The Last Knight marked the fifth film in the Transformers series and one which had ILM reprising its role as lead visual effects house. Like each of the films that preceded it The Last Knight was chock full of massive action set pieces, explosions, destruction, and nuanced robot performances delivered through the combined talents of the all-star voice actors and ILM’s global animation team supervised by Paul Kavanagh and Rick O’Connor.
With senior visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar leading the charge, ILM VFX supervisors Jason Smith and Dave Fogler led a team of over 500 artists and engineers in San Francisco, London, Singapore, and Vancouver, to create the film’s extensive visual effects.
In the film various scenes are set on Cybertron, the home world of Transformers. ILM art director Ryan Church spent months developing concepts with production designer Jeffrey Beecroft which would guide ILM’s environment artists in constructing the world.
Yet another major challenge was designing and building the Knight Ship, a massive ship so large it actually generates its own atmosphere. The effects team had to not only build the exterior of the ship but also a complete interior where a variety of scenes would take place.