See How ILM Animated The 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'

There's no point in pretending that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles was a particularly good movie, but the tech that brought it to the screen is great stuff. In a new video, we see some of the process ILM used to animate the turtles based on the motion-capture performers. In the process, we learn that one of the film's most effective scenes — the impromptu elevator scene — was actually suggested by the actors playing around between takes.

THere's some fairly technical stuff here, but it's all related in fairly approachable language. I'd actually like a lot more of this — I could watch a feature-length doc on the digital work that went into this film.

Of the elevator scene, ILM VFX Supervisor Pablo Helman says,

I had recorded something on my iPhone the first week in New York on top of the roof, and the actors were just dancing around Megan Fox, and the were just being goofy. They were so much fun together and had so much chemistry, they were so excited about being the turtles.

That led to the elevator scene.

Mike Seymour breaks down the tech behind the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick, including the facial animation effects. Plus, find out how an improvised, off-camera moment turned into one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

[via io9]