Insane VFX of Cassandra Nova's Fingers Explained by Marvel

Take a look at this mindblowing scene from Marvel's recently released movie Deadpool & Wolverine, in which Cassandra Nova goes through Mr. Padadox's face with her hands. Swen Gillberg, the VFX Supervisor of the movie, shared a breakdown of creating these "cringe-worthy" effects, as he described them.

The team started with comic book references and tried to match the keyframes. Swen Gillberg said that the team experimented with skin thicknesses and decided to go with a thinner one, as it allowed the viewers to better see the knuckles through it. The filmmakers used the tracking markers technique to create these scenes, similar to other effects with replacing faces.

When the actors were performing in the scene during filming, Emma Corrin, the actress who portrayed Cassandra, put her hand out of the frame so it would not be seen. Later, during post-production, the filmmakers created a fully digital hand and arm. The face of Matthew Macfadyen was also almost entirely recreated in 3D. After that, the movie creators proceeded to detailed animation and final detailed sculpting, where such things as Cassandra's ring were visualized.

The main characters visit Cassandra's lair twice, and both Deadpool and Wolverine get attacked by Cassandra's monstrous fingers.

Facial expressions on Deadpool's mask were also created digitally. Wētā FX, the company that produced visual effects, shared that they were animated using Nuke and machine learning.

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