The Midnight Sky

Jul 17

1 min read

Updated: Sep 3

PRODUCTION

A science fiction film directed by George Clooney for Netflix, adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton's

novel Good Morning, Midnight. After a catastrophe has left the Earth uninhabitable, a scientist

alone in the Arctic tries to warn the crew of the spacecraft Aether not to return home. The story

alternates between his frozen journey and the astronauts' voyage back through space, sequences that

called for extensive visual effects work.

As a rigger, I contributed to the creation of the rigs for the spacesuits worn by the astronauts,

focusing on their deformation. This was the heart of my work on the film: achieving believable

deformation of the suits in every possible pose, with no breaks or unnatural folds. To get there, I

spent considerable time refining the skinning and setting up corrective blendshapes on the trickiest

areas. The armpits, when the arms are raised, are a good example: a notoriously difficult zone,

where the material has to fold without collapsing. When the mesh itself limited the quality of the

deformation, I worked directly with the modelers to adjust the topology of those areas and solve the

problem at its source. Built in Maya. This costume rigging work ties into my environment work for film and television, in the same vein as the creature rigging I did on The Little Mermaid.