ILM visual effects supervisor Steve Ellis talks to Jay Stobie about ILM’s work on The Boroughs, the latest spellbinding series from Netflix. Be aware of spoilers!
From creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, Netflix’s The Boroughs (2026) follows Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) as he and his band of fellow residents unearth a horrendous secret lurking within their retirement community. ILM visual effects supervisor Steve Ellis connected with ILM.com to explore Industrial Light & Magic’s numerous visual effects contributions to the project’s thrilling story, a task that included collaborating on the previsualisation and sequence design process, developing and animating the movement of the show’s unique creatures, orchestrating a dazzling scene highlighting the creatures’ miraculous blood, and much more.
Moving In to ‘The Boroughs’
As the ILM visual effects supervisor on The Boroughs, Steve Ellis worked directly with production visual effects supervisor Tara DeMarco and oversaw the approximately 170 shots that ILM handled as the project’s lead vendor. While ILM’s Mumbai studio helped out during early previs animation tests, the London studio tackled the majority of ILM’s duties on the series. “By ILM standards, we had a relatively small number of shots across seven of the eight episodes, but we did most of the biggest effects on the series, including the creature,” Ellis tells ILM.com.
The creatures, often referred to as “The Kids” by the characters within the show, were the offspring of a mysterious being – known as Mother – who was being held captive by the shadowy cabal which owned and operated the community. A crucial piece of The Boroughs lore, these entities stood as one of ILM’s primary assignments on the show.
“The creature has this wonderful arc,” Ellis observes. “In the first episode – which was single-handedly animated by [lead digital artist] Filippo Dattola – it has to be creepy and scary, almost like an agent of death. However, as its arc evolves, we wanted viewers to start feeling sorry for it, because you ultimately learn that they are enslaved. By the end, you’re moved to feel hope when they break free, and even though Mother dies, it’s a moment of sweet release for her. We had to elicit so many emotional responses from the audience with these creatures through the work that we did.”
Research and References
Before production began, ILM received a brief containing concept art and details about the creature’s outward traits. “The design had been worked on by the showrunners, as well as a fantastic concept artist, Jamie O’Hara,” Ellis divulges. “They and a number of other collaborators had figured out the creature’s design, and we were given this incredible concept artwork of the creature feeding on Jack [Bill Pullman] and hanging above Renee [Geena Davis] as she slept in bed. The art was quite faithful to the final shots – the showrunners had a clear vision of what they wanted.”
These initial discussions also revolved around the creature’s ancient appearance. “We talked about it being potentially hundreds of years old, so we looked at references of a ballerina in her eighties – someone who is an inspiration to us all,” Ellis shares. “Her skin was wrinkly, but there were taught muscles underneath. We had these interesting features that we wanted to implement into the creature’s design. What hadn’t been figured out was how this creature moved. That was the first thing ILM started on.”
We built our initial rig for the creature and used the term ‘geriatric parkour.’ These creatures are old, yet they were designed to move along the ceilings of the bungalows,” Ellis continues. “Typically, one of the first things we explore with a creature is a walk cycle, and that becomes a basis for the animators who will pick up the cycle and develop it for the shots. But every creature sequence we had on The Boroughs was completely different, so there was no walk cycle. The creature was either in the bungalow, moving hastily across the ceilings or lowering itself from the ceiling, or it was in the cave environment and pushing itself against all of the nooks and crannies among the rocks.”
Such distinctive environments required that ILM plan each of the creature’s steps with extreme precision. “Every foot placement and hand grab was very purposeful, particularly in the cave sequence, where we looked at loads of references of rock climbers. For example, how does the weight of the creature swing? We recognized that climbers often use their arms as counterweights to be able to hang somewhere while moving parts of their body around, so we incorporated that into the specific animations,” Ellis reveals.
Previsualising the Plan
While the creature’s movements proved to be complex, ILM’s involvement in the previsualisation and sequence design process facilitated a smooth workflow, as Ellis explains, “We started work on the show just before the shoot started, and we delivered previs to Tara on set so that she could help the directors and camera team visualize the shots. Even just basic layouts, such as, ‘The creature will come in at Point A, the shot will take 10 seconds, and the creature will exit at Point B.’ We loved having previs to show Tara the blocking and action, and she said how excellent it was to have an image – even if it’s wrong – because everyone could talk about why it’s wrong. It was terrific to be part of that process, because we’d get plates within a week of sending the previs. We felt like real partners even though the shoot was in Albuquerque and we did most of our work in London.
