contacted directly by the supervising art director from the production company, LevelUp Productions. I can't say exactly how the concept images I sent were used. But I didn't do anything like animations. I don't think I can safely say more about it because of the NDA I signed, sorry.

[Tabasco Raremaster]

It will be the fifth of May soon.

I do hope they will ask you again for future movie projects Hal.

[Chillheimer]

awesome! contragtulations on this!

Part one is already on my alltime favourite movies list - now I really can't wait to see part two!

[haltenny]

It will be the fifth of May soon.

I do hope they will ask you again for future movie projects Hal.

Yes looking forward to it myself of course. It would be awesome to do another project of this nature, one can only hope! Thanks!

[haltenny]

awesome! contragtulations on this!

Part one is already on my alltime favourite movies list - now I really can't wait to see part two!

Thanks much! One of my favorites too~

[surrealista1]

Conratulations Haltenny, you really deserve to be chosen to collaborate on the film

[haltenny]

Conratulations Haltenny, you really deserve to be chosen to collaborate on the film

Thank you~