Relive Freefolk’s magical VFX for Fate: The Winx Saga

Freefolk has announced their delivery of a significant award of VFX as a lead vendor for season 2 of Netflix series, Fate: The Winx Saga.

Based on the popular Winx Club cartoon, the drama transports viewers to the Otherworld where fairies and specialists train within the confines of Alfea College.  The story centres around a group of teens, determined to master their enchanting powers, navigate rivalry, romance and supernatural studios at the magical boarding school.

Dave Houghton, who the Freefolk team worked with previously on Cursed for Netflix, was the overall VFX supervisor. The Freefolk crew were led by VFX supervisor, Steve Murgatroyd, CG supervisor, Harin Hirani, and VFX executive producer, Meg Guidon.

The team were tasked with creating numerous ethereal elements for the series including fire, water, ice, air bubbles, writhing muscles, glowing veins, vines, a protective magical barrier for Alfea College and a portal as well as as an elaborate banqueting hall ceiling adorned with mangrove like tree roots.

The biggest award of work, however, involved a CG character called the Scraper. Integral to the story, the creature, with complex and varied actions, features throughout the show and kept the animation team very busy.

Steve Murgatroyd explains the work in more detail, ‘We had a fair number of key sequences but the stand out ones would have to be Aisha and Flora’s encounter with the creature (or Scraper) in episode 3, where we had over 30 shots to animate, many of them requiring interaction with the live action characters.

Another key VFX we created was Musa’s run in with a Scraper in a gloomy basement in episode 4, it’s fast paced and probably one of the more chilling moments. There are also Scrapers swimming in tanks, Scrapers smashing through glass, Scrapers attacking in large numbers and even Scrapers crawling under blankets – there are a lot of Scrapers.”

The FX department created proprietary setups for the crowd scraper shots that allowed the scrapers to avoid each other, as well as collide against one another and the environment. They also had to manoeuvre like the hand animated scrapers seen in other sequences.

Judy Counihan, executive producer, comments on working with the Freefolk team on this series. “Freefolk did a fantastic job in creating an iconic creature and other images on Fate series 2. The team were brilliant and we are all immensely proud of the results.”

Fate: The Winx Saga is available to watch globally on Netflix from September 16th and is currently number one in the Netflix chart.