Movies - TV
How Marvel Reverse-Engineered Iron Man’s Mid-Air Suit-Up
By JEREMY SMITH
Iron Man’s mid-air suit-up in "The Avengers" is a reverse-engineered sequence that’s still effective today due to its precisely rendered elements, but achieving this wasn’t easy.
In "The Avengers: The Art of the Movie," concept artist Phil Saunders discussed keeping the feel of the Mark V suitcase suit while giving it a "bulkier, fully armored silhouette."
In order to effectively achieve this, Saunders waited to tackle that goal "until the suit was designed and modeled so that it wouldn't compromise the ultimate design of our hero."
He then took a digital model and imported it into Luxalogy Modo. After breaking the model into components, he found an articulation that let it collapse into a missile-like shape.
Next, Saunders used "a basic animation and a final collapsed silhouette," where he "added panels to streamline the form using as many of the [...] suit surfaces as possible [...]."
"Those panels would ultimately blow off like the shield plates on an ICBM before the suit unfolds, adding another dynamic element to the sequence," he concluded.
These meticulous efforts paid off because you can rewatch this scene over and over, and see every element rendered precisely as Saunders explains it in the book.