creating sonny
"Having a chance to do the sets and create Sonny the robot, from the beginning, was very important," says Tatopoulos. "I've always believed that the beings that live in a world should feel very much like that world, and that they should really fit together well."

Working with Proyas, Tatopoulos developed the design of Sonny over a two-year period by trying "to forget everything we'd seen before." Sonny's look went through approximately 50 different designs before its final incarnation as a slender and elegant figure.

For Proyas, Sonny's look was a key to the story's credibility. "We tried to put ourselves in the mindset of the people designing the robots and we figured that they would be making creatures that we would feel comfortable having in our homes, around our kids. So the robots had to feel familiar.
"Again, it feeds right back into Asimov's stories, which are about safety and feeling secure in the knowledge that the robots can't turn on you or hurt you in any way. It all makes sense from a human and corporate perspective. So we've tried to be truthful to those original ideas that Asimov created."

The turning point in Sonny's design came when Proyas began to picture Sonny as a saintly, innocent figure. "Sonny, at his core, is innocent," says Proyas. "He is like a young boy on the brink of manhood. Sonny is highly intelligent, but his emotions - that distinguish him from the rest of the robots - are as highly attenuated as those of a child."

Ultimately, the design of the NS-5s, including Sonny, came down to three defining characteristics: transparency, a human-like form with a unique muscle structure, and a perfectly symmetrical face. These traits led to some formidable design challenges. "Sonny and the NS-5s don't morph, so I had to find a way for them to suddenly become scary, without changing the design," says Tatopoulos.

Most importantly, transparency reinforces the idea of safety. "If something is transparent, it cannot hide anything," explains Tatopoulos. "For example, public buildings have more glass so visitors feel welcome. If the robots can't hide anything, then they are safe." Or so you would think…

Yet another benefit of making Sonny transparent was the way he reacted to light. Sonny appears angelic when one sees only the outside of the face and the body. But when placed underneath the light, permitting a view of his "insides," Sonny becomes what Tatopoulos calls a "mechanical, super freaky, scary thing. Being transparent let him change without changing."

Sonny's face has three levels. There are mechanics on the inside, an under-skull similar to human skull bones, and an outer clear layer. On top of the skull is a soft skin. "So if you touch him he's soft, but behind that is a clear skeleton," says Tatopoulos.

To distinguish Sonny (and the rest of the NS-5s) from previous cinematic robot incarnations, Tatopoulos created "futuristic muscles" for Sonny's joint mechanics - a feature that lends yet another anthropomorphic touch to the robot. In creating the musculature, Tatopoulos was inspired by recent advances in artificial limbs, including new materials that respond to electrical impulses and react like real muscles.

In the end, the filmmakers learned the human factor was the essential to making Sonny work. "A year before starting production, we were sitting in an office trying to figure out how to do the robot… CGI, guy in a suit, whatever… we never would have figured out the emotional impact and that it has real value, because we were looking at it as if we were solving a technical problem, says Producer Wyck Godfrey. "Though we won't see Alan Tudyk on the screen, you will certainly know the persona and humanness that he brings to that role."

Tatopoulos was also charged with designing the other robots that populate the story. "The previous generation of robots, the NS-4s, are also anthropomorphic, but they have much less detail than the NS-5s," says Tatapoulos. "They are bouncy and not as smooth. They do the same tasks, more or less… they just don't do them as well. So, there's an interesting contrast between the two generations."

designing the future
As Production Designer, Tatopoulos had to create, envision, and design the future physical world of 2035. Every element had to be thought out early in the process, so decisions could be made about what parts of sets to physically create, find on location in Vancouver - or "build" in the computer.
There are two design "flavors" in the movie's Chicago. The downtown area is filled with beautiful metropolitan landscapes. The plazas are large, white and pristine. Shiny glass buildings house the city's wealthy citizens. In surprising contrast, the suburbs have a grungy feel; they are the older, poorer parts of the city.

One of the signature elements of Proyas' visual style is the absence of greenery. Achieving the "no trees" look while shooting on location in lush Vancouver was challenging. The production even hired a greens staff to keep bushes and trees out of the frame.

The filmmakers chose Chicago for the story's setting because its skyline resembles Proyas' original concept of mixing classic and modern looks - where, for example, tall brand new buildings are situated next to the projects that are half a century old.

