May 26, 2012

Putting the Steel in Real Steel

by Terry Persun | Published December 7, 2011

In Real Steel, Hugh Jackman plays ex-boxer Charlie Kenton who, along with his estranged 11-year-old son, enters into the world of robotic boxing, now the standard after human boxing has been outlawed. Though Kenton starts off as a promoter for the new sport, he is faced with the additional challenges of scrounging up parts at junkyards to create his own robot—not the best way to create a quality end product.

Many of the robots and robotic components for the film were designed and fabricated by San Fernando, California-based Legacy Effects, which creates live-action effects for films, commercials and television. For Legacy, no product is too small or too large.

“We built all the robots for the film, which included six ‘Hero’ or close-up robots, one partially destroyed robot called Axelrod and twenty background level robots,” says John Rosengrant, a partner at Legacy and a member of its engineering team. “A few specific ones included Atom, who is 7-feet, 6-inches tall; Noisy Boy, who stands 8-feet, 6-inches; and Ambush who is 8-feet, 2-inches tall.” Legacy created 19 animatronic robot fighters for the production, allowing the film to utilize a mixture of real-life and computer-generated action. As a result, some of the film’s fighting sequences would have to involve motion-capture animation.

Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) prepares Ambush for a fight.
©DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Real Steel‘s production designer, Tom Meyer, worked with his team to create the look of the robots; Legacy Effects then took those designs and fleshed out how the end product would function, all the while maintaining the integrity of the original look. Each robotic component was sculpted digitally using the programs Maya, ZBrush and Adobe MAX 2010 and were then downloaded as STL files for rapid prototyping. “All of our files were shared with Digital Domain, who was the team heading up the CGI versions of the robots,” adds Rosengrant.