Avengers: Endgame – Sean Gunn Standing in for Rocket Is Funnier Than You’d Think

Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has shared a video from behind-the-scenes of Avengers: Endgame. The video shows his brother, actor Sean Gunn, hard at work standing in for Rocket in the film. It’s an eye-opener for how dedicated Sean Gunn is to the motion capture role.

The video shows Gunn walking alongside the Avengers as they stroll purposefully through their hangar. The difference is that Gunn is walking in a crouched position and using his arms for extra balance and leverage. Take a look above.

ComicBook.com spoke to Gunn earlier this year. He explained how playing Rocket ended up being more engrossing than he expected at first. “In the first movie I wore the, you know, whatever you call it, but the nylon onesie,” Gunn said. “But then in the second movie and in the two Avengers movies, I just wore a gray sweatsuit, which was a lot more comfortable and I wear some knee pads and things like that. The thing that was unusual is that the motion capture part of it, which is technically motion reference, not motion capture because it’s not, they’re not doing it through a computer. The animators are literally watching what I do and animating that rather than sending it through an algorithm the way that you would do it with the way you would do it with a more humanoid character. That doesn’t work for a raccoon. It just doesn’t, the technology isn’t there. It doesn’t look good enough. So the animators actually watch what I do and animate that.

“But that part of that, we didn’t even know that that part was essential when we started it. The main reason that I was there was so that I could read the lines with the other actors and be an actor in the scene with them and I got down low because I knew for sightlines and things like that, that you’d want to be looking at a pair of eyes when you’re looking at the character’s eyes, so we did it like that really for the other actors. It wasn’t until we had been shooting for a week or two that the visual effects team said, ‘You know, these shots that we have of Sean in there are incredibly helpful to us as we start to animate Rocket and we start to know where he’s looking and where his hands are moving and what his, you know, what his shoulders are doing and that kind of thing.’ And so then we started making sure that we got at least one really strong reference shot with me in it for the animators, and then I would step out and do it through the subsequent takes from behind the camera and I’d be just doing my same vocal performance but feeding the actors the lines.”

What do you think of this behind-the-scenes look at Sean Gunn playing Rocket Raccoon in Avengers: Endgame? Let us know in the comments. Avengers: Endgame is available now on Digital and on Blu-ray on August 13th.