The 2014 remake of RoboCop is hands-down one of the best sci-fi movie adaptations of all time. It dispenses with the drivel in the previous hit and brings in more of what’s cool about a crime-fighting robot. Even if the storyline misses the target here and there, the visuals do not, and the reimagining of the suit is at the top of what makes this movie so cool. A sleeker, darker and more agile Murphy, takes out perpetrators throughout the movie and fights a fleet of revamped ED-209’s that delivers top-notch, bot-battling action. Knowing more behind the redesign of the suit, the machines and weapons makes viewing the result even better and designer Vitaly Bulgarov takes us there, telling how KeyShot helped along the way.
You’ve seen Vitaly’s artistry, his mechs and his process, but just this week, he posted RoboCop concept visuals and gave behind-the-scenes insight into the development of the suit and other machines in the movie. The models and visuals he created for the film were used throughout the project from pre-production concepts to the development of the RoboCop suit, ED-209, bike, weapon and other props at Legacy Effects, all of them completely visualized using KeyShot. You’ll find shots and an overview of the suit development below with much, much more at his site on ED-209, the exoskeleton suit, RoboCop’s bike and more.
“After Eddie Yang with his team did the first couple rounds of concepts I was brought in to continue developing one of the ideas for the suit. Particularly my task was to explore the sleek aesthetics of a dark robo-suit idea further. The elements from Eddie’s concepts that the director Jose Padilha liked were preserved in the final suit design as well. Unlike the tank-like heavy original robocop with exposed hardware and pistons, one of the tasks for the new suit was to give him a slimmer, faster and overall more hightech and commercial appeal without too much of exposed hardware. This resulted in a more aerodynamicc look with some automotive shape language influence. Initially I used a larger variety of materials and surface finishes like black chrome, silver metallic, satin metallic and carbon fiber but eventually after the design was approved it was decided to make a matte black finish as the primary color. During the final stages of the design Legacy Effects suggested certain changes to be made to provide more suit mobility to support the high-pace action scenes of the film, which are also reflected in some of the images below. Once the design was approved I passed the 3D model to Legacy Effects and they used it as the base 3d mesh from which they did output the final suit parts. Legacy’s artists and technicians took the 3d concept model through the stages of digital re-fit of the suit to match Joel Kinnaman’s proportions in 3d and then did the necessary preparation/clean-up work in order to be able to output the parts using 3d printing technology all the way to final practical suit. Fausto De Martini also worked on the suit and did some really awesome designs for the Robocop’s internal parts as well as the silver version of the suit that had to look more like the original Robocop, that you can check out on his website.”
All images property of Sony Pictures and MGM 2014. Courtesy of Vitaly Bulgarov.
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