“ILM prevised nearly all the sequences that we had shots in, and every sequence featuring a creature,” Ellis declares. “We also prevised the sequence where Sam, Judy [Alfre Woodard], and Wally [Denis O’Hare] find the creature in the abandoned tunnels. I went to ILM London’s motion-capture studio and, with a small crew, did a virtual camera scout of that. We essentially did digital storyboards, as this was an occasion where we were brought on before the storyboard artists. Usually, the sequences we tackled had already been storyboarded, but in this instance, Tara wanted to work ahead. So, ILM did our own virtual camera storyboards using our in-house real-time renderer, Helios, and I built a scene that had the creature on the railway tracks and moved the characters around the set.”
The immersive experience supplied many benefits to the ILM team, as Ellis notes, “I could physically walk around the stage with a virtual camera and see the action, which allowed me to create these snapshot storyboards. Within an hour or so, I storyboarded about 40 shots in the sequence. Also, since this was before the physical sets had been constructed, I filled the area with haze to make it feel moody and dark. Later, I went out to the set in Albuquerque when they shot that sequence, and seeing the ideas we devised during previs being used on the actual set was extremely rewarding.”
The Creature’s Features
In addition to animating the creatures and blocking their movements, fulfilling the showrunners’ design vision ranked as another top priority for ILM. “We put so much thought, care, and love into our creature asset, whose lookdev was done by [technical director] Felipe Vargas,” Ellis professes. “The initial brief stated that their eyes needed to be retroreflective like a cat’s, so we researched the different reflective colors animals eyes have and presented various options to Tara. We had some tremendous turntables to show this retroreflectivity, and we focused on making new custom shaders to do it in a physically accurate way.”
Since Addiss and Matthews sought an ancient vibe for the creatures, ILM opted to avoid going in the direction of giving them “slimy” skin. “We went for old and leathery skin that was translucent and had wrinkles. We used techniques where we’d get into multiple levels of subdivision on the mesh for the skin sims,” Ellis says. “We had our standard asset, but when it came to the muscles and sim, we swapped out all of the skin with a super high-resolution version. Creature dev lead Gabriela Pruszkowska ran high-fidelity skin simulations to get a super-fine level of wrinkling. The mesh that we passed to our lighting technical directors was often different from the standard model, because we selectively subdivided parts of it – and sometimes the entire thing.“Much of the skin shading is procedurally driven, so we linked it to our animation rig,” Ellis remarks.
“Thus, when we’re deforming the skin – such as when the eyes move around – parts of the skin will get stretched, causing the blood in the shader to be pushed into other more relaxed areas. Therefore, depending on the facial animation that’s happening, the creature never appears the same. If the eyes stretch and push the skin, you’ll get a darker color as more blood is pushed out. Also, even though the creature doesn’t move a great deal, the showrunners wanted to see the tension. So, when it fed on Jack, we heavily sculpted, fired, and flexed our intricate tendon work to convey the tension as it gripped onto the chair.”
Out of the Shadows
The level of thought and detail that ILM infused into the creature remained evident throughout the series, but Ellis points to a brief-yet-pivotal sequence to illustrate this fact. When Sam, Judy, and Wally attempt to set a trap for the creature, it emerges from the shadows atop a dimly lit closet and gets shot by Judy. “It’s a split-second scene, but there’s plenty of complicated motion as the creature is shot and scrambles away. Since it had been injured, the creature wanted to leave the scene, but it had to do so in a way that explained why Judy couldn’t hit it again. We did many iterations of how it swung through the door frame and where it would place its limbs – this way, Judy needed to duck out of the way.”
This scene resulted in a special collaboration between ILM and the production’s special effects crew when it came time to create the shadows behind the creature. While the bungalow exteriors were constructed on the Netflix backlot, the interior sets were built on soundstages and supported by digital backing provided by production. “However, for this sequence, we needed a device to show the creature in silhouette,” Ellis discloses. “ILM did some simple digital extensions of an evening sky to have a bright light source behind the creature. This way, we had the silhouette with only the glowing eyes showing.
“The script said that the creature started off hidden and gradually lifted itself up, getting ready to pounce onto the characters. Using Helios, I did proper ray-traced shadowing of how the light source would affect the shadows on the walls,” Ellis continues. “We passed our creature asset to the special effects team, and they actually built a tiny puppet – only a foot or so wide – and puppeteered it based the movements we prevised. All the shadows that you see in that moment are real and based off their little puppet with the light set close behind it.”
Read the article in full here and stream The Boroughs on Netflix.
