Our Work on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

The Weta Digital team, led by Visual Effects Supervisor Martin Hill, created a stunning array of creatures and environments for the boundless universe in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

We worked closely with director Luc Besson to create over 1300 shots, paying careful attention to the original work of Jean-Claude Mézières, the creator of the Valérian and Laureline comic series.

Each of the species in the film needed to be distinct enough to come from different worlds but also be coherently of the same cinematic universe. Many characters appear fleetingly in one or two shots, while others receive a lot more screen time — including the Doghan Daguis, the ethereal Pearls and the Boulan. No matter how big or small the part, every character was created with meticulous detail from the design and concept phase through to completion.

The sheer volume of environments we were tasked with meant we had to be inventive in how we built each scene. In one scene alone Valerian traverses through ten different worlds. We combined matte paintings with photogrammetry to efficiently create many different worlds without sacrificing beauty or detail. As with the character designs, we made the locations uniquely distinctive, but made sure they felt very much part of the same universe.