How Annihilations visual effects artists created those terrifying mutant creatures
See the original posting on The Verge
The last time director Alex Garland and visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst worked together, they created Alicia Vikanders Ava, the robot star of Ex Machina. For their follow-up collaboration, Annihilation, they had a much bigger set of challenges. Garlands newest film is a heady mind-trip that explores humanitys self-destructive impulses, but its also a walking tour of the gorgeous and the grotesque. The story of Lena (Natalie Portman), a biologist who joins a group of women to explore an area of coastal America thats rapidly mutating due to an alien contaminant, Annihilation is full of improbably beautiful biological mashups, shimmering landscapes, and human-plant hybrids.
It also features one of the most terrifying…