Amidst all of the Inception-y visuals in Doctor Strange, there is one bit of VFX that doesn’t look like a comic book drawn by M.C. Escher: the astral forms. The ability of the Sorcerer Supreme to send out his celestial self is one of his greatest powers, and for the people behind the movie’s effects, it was also one of the simplest—and yet hardest—to do. Why? Because it needed to look like a specter, but not like something out of Ghostbusters. "You need to believe that, in a way, it's the spirit that sort of comes out of the body," says *Strange'*s head of VFX Victoria Alonso. "The idea was that we didn’t want it to look like a ghost, yet is ghostly." Find out how her team did it in the video above from the Doctor Strange Blu-ray, which hits stores February 28.
The Secret to Doctor Strange's Astral Forms? Not Going Ghostly
Here's how the film's VFX team made the Sorcerer Supreme's astral projection.