To achieve the enormous scope that Proyas desired, most shots in the movie utilize some combination of constructed sets, practical locations, and visual effects.

Located in downtown Chicago, the glass and metal headquarters for U.S. Robotics is a character in its own right. Much of the action driving the story takes place in the lobby, plaza, labs, boardrooms, and offices as well as the catwalks, tunnels and innards of the USR Building.
Explains Tatopoulos, "The USR Building has an interesting shape; it looks like a knife blade, giving the visitor a sense of vertigo. One edge of the building is a blade of clear glass, so when you go to the edges of the catwalks inside, you see yourself, the city beyond, and all the way down to the lobby at the bottom of the building. The design of the building allows the audience to really see what the world is, not just grab a couple of glimpses."

The plaza outside the USR Building represents power. "When you have power, you're not going to make a taller building, you're going to create a bigger plaza around your building, because the ground is what is expensive," says Proyas.

Will Smith's Detective Spooner lives in the outskirts of Chicago. What is thought of as downtown today has become a suburb in 2035. It is a far different place from the pristine world of USR and Dr. Calvin.
A 260-foot long, two-story section of the riverfront in the Vancouver suburb of New Westminster was transformed into a large section of Spooner's neighborhood, affectionately dubbed "Spoonerville" by the crew.

An omnipotent computer named V.I.K.I. controls the USR headquarters. "V.I.K.I. is basically the central brain of the USR structure," says Tatopoulos. "She has a central brain like your heart in the middle of your body, and she has the veins and the vessels that are going through the building." Strips of light throughout the hallways and rooms represent the veins of V.I.K.I. Her "face" comes from shards of light that continually reshape themselves from the many veins that run throughout the building.
I, ROBOT's futuristic transportation systems were also critical to its look. As motorists transition from the suburbs, where they drive on the surface, to downtown, all traffic goes underground, into a series of tunnels and underground parking garages shaped like oblong footballs. Round ball-shaped wheels allow cars to move sideways. The lateral movement facilitated a huge, intricately choreographed chase scene involving packs of cars going two hundred miles per hour forward, while moving sideways at the same time.

All the cars in I, ROBOT were designed and built exclusively for use in the film, with Germany-based Audi working with the filmmakers to build Will Smith's "hero" car. Audi also provided several existing models that were altered for the film.

Under a veil of secrecy, the film's car designer, Jeff Julian, made several trips to Germany to fashion a car for Will Smith's Del Spooner, based on a prototype of a real upcoming Audi model.

the visual effects
Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor John Nelson ("Gladiator") supervised over 1,000 visual effects shots from pre-visualization through post-production. Nelson and his second-in-command, Digital Visual Effects Supervisor John Berton ("The Mummy," "Men In Black 2"), began with a team of 20 at the start of production in Vancouver. Ultimately, the department swelled to thousands, occupying several effects houses for approximately eight months of post-production, a relatively short period for the volume and sophistication of the shots rendered. Digital Domain, WETA Digital, Image Engine, Rainmaker and Pixel Magic were among the visual effects houses on the film.

The department's tasks were three-fold: create a credible, emotional performance from Sonny, establish a world integrated with robots in the year 2035, and make the huge, high-tech action sequences look seamless and believable.

"Sonny must look real for audiences to buy it," says John Nelson. "Visual effects take the nuances and emotional energy that Alan Tudyk creates on the set and brings it through in the CG robot. The level of detail that an actor can create is amazing. Alan Tudyk gave us an incredibly high standard to work towards."

"You do care about Sonny because he is an incredible character," adds Nelson. "He's a robot that can feel and improvise. He becomes a reflection of us and that becomes a very powerful and potent storytelling possibility. So we must have complete realism."

Will Smith embraced the idea of working with a digital character. "This is a very revolutionary process," he says. "As an actor, it makes it so much easier to really capture the emotional depth and comedy of the individual scenes, because I actually get to play the scene looking into someone's eyes rather than, like in the past, a tennis ball!"

"This is on the cutting edge of what we're trying to do with computer graphics characters - finding better ways of making them interact with the other characters and drawing on real acting performances," adds John Berton.

Visual effects house Digital Domain won the coveted assignment of creating the robots and specifically, breathing life and emotion into Sonny. The Digital Domain team was led by supervisor Erik Nash ("Titanic," "Apollo 13,") and Animation Supervisor Andrew Jones.

