Bomper Studio

Foo Fighters - Chasing Birds

The studio's second collaboration with the Foo Fighters came with a deceptively tricky brief: recreate the feel of classic 2D animation — think Yellow Submarine — without stepping outside of a 3D pipeline. After working through the R&D, toon shading in Arnold proved to be the right approach given the time available.

Alongside driving those technical decisions, the hands-on production side was a big part of the role too — spanning environment build, texturing, lighting, rendering, and simulation work throughout.

Two personal highlights from the FX work on this project. The liquid effect, which features heavily across the film's opening section, was built in SideFX Houdini using a combination of particles, particle trails, and VDB meshing to achieve that smooth, fluid-like motion. The cactus transformation followed a different approach — VDB morphs, blend shapes, and point deformation to iron out the technical issues, with RBD simulation used to sell the destruction. Getting stable RBD sims running on moving characters proved to be a real optimisation challenge; keeping the fracture clean and the shapes readable was key to making the effect land on screen.

The second breakdown is arguably the simplest of the FX work, but possibly the most enjoyable — the goofy cactus character built with basic motion graphics and aim constraints to push the silliness, finished off with VDB meshing to keep everything looking seamless. Sometimes the straightforward solutions are the most satisfying.