Feature Films VFX
Predator : Badlands
The Yard VFX
theyard-vfx.com
For Predator: Badlands, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, The Yard delivered over 100 VFX shots, including the film’s opening five minutes, which rely entirely on the studio’s work. Spanning full-CG environments, creatures, digital characters, and FX, this contribution marked The Yard’s first creature-driven project at this scale, combining technical ambition with a strong narrative focus.
Set on the hostile world of Yautja Prime, The Yard developed five fully CG environments, from the concept stage to the final image, establishing the planet’s harsh and monumental identity. From vast desert expanses and jagged mountain formations to deep crevasses, each landscape was carefully crafted to feel both alien and physically grounded. Among these, the crystal cave stood out as a major challenge—designed from real-world crystalline references and translated into a fully digital environment that could support complex action. Its dense atmosphere, layered depths, and precise lighting—filtering through rock and interacting with volumetric fog—required meticulous compositing to maintain clarity and realism, particularly during a choreographed and brutal duel sequence with demanding camera movement.
The Yard’s work also extended to the creation of three original creatures and multiple digital doubles for key characters, including Dek, Kwei, and Thia. These assets played a central role in the film’s storytelling, enabling continuity across complex sequences while preserving performance nuance. Special attention was given to look development, anatomical credibility, and animation behavior, particularly for the Predator characters, where subtle emotional expression had to be conveyed through non-human designs. For Thia, a synthetic humanoid, detailed internal structures—mechanical elements, cables, and skin interaction—were developed to ensure physical coherence, especially in sequences involving damage and exposed components.
Working within a large-scale production, involving the collaboration of multiple studios over the world, The Yard integrated and adapted shared assets while maintaining consistency across vendors. This required precise coordination across departments—from concept and modeling to rigging, lookdev, animation, FX, and compositing—ensuring seamless visual continuity throughout the film.
Across all work, The Yard combined creative development, technical precision, and pipeline adaptability to help define the visual identity of Yautja Prime and support the film’s character-driven approach—bringing scale, emotion, and credibility to a bold new chapter in the Predator universe.
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CREW
Laurens Ehrmann - Senior VFX Supervisor
Elisa Perez - VFX Producer
Virginie Wintrebert - VFX Executive Producer
Bertrand Cabrol - CG Supervisor
Julien Dias - Compositing Supervisor
Tom Fonvillars - Head of CG
Gregory Ginsburger - Head of Assets
Corentin Bachelet - Head of Environments
Fabian Nowak - Head of FX
Denis Scolan - Head of Compositing
Bruno Etchepare - Animation Supervisor
Juliette Grandjonc - Lead Lookdev & Lighting Artist
Noemie Cauvin - DMP Lead Artist
Hadrien Palanca - FX Lead Artist
Camille Juge and Marielle Santens - Compositing Lead Artist