'Doctor Strange' VFX Reel Reveals Some Of The Most Impressive Digital Doubles & More

When it comes to blockbuster movies, visual effects companies can create (and destroy) anything. Sequences where entire cities are destroyed or an entire creature created with visual effects happen regularly, and the technology is so advanced that they pretty much all look incredible. The more impressive trick in visual effects these days is when one of the companies responsible for these effects makes it so that you aren't even aware there's a visual effect happening.

In the case of Doctor Strange, there are endless visual effects, mostly because of how our characters can manipulate the world around them. However, some of the more impressive visual effects you may not have realized were there to begin with. A Doctor Strange visual effects reel was recently published online, and I was floored to learn of the existence of more extensive visual effects than I had initially though, including some of the best digital doubles of actors you've ever seen. Watch below.

Here's the Doctor Strange visual effects breakdown from the folks at Framestore:

First, it's cool to see all the layers of what is referred to as "Mandbrotting." Visual Effects supervisor Mark Wilson talked to Art of VFX about that and explained:

"There's the whole set bending and moulding, cloning and reconfiguring itself, but then there's also the Mandelbrot pattern, which is the mathematical formula that creates these crazy patterns and the fractured world aspect to it. Once we had animated all of these assets, our FX team then placed additional Mandelbrot sponge fractal patterns inside it, using Houdini to drive a proprietary Arnold procedural iso surface shader at render time to give us a mathematical organic growth that was really cool. That was all new to us!"

But for me, the real surprise was seeing how many times a digital double of an actor was used without any indication of it. For example, unless I'm understanding wrong, that slow motion shot featuring Doctor Strange throwing on his signature cape doesn't feature real actor Benedict Cumberbatch. That's entirely a visual effects. I thought it was just the cape, but the entire character is a visual effect. That floored me.