The Boys: Homelander's Cape is CGI More Often Than You Think
Throughout the first three seasons of The Boys on Prime Video, the series has prided itself on using practical effects whenever necessary, from much of the show's gore to the building of a massive fake whale the production could crash a speedboat into. Even then, the show prominently features superheroes, so that means not everything can be practical. In fact, even Homelander's cape has to be computer-generated a good chunk of the time.
The Boys visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet made the reveal on a recent Corridor Crew episode breaking down the various VFX work included in the latest season of the Prime Video hit.
"We have to add the cape anytime we use the wires. It ends up being CG a fair amount of times," Fleet said on the show. "Any time he's doing anything crazy like flying or wires or anything like that, we're going to pull the cape and go CG. We want to control the physics of it when he's flying because that's a big tell for which way the wind's moving."
When we spoke with Fleet in 2020, the filmmaker said the collaboration between practical (or SFX) effects and visual (VFX) effects is a paramount in the development of any series or film.
"We worked so well together that it's one of the reasons I think the show looks the way it does is that I'm able to, with a lot of sequences, have it be 75% practical and 25% visual effects or like 50/50. Not like 10% practical, 90% visual effects," he said at the time adding, "What people I think outside of the industry may not realize is that so much of it comes down to time and the challenge for special effects in this day and age is it takes a lot of time on set. It was so easy on a show to say, we're just going to do a visual effect and just push the hot potato down the line so they can make their day on set, but on this show, we don't do that. We make sure to fight for them to have the time and do it that way.
The Boys Season 3 is now streaming on Prime Video.
What have you thought about the show's latest season so far? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter!