Cruncher's Block
Cruncher Block is a notorious criminal figure in the racing world of Speed Racer. Our scene opens in his office, which you come to realise is located in the back of a big rig that is barrelling down the Lonely Highway. The mobile nature of his office is revealed when one of his goons opens a hatch and peeks outside. Whilst ILM did the exterior fight scene, we handled all the interior shots, including the stylised slow-motion shots of the bullets coming through the walls.
The entire interior of Cruncher's office is practical. It was a set piece built on a rocking base, so that throughout the sequence the rocking builds up until the characters get thrown around. We created the CG piranhas that are Cruncher's pets, kept in a large tank behind his desk and used to intimidate his enemies. The tank was practical and sloshed around and we had to animate the fish to match.
The Cruncher Block set piece was built with a strong color scheme and we didn't want to clash with it so we developed the look of our CG to compliment it. The piranhas reflect a lot of the blue light coming off the back of the tank, and have bright green tones in their scales to fit in with the walls of the office. We also gave them bright red eyes that flash and flicker like cats' eyes. With over a dozen VFX vendors worldwide, the overall digital color management of the show was critical. We lit and matched all CG to our plates and then viewed our comps through a LUT that boosted the overall saturation and vibrancy.
