Nosing around on Fallout

We sniff out the story of how FutureWorks brought The Ghoul to life with the creation of his iconic noseless face

Long-time FutureWorks collaborator and VFX supervisor Jay Worth turned to the studio's visual effects team to create one of the most iconic composites of the 16-times Emmy nominated Amazon Prime hit Fallout. In addition to the ideation and delivery on the look of The Ghoul, the FutureWorks team delivered over 700 shots for the series, including set extensions and clean-ups.

VFX supervisor Gouri Shankar worked closely with Worth and over 150 FutureWorks artists to bring the character to life. "Jay has been a long-time partner of FutureWorks," he explains. "We were fortunate to work with him on projects like Westworld, The Peripheral, and more recently the Apple TV+ limited series The Lady in the Lake. Naturally we jumped at the opportunity to work on Fallout. The success of the franchise set it up for a promising reception. This was never going to be a straightforward comp job, but we relished the challenge and were excited to be involved from the conceptualisation of the look."

The job at hand for the FutureWorks team was to remove the nose of actor Walton Goggins, lost as a result of nuclear radiation from the Fallout universe's Great War. "Our task was to create the negative space where The Ghoul's mutilated nose would have been," Shankar says. "We got on board at the very beginning, working closely with Jay but also the makeup and prosthetics teams led by Jake Garber. We had to ensure the final result was as realistic and as true-to-thegames as possible.