SUBMITTED BY Typhon24

April 29, 2003 —

From USA Today:

Visual effects master Michael Fink had to open X2 with a bamf. The sequence lasts less than 6 minutes, but Fink estimates there are more than 100 separate special effects in it, including:

The bamfing. Nightcrawler disappears and reappears more than 40 times in the sequence, and Fink wanted moviegoers to remain intrigued by the smoky effect at the end. "First we created what are called particle dynamics in 3-D computer graphics. You're taking individual little particles and moving them around in a three-dimensional volumetric space. We made the smoke oily. It has thick and thin spots. And if you could single-frame through it, and on DVD people will, Nightcrawler expands for the first few frames of the bamfing even as his image starts to erode. The smoke is formed by his disappearance, and when he finally disappears, the smoke is sucked back inward and then sent back outward ... as if he leaves a vacuum behind."

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