Cartoon Brew

One Piece isn’t Hollywood’s first attempt to adapt a fan-favourite anime in live-action, but it already looks like the most successful. It certainly leans into the property’s animated roots as much or more than the likes of Netflix’s own Cowboy Bebop or Paramount Pictures’ The Last Airbender and Ghost in the Shell. Cartoon Brew sat down with One Piece VFX Supervisor Victor Scalise on how the show balanced practical and CG effects to create the most-watched series on the platform for the week of its August 31st release. 

On adapting some of the show's iconic movements Scalise comments, "Framestore put a ton of detail into our digi-double of Luffy, especially on the limbs. We learned that for the cg to have interest and some shape, we had to play around with how the muscles, tendons, and skin textures would interact as we stretched Luffy. We even played around with hair sims to push the detail further. Once we had the formula, we played with how much weight we needed to add to his fist or foot and how that would bend or ripple the arms or legs. As we finished more shots, we found adding more flex and bend really helped to give life to the effect without it feeling like the old Stretch Armstrong toys or Silly Putty. At one point, I told Andy Zazzera, our Framestore supervisor, to tell the artists to have fun and push it to the limits, and they came up with some amazing stuff."

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