VOTD: See How Rocket Was Created For 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'

A couple minutes of video montage is hardly enough to represent the months of work that go into creating a character like Rocket Raccoon, but we're happy to have a look at the layers of digital work and real-life photography that went into bringing the irascible Guardians of the Galaxy character to the screen. Below, check out a video that shows many stages of the CG animation process, and also reveals the low-tech way in which the character was played on set.

The FX house Framestore posted this video, along with the brief explanation: "Here's how we created Rocket Raccoon for Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Find out more here."

This video is just the beginning, however. That "find out more here" link above points to a long essay detailing some of the effects work on the film. Here's a basic description of the starting point for Rocket from Animation Supervisor Kevin Spruce.

James Gunn instinctively had a gut feeling of what was right for Rocket. He often wanted to keep him casual and low-key, rather than over-acted. He was very big on the fact that when you shoot live action the actors don't always look at each other when they're talking, whereas there's a tendency for animators to always make characters face who they're talking to. The animation team worked hard to get all that observational detail into Rocket and became really intuitive to what he would do in any situation.

There's a lot more to read at Framestore, including a long piece on the development of the tech used to create Rocket and other characters.