In 2021, we conducted an interview with Liyana Mansor, an incredible VFX editor known for her work on Chernobyl, Alien: Covenant, Black Mirror, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, and much more. In the interview, Mansor discussed her work and career, including how her Wacom Intuos Pro is essential to her workflow.
At the time, it had recently been announced that she would be the Lead Visual Effects Editor on LucasFilm’s Star Wars series Andor, now critically acclaimed for a variety of reasons including for its special effects.
So we were excited and proud when she and the rest of her team were nominated for an Outstanding Special Visual Effects Emmy for their work on Andor! While The Last of Us took home the award, being nominated is a huge honor, and we’re pleased that Wacom pen displays and pen tablets were a part of making the show’s effects happen.
Another important partner in making Andor’s VFX Emmy nomination-worthy was Boris FX, who recently interviewed Mansor again to discuss her work on Andor. In that interview, she explained her workflow in detail, including how important Boris FX plugins Sapphire and Continuum were to her process.
“Continuum’s Primatte Studio was utilized across the episodes for removing blue screens and dropping in temp background plates,” she explained. “These can often look really rough in the offline stage, but with tools like Primatte and integrated Mocha, we were able to achieve excellent tracking and integration … [w]ith Continuum, we have access to ready-made elements that can be manipulated and integrated into footage.” Read the rest of the interview here.
For evidence of just how incredible the VFX are on this series, check out this “Special Look” video, released just before the series premiere:
The Los Angeles Times also did a recent feature on the series’ visual effects, and spoke with Scott Pritchard, a colleague of Mansor’s, about why Andor’s effects were so dynamic and engaging.
“Primarily on this show … we were taking existing photography and either extending or augmenting it,” Pritchard told the Times. “[W]e chopped holes in some of these buildings [virtually] and then extended that to make the environment on Coruscant.” According to the Times, this made the show’s sets feel “like a material place where people live and work, and with buildings that have weight and substance.”
This sizzle reel shows even more behind-the-scenes shots across the production, including some VFX:
YouTube channel befores & afters also produced a series of featurettes on Andor’s visual effects — check out Collider’s roundup with more info and links to each featurette here.
At Wacom, we’re proud to be partners with Boris FX and to be the creative pen tablet choice of incredible VFX artists like Liyana Mansor.
For more insight into how Wacom is used in visual effects workflows, check out this interview we did with Pretend VFX, the artists behind Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
