The Unlikely Inspiration For She-Hulk’s CGI Transformations Revealed (Exclusive)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has ebbed and flowed into a lot of different directions this year, and none have been quite like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. The Disney+ exclusive series brought the journey of Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) into live-action — something that viewers were very curious to see realized onscreen, given her unique tenure in Marvel Comics. The first season saw Jen changing in and out of She-Hulk form quite a lot, and as supervisors at the VFX agency Digital Domain revealed to ComicBook.com, those transformations were rooted in a unique visual aesthetic, which actually had nothing to do with comics.

“We got a reference, early on, of a strawberry ripening,” Digital Domain VFX Supervisor Jan Philip Cramer told ComicBook.com. “It was a very simple but very elegant transformation. Before, often the transformations were rather painful on the body. It seemed like bones are breaking and reseting and stuff, so you normally see the characters going through some emotions. With She-Hulk, that’s not meant to be the idea at all, right? It’s meant to be a pretty event, something beautiful that’s happening. I think it’s a very different approach to it. For us, we wanted to obviously respect that, but then get as much detail in there during the transformation to She-Hulk, like little veins and little goosebumps running. But everything had to be done in under the eye of making sure it looks pretty, and not scary or uncomfortable, or that her skin is not looking pretty during that transformation.”

“One of my favorite transformation shots in the show is actually in the second episode, where she’s talking to her boss, after she’s just pounded Titania in the face in the courtroom,” Digital Domain Animation Supervisor Elizabeth Bernard revealed. “She’s had quite a few glasses of whiskey at this point, and he asks her to transform back into Jen so that he can fire her, and she just falls down instantly, because she can’t handle her liquor at that point anymore. That was such a funny scene to get to work on. I loved it.”

The first season of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is now available to stream exclusively on Disney+. If you haven’t checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.

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