Wings n Tings – The Fades

An interesting point was brought up about the cgi wings on Paul in The Fades. As a trained VFX artist I thought this might be a good chance to look further into it.

My main experience with creating wings was with bug wings in 2009 and it was a lot harder than I thought. Not getting the gloss or translucency of the wings correct but the behaviour.

Here’s an interesting article about how the wings were created for the movie Legion a short while back. Traditionally you try to build the angel wings physically and fix any problems in post-production. This is pretty costly and lets face it, TV doesn’t have the dosh. So CGI is often the cheaper alternative, and this can be done quite well  at times.

Paul’s wings made their debut at the end of episode 2 of the Fades and well they looked a bit naff. First, the lighting was a bit off as they were brighter than the room he was in. Second, maybe it was just the vfx artist in me but I noticed a bit of slipping around his shoulder blades. And third, where was that wind coming from as they were blowing around more than I thought.

I haven’t yet seen today’s episode so I will comment about it later on. No spoilers from me.

So does anyone else think those wings could have been done better?