iBoy

Project Overview

The film, starring Bill Milner, Maisie Williams, Rory Kinnear and Miranda Richardson, is the story of 16-year-old Tom who awakens from a coma to discover that fragments of his smartphone have embedded in his brain, giving him superpowers.

Outpost VFX provided all 150 shots for the film, the vast amount of which were coined ‘iVision’ – this refers to how the protagonist connects with and manipulates technology. These shots consisted of motion graphics elements that were composited in Nuke.

The work also involved numerous digital matte paintings in and around London, green screen window replacements, SFX enhancement and basic cleanup/wire removal/crew removal.

Key sequences the team worked on included the bus and school scenes where Tom first begins to understand and exploit his powers. Another key sequence is when Tom is in control of powers and uses them to hack a phone’s GPS, then a series of drones and helicopters, and then finally to pinpoint a car on a map using licence plate recognition.

The sequence moved between third and first person perspectives, and the challenge here was to design all the iVision elements to work across multiple angles and backgrounds.

The 150 VFX shots were diverse, with careful attention given to the design, animation and final comp of all the iVision shots. Particle effects were used to design a climactic event at the end of the film, and we designed, storyboarded and developed the incredibly creative and complex title sequence. All of this was done in just seven weeks.

This is the second feature we’ve completed with Wigwam Films, after the BAFTA-winning Under The Shadow. iBoy was released in all territories on Netflix on January 27th 2017.