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Today, she may be the first and only Bahraini digital artist to have worked on a Marvel movie, but Zahra Fahad Abbas’ journey into the visual effects (VFX) big leagues began in the twilight of an analogue band’s digital Voyage, writes Naman Arora.
The 28-year-old Bahraini creator was originally brought onto the Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) team in 2021 to work on legendary Swedish pop group ABBA’s holographic tour to support their ninth and final studio album Voyage.
And Zahra’s part began in this voyage, as it often does when it comes to anything involving ABBA, with the “mushiest love letter” of a cover letter to ILM about how working for the company would be a dream come true.
“It was absolutely ridiculous, and then two months went by, and I had not heard from any of the 250 companies I had applied to, and I was about ready to call it quits and come back to Bahrain when I got a call from ILM,” the former Al Noor International School student told GulfWeekly.
“I was almost in tears when I got an interview and then the job because I had finally done it!”
Zahra joined ILM while in the UK, after completing her Bachelor’s degree in Animation, Interactive Technology, Video Graphics and Special Effects from the University of Hertfordshire and a foundation degree in game and interactive media design from the University of Cumbria.
For the uninitiated, ILM is a division of Lucasfilm, founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas in 1975 when he began production on the original franchise.
Through the decades, the company has been at the forefront of cinematic VFX, including the first use of a motion control camera in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, the first completely computer-generated (CG) character in 1985, the first partially CG main character – the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day and most recently, the first use of real time rendering with Unreal Engine and digital LED displays as a virtual set (known as StageCraft) in The Mandalorian.
And with the ABBA Voyage tour, the ILM team was tasked with creating holographic versions of the band members reminiscent of their younger days.
“I got to do the facial capture work for their holographic concert – the level of technological wizardry that went into it was absolutely insane!” Zahra added.
“And since it was supposed to be a surprise, we had a non-disclosure agreement, which was so detailed that we weren’t even allowed to sing ABBA songs, which, after listening to their music all day, while doing their facial capture, was so difficult.
“We filmed ABBA with Go Pro cameras, de-aged them and rebuilt their younger selves… it was something that hadn’t been done before!”
The team was not even sure how it would look, but five minutes into the concert that they attended after the work was done Zahra forgot that ABBA was not really performing on stage.
In the next year, Zahra went on to work on her first Marvel film, while inadvertently starting a social media trend.
“When we were doing Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there is a scene where they eat these ‘pizza balls’ and since everyone else was busy, I had to animate these,” Zahra explained.
“And that took a month, because there was a discussion about whether they should be melty or how cheesy before we agreed on the right CG effects– and after the movie came out, I found out that there were hundreds of people trying to actually make these, so that was cool!”
Her next big project was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and there’s plenty more in the pipeline – much of which she cannot talk about. In her less-than-two-year career so far, Zahra has worked with the likes of Bill Murray and Tom Hiddleton to make their characters larger-than-life on the big screen.
Knowing the rules of VFX and when to break them, being open to criticism and effective communication were skills she picked up along the way, as she worked with teams ranging from 30 to 3,000 people.
As to what comes next, Zahra wants to continue improving her skills and some day in the distant future, dreams of opening her own effects or animation studio.
But in the meantime, she is counting her blessings as she lives her – and every other comic lover’s – childhood dream!
To check out Zahra’s art, visit www.artstation.com/zabbas or follow @zfabbas.art on Instagram
