Skyrim: Alduin Death VFX
Opening up this post with a pics from Ray Lederer’s concept work and Jonah Lobe’s modeling work as a reminder these big set pieces are the culmination of a lot of different people’s work.
The main thought I had going into developing the VFX for this scene was Alduin was stealing souls so he must be a big magical sack full of souls and evil. That idea led me to start trying to have him shed his dry lava looking shell to reveal a putrid under layer.
Once I had that idea stubbed in I started trying to raise the drama in the scene. I added in the meteor storm spell that Grant Struthers had made for him to the script controlling the sequence. I also started fleshing out the sould escaping effect that starts once he loses his shell.
My final addition was an explosion at the end of the soul streaming part that vaporizes the shell bits on the ground. I always looks for the chance to have parts from earlier in a long fx sequence interact with parts that come later.
You can watch a YouTube video of the whole fight here:
And I noticed a few positive fan reactions in the comments as I researched for this post :):):):):):)











