Greed VFX Breakdown

Excess. Extravagance. Grandiose. When you're the king of fast-fashion, you can have it all - and Richard 'greedy' McCreadie has spared no expense for his 60th birthday bash.

Starring Steve Coogan, Isla Fisher, David Mitchell and Shirley Henderson, and directed by Michael Winterbottom, Greed follows the inequality between the super-rich, and the less-privileged garment workers who suffer from the horrendous factory conditions that keeps the clothes on our back as cheap as possible.

Directed and written by Michael Winterbottom, Greed pokes fun at the vast wealth of the billionaires behind ‘fast fashion’, as well as studying the impact on those working in the factories that have built their wealth.

“As sole vendor on Greed, it was a fantastic opportunity to work closely with Michael and the team at Revolution Films,” says Outpost VFX Producer Josh Sykes.

“With an exceptionally tight schedule, we also had to adapt to difficult on-set conditions resulting in further unforeseen challenges.

“Using our core creature team and having spent a day filming/photographing a real lion, we rose to the challenge and delivered on target!”

Outpost VFX’s VFX Supervisor on Greed, Cale Pugh, also discussed our work on the show in more detail, “Greed was a very interesting project. The story's backdrop revolves around a lavish 60th birthday party, and the main attraction at the party is a lion.

“We were tasked with adding this lion to the movie and looked at a number of options, including using a real lion on a greenscreen, but due to the complexity of some of the shots, and to give Michael (the director) the flexibility he needed, we decided that a full CG Lion was the best approach.”

“So we embarked on the journey of creating a photoreal lion in 62 shots on an independent fIlm budget in four months.

“It was a huge creative and technical challenge and it’s great as a creative person to face obstacles, and to come up with creative workarounds. This wasn't a production where we could brute-force solutions, we had to be innovative in our approaches to things like fur sims, muscle and skin deformation, and animation.

“Michael trusted us to produce great work and he really left us alone and trusted the process. It’s massive for the team when you are given a lot of creative freedom to produce really good work.”

“I felt incredibly lucky to work with an amazing dedicated and talented team of artists who poured everything they had into this project to make it the best it could be.

“This was a real labour of love for me and a lot of the team at Outpost.”

Greed is in cinemas now. Check back here soon if you want to take a look at some of our wild work on the film!