Behind The Scenes Of ‘Deadpool’: See How Five Different Actors Brought Colossus To Life
It’s no secret thatDeadpoolis all the rage right now, and a sequel is already in development at 20th Century Fox. With a visual effects wizard likeTim Millerbehind the camera as director for the first time, it’s no surprise to see how visual effects were utilized perfectly to help bring Deadpool to life, making his masked face express a variety of emotions like the character does in the comic. But even more interesting is how five different actors and a team of special effects artists were used to bring the metal mutantColossusto life in a completely different way than we’d seen on the big screen before. Find out how it was done after the jump.
Here’s aDeadpoolvisual effects featurette looking at the creation of Colossus fromWired:
FX Guidedives even deeper into the process, giving us a breakdown of how five different actors helped bring the shiny, muscular X-Men team member to the big screen. First, the actor on set for production as Colossus wasAndrei Tricoteux, a 6-foot, 9-inch actor who sometimes wore a gray tracking suit to help those who would replace him with a finished Colossus in post-production. Even though the actor is a huge guy, sometimes he still had to wear big platform shoes to make him even taller. Here’s a before and after image of Tricoteux on the set ofDeadpool:
But since Tricoteux couldn’t always go through the swift motions needed for certain action sequences on set, that’s where actorT.J. Stormcomes into play, doing motion-capture performing for body motion. That takes care of Colossus' movement, but he has a face too. And since neither Tricoteux or Storm had the look they wanted for Colossus, it was stunt performerGlenn Enniswho serves as the inspiration for the chiseled jaw line that makes Colossus look so intimidating. His face was still modified in post-production to get the exact shape right though.
Even with those three actors, they didn’t have everything they needed, because Colossus still has to talk. The voice was provided by Serbian actorStefan Kapi?i?, finally giving us a big screen version of the character true to his comic book roots. And finally, to verify the facial performance matched up properly with the voicework, Digital Domain team member and motion capture supervisorGreg LaSelledid the multi-camera facial performance with phosphorescent paint sprayed on his face, syncing his performance to the lines that were already recorded.
Personally, I think this mash-up of a variety of performances sometimes made the Colossus performance a little awkward, but not enough to really tain him as a character and take you out of the movie. Even at those times, some incredible work was done to bring the character to life in the way that fans have wanted for awhile.
FX Guide has a much more detailed dive into the visual effects, including much more than just the work that went into bringing Colossus to life. Sohead over to that full articleto find out a bunch more behind the scenes information aboutDeadpool.
