Framestore & the Making of Detective Pikachu

Detective Pikachu

At the Escape Studios VFX festival yesterday, Framestore's Jonathan Fawkner gave an excellent talk on the Making of Detective Pikachu, a movie which was filmed in London and which used the talents of two of the UK's top VFX houses, Framestore and MPC.

One of the big challenges on the film was the take the original Pokemon 2D artwork, and create characters which could be fitted into a photoreal VFX environment.

If you think that's an easy task, consider the trouble caused by the recent release of the trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, in which a fan rebellion against the look and feel of Sonic led to a bottom-up re-design of the character.

Taking the original Pokemon characters to the big screen wasn't simple, and took a lot of careful development.