Planet X FX

From the neon lights to the pumping beats, watch our VFX breakdown of 'Zillion' and relive the hype of the 90s!

The challenge, as it turned out, was fitting the former club into the shoot location, as they had very different dimensions. Also the locations for the front and the back entrance were geographically separated and very different, making it necessary for us to come up with a building-block approach where we could resize and reposition the individual buildings the complex was constructed out of on a per-shot basis. That way we could, for instance, make sure the landmark industrial chimney that was at the center of the complex, was visible in most of the shots.

We then modeled, textured and shaded the building blocks, taking care especially of reproducing the mix of metallic and reflective tiles the main entrance building facade was plated with. This way we managed to get its signature shimmering effect.

Further care went into fitting the whole with the many neon tubes and spotlights that would light it up at night-time. This really helped to get the cutting-edge technoclub-feeling the Zillion was famous for.

The openings credits and main title are inspired by the original Zillion ‘computer graphics’. By that time made by Frank Verstraeten himself. We wanted to refer to the atmosphere of these graphic, to bring back the Zillion feel, but with the production value of today. For the main title the original Zillion logo was used.

The first sketches were made by Joery Verwey. Motion Graphics were done by Kevin Megens.
Over all art direction by Donald Roos.

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