I, ROBOT defines the world of Chicago in 2035 by filling it with robots of every description and futuristic landscapes and skylines. "I, ROBOT has the most complex and sophisticated CG work in movie history," says Wyck Godfrey. "Not only are we creating a photo-real CG character, but that character is set against a CG background."

Award-winning New Zealand-based visual effects powerhouse WETA ("The Lord of the Rings") was charged with creating the broad sweeping shots that establish the future world and the colossal sequences involving robots fighting, as well as robots and humans fighting. Two-time Oscar®-winner Joe Letteri ("The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King") and Brian Van't Hul at WETA oversaw the grand spectacle 'David Lean'-type moments of the film. "Only our 'cast of thousands' involves thousands and thousands of humans and digital robots interacting," says John Nelson.

The visual effects team made the action sequences come alive on screen in a believable manner. Epic battles, escapes from collapsing buildings, and chase sequences through tunnels involving a variety of futuristic vehicles make up just a few of the film's action set pieces.

"We can provide those high octane moments where movie-goers feel like they're on a ride at Disneyland. But, when we're the most successful, we're providing those moments in support of good storytelling and good character development," says producer John Davis.

To pull off these large-scale sequences, the filmmakers first had to define the rules governing the robot behavior. "We have action that people have not seen before, because we're doing things with robots you could never do with humans," says Nelson. "But their capabilities are not limitless. The real issue is that there are rules in the world. Gravity, for example: it's not just a good idea, it's the law."

"We wanted to say the old robots are this powerful and the new robots are that powerful," adds Berton. "We decided that the old NS-4s are roughly as powerful as a human, but the new NS-5s have about four times more power."

With the help of impressive technological advances, the I, ROBOT visual effects artists developed a new level of photo-realism that will seamlessly integrate the CG images with practical sets and human characters. These state-of-the-art effects tools included Global Illumination Lighting Models (aka "Balls & Bots"), HDR (High Dynamic Range), Robo-Tile and Encodacam.

The visual effects team required four passes to create each CG shot. The 'with' pass used robot proxies, which allowed Proyas to give direction and frame the shot. The 'with' pass takes the process out of the synthetic world and places it in the real world.

For the 'without' pass, the camera movement in the "with" pass is repeated, with the actors but minus the proxies. The "clean" pass is shooting the same action without actors or robots. For the "reference" pass, also know to the crew as the "Balls & Bots" pass, a chrome ball, a gray ball, and the human-sized lighting dummy (known as "Ozzie") were pushed or walked through the frame to provide critical lighting references.

I, ROBOT employs the latest research in light dynamics and image-based rendering. "The level to which we are lighting these creatures is very complex," says Nelson. "We are capturing more info about lighting on our set than ever before… not just about placement of lights and what that light does to an object, as was done in the past. Now, we are also recording how bright those lights are."

The production used a special camera from Digital Domain called Robo-Tile, which takes multiple pictures that range from extreme underexposure to extreme overexposure, meaning that these pictures will read everything from the deepest shadow to the brightest sun. Through high dynamic range lighting, those images were then applied to light the environments and characters that were created digitally.

Another creative tool, Encodacam, combined the physical set with the digital set in real time, as cameras rolled, to enable Proyas to direct both the virtual and the real worlds simultaneously. The technology, developed by General Lift in Los Angeles, was created for possible use on the "Matrix" sequels, but was actually first used on the set of I, ROBOT. It is the latest method to bring the computer graphics world onto the soundstages.

For some scenes, like an action set piece that has Spooner fleeing a house that's being demolished around him by a "demo-bot," the filmmakers used every trick of the trade, combining location and studio live action, green screen, computer graphics, miniatures, and models. "Alex loves to make shots that are detailed and complex and give a lot to the viewer," says John Nelson.

Vancouver-based visual effects house Rainmaker created the digital and miniatures work for that sequence. Model builders spent several months constructing 1/4 and 1/6-scale miniatures of Lanning's house; each was destroyed in about three seconds. Approximately 30,000 man-hours were necessary to get that few seconds of film.

The miniature house was constructed of 30,000 individual bricks, which were cast in Toronto and matched to the exact color of the bricks that were in the actual house built on location in Vancouver. A quarter scale 'demo-bot' model was also constructed to interact with the miniature of Lanning's house.

Isaac Asimov's 'Three Laws'
Director Alex Proyas      Screenwriters Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman