All images courtesy of Zoic Studios for ABC.

We're pleased to publish this first part interview with Andrew Orloff, Zoic Studios Creative Director and VFX Supervisor. We're particularly excited to learn more about the work by Zoic on the hit television shows V (2009) and Flash Forward. In this first part interview, we focus on V. In this daring re-imagining of the 1980s sci-fi classic, humanity takes on a greater threat than any it has ever faced before. Produced by The Scott Peters Company and HD Films in association with Warner Bros. Television, Scott Peters is executive producer/writer and Jeffrey Bell, Steve Pearlman and Jace Hall are executive producers for this exciting series.

IT'S ART - V is a one of the most well-known sci-fi miniseries from the 1980s. What was your reaction when you learned you would be working on the re-imagining?

Andrew Orloff - We are all huge fans of the original series, and it is an incredible honor to be able to pay homage to it with this incredible update. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.

IA - Can you talk about the design of the Visitor mothership? How did you create it? Did you choose to keep some details from the original?

AO - The show’s creators, Scott Peters (The 4400) and director Yves Simoneau (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The 4400), were dedicated to realism, and internal consistency and logic in the design of the alien technology and culture. We worked with Peters and Simoneau, plus executive producers Steve Pearlman and Jace Hall, to design the mothership. The enormous, saucer-shaped Visitor mothership is one of the original V’s iconic images, and visually represents the Visitors’ technological superiority and their domination over humanity.

I created the mothership on my laptop, working through numerous iterations with input from Peters and Simoneau. I wanted a design that was “freaky and menacing,” and would be emotionally impactful when it made its first momentous appearance onscreen.

IA - You say in your blog that the mothership was created in Lightwave. Can you tell us about the complexity of the ship, and snakeskin pattern design?

AO - The mothership was created in NewTek’s Lightwave 3D. Because the mothership itself is enormous, the 3D model used to represent it is huge and highly detailed. Zoic CG supervisor Chris Zapara (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Pathfinder), modeled the “transformation” effect, in which the ventral surface of the ship changes, causing the frightened humans below to fear an imminent attack. In fact, the ship is deploying an enormous video screen, displaying the greeting message of Visitor leader Anna (Morena Baccarin, Firefly). After many rounds of pre-visualizations, a design was chosen with large, movable panels and a grid of smaller panels arranged in a snakeskin pattern. Digital artist Steve Graves (Fringe, Sarah Connor Chronicles) was responsible for filling in the copious detail that gives the mothership the impression of immense scale. After the pilot was picked up by ABC, the dorsal surface was remodeled to add photorealism. The model was initially detailed only from the angles at which it was shown in the pilot, due to the many hours of work necessary. As shots were created for the second through fourth episodes, Graves created detail from new angles, and now the mothership model is complete.

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