Note from Connie: What can I say, this book is just spectacular. It
is more than 300 pages long and is jam-packed with color photos illustrating the special effects
work that ILM has done on dozens of movies, including many of the biggest films in
movie history. There's loads of technical information too, presented in a way
that's easy for the typical movie fan to understand. There's a substantial section
about how the computer morphing technique was invented for Willow and another
section about the creation of the fairy effects, but these are
not presented here. People who are seriously interested in special effects techniques
really need to buy the book!
The pictures and captions relevant to Willow are reproduced below. There are so many
of them that it isn't practical to present them full size; they're presented in
thumbnail form instead. Click on the pictures for a larger image.
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| For the fantasy epic Willow, ILM utilized some classic in-camera compositing tricks, as with the use of this canyon maze set (modeled by Paul Huston) through which heroes Willow and Madmartigan will ride on horseback. Chris Evans adds final touches to a Caroleen Green matte painting of distant mountaintops and a cloud-filled sky, while the foreground black hole in the miniature canyon will later be fit with a screen for rear-projecting images of the horseback riders. | A starting point for the fantasy epic Willow were production-concept illustrations that helped conjure up the look of a fairy-tale land. Painting by Richard Vander Wende. [Note from Connie: this is an early concept for the Nelwyn Village.] | Willow production painting by Richard Vander Wende. [Note from Connie: this is an early concept for the Standing Stones area, which was the point of departure when Willow left the village.] |
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| A final production design by Richard Vander Wende for the two-headed Eborsisk of Willow. | Sean Joyce concept painting of the fearsome General Kael, one of the villains of Willow. | Internationally acclaimed French cartoonist Jean Giraud (who has also worked under the nom de plume "Moebius") produced a series of production illustrations for Willow. This shows concept art for the character of King Kael. |
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| Another fantastic Willow character/costume design by visionary artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Here's the design for the warrior hero Madmartigan. | Illustration concept for the throne room set of the evil Queen Bavmorda, for Willow. Art by Jean "Moebius" Giraud. | Willow creature study by John Bell. |
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| The Eborsisk was created as a stop-motion puppet under the supervision of creature shop veteran Phil Tippett, pictured here. Tippett shared overall effects supervisory duties with Dennis Muren and Michael McAlister. Adding to the realism on major moves was ILM's own go-motion technique, in which a puppet can be programmed to move during each frame exposure for realistic motion-blur. | In this Chris Evans production painting, the two-headed Eborsisk is pictured fighting for the evil Queen Bavmorda. | Creating a creature starts with a script and is first conjured up in the art department. In this early Dave Carson production illustration the two-headed Eborsisk went solo. |
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| Film of the fire-breathing creature in action (still from film). | With strokes and dabs of brush and oils, matte painters conjure up entire environments. Willow, with its fantasy story line and mythic landscapes, is one of the showcase examples of this unsung art form. The creation of the village of Nelwyn, with its surrounding mountains inspired by the limestone formations of Kweilin, a region in southern China, began with this preproduction concept by Chris Evans. | The final painting of the Nelwyn village, produced by Chris Evans. |
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| Detail of Nelwyn village (black areas to be composited with live-action footage). | Final Nelwyn village composite. The shot began tight on the village and pulled back to reveal the entire valley. | Willow's adventure begins as he and a small band leave the valley of Nelwyn to return a baby girl (actually an endangered princess) to the outside world. This Chris Evans preproduction painting worked out a farewell look for Willow's band. |
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| Artist Chris Evans, who supervised the film's matte paintings, checks out a series of test exposures designed to match the live-action footage. The final painting would be accomplished as a "latent-image" composite, in which live-action film photographed with the desired portion of the lens blacked out by painted glass, would be rewound and the black part of the frame filled with a matte painting exposure. This in-camera technique traditionally bypassed opticals for a first-generation quality image. | Live-action plate exposure; masked area reserved for a matte painting of Nelwyn valley. | Final latent-image composite. |
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| Lining up placement of a matte line on a VistaVision camera lens for a latent-image Willow shot are Chris Evans (left), Wade Childress (center), and Craig Barron. | Willow and the evil Queen Bavmorda in a final face-off. Dave Carson production illustration. | A deadly brew intended for the baby princess proves the undoing of Bavmorda. The killer smoke is worked out in this Dave Carson design. |
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| Effects camera supervisor Bruce Walters and head animator John Armstrong created the smoke with a complex slit-scan approach, filming light streaks through rippled glass and adding glows and animated electrical bursts. | Close-up of Bavmorda (actress Jean Marsh) going up in smoke. | The breakthrough digital-transformation scene in Willow, in which the title character's handling of a magic wand sets off a metamorphic sequence, began with an old-fashioned storyboard by artist David Lowery. |
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| Shots from the digital morphing effect for Willow. | The transformation sequence in Willow required a series of animatronic puppet creatures (with the transitions morphed). Here Wesley Seeds prepares a goat puppet. | Blue-screen filming for the transformation sequence began with the animatronic goat puppet, animated here by Bob Cooper (kneeling in foreground) Jeff Olson (kneeling in background, to the right), and Blair Clark (standing). |
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| The goat puppet with its neck fully extended brought the physical animation to the ostrich stage of the transformation. | The ostrich caught in the digital realm. | Some of the transformation stages were best staged with the real thing, such as this tiger that took the ILM blue-screen stage. |
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| Once the puppets and live-action elements were shot, they were scanned into the digital realm. Here Lincoln Hu (left) and Doug Kay (right) monitor a now digitized tiger. | The transformation sequence originally was to include a live-action cut with a half-human, half-tiger figure, but this idea was dropped in foavor of a seamless morphing effect. Here David Allen points out a detail on the sculpted tiger headpiece to Richard Miller. | The humanoid tiger, realized as a creature suit, is prepared for blue screen by Anne Polland (left), Jean Bolte (middle) and Tony Hudson (right). |
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| ILM's VistaFlex camera records the antics of two Willow brownies, with the performers clambering on an oversized set representing a section of a runaway cart. Eyeing and lining up the action from above are visual effects supervisor Michael McAlister (left) and camera assistant Pat McArdle (right). | Woodland study for Willow. | The creative brain trust (left to right: George Lucas, director Ron Howard, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren) contemplate an enchanted brazier that will come to life in a climactic sequence in Willow. |
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| Cameraman Bob Hill shoots the brazier, which was animated as a stop-motion blue-screen element. | The fairy queen Cherlindrea (Maria Holvoe) hovers over the child destined to bring about the downfall of the evil Bavmorda. | Willow (Warwick Davis) encounters a forest fairy in a magical shot from the film. |
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| Chief model maker Lorne Peterson prepares a one-third-scale redwood forest set for Willow. | An interactive Cherlindrea light element is prepared on the miniature forest set. | Dennis Muren (who shared effects supervisory duties with Michael McAlister and Phil Tippett) checks the glowing gown of Cherlindrea prior to shooting the forest wonderland scene. |
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| Muren watches as an actress is flown for blue-screen work (later she will be transformed into the forest fairy who greets Willow). | The custom motion-control flapper that animated the wings for Willow. The wings would be rephotographed with an animation camera setup that aligned them to the forest fairy performers, with added flight path animation effects by Bruce Walters. | Animation department head Wes Takahashi painstakingly constructs from etched plastic the miniature wings that will adorn the forest fairies of Willow. |