One of my fondest memories is seeing Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) in theaters. It was playing at the Neptune Theater in Seattle. Tickets were sold out, so there were over 600 moviegoers in attendance. I brought all my friends and it was a blast. While the film nowadays drifts between being a party pleaser to an assault on my sensibilities, I’ll always remember how much fun we had that night—and how, if given the chance, never pass up seeing a Godzilla movie with a crowd.

Fast-forward to the present day. As of this writing, GFW premiered nearly 20 years ago. I’ve recently made a Godzilla: Final Wars inspired stop-motion. Similarly, to how Ryuhei Kitamura’s film ended, the world is an apocalyptic wasteland. Earth’s greatest champions (Gamera, Gipsy Danger, Mothra, Ultraman) have fallen—well, except one. Godzilla is the last line of defense against a cabal of his most dangerous enemies (SpaceGodzilla, Destoroyah, Gigan). But these evil kaiju are being led by the most unexpected Titan… Legendary Godzilla?!

Which Godzilla will emerge victorious in this apocalyptic showdown? Find out by checking out the movie below. Consider subscribing to Kaijutopia for more exciting stomp motion projects!

Time to do a VFX breakdown of arguably the movie’s most iconic moment: the revelation of Evil Legendary Godzilla! If you like this behind-the-scenes content, consider tuning in when I host VFX livestreams on my channel.

Before diving in, here’s some important info. Most of my Adobe After Effects projects have a resolution of 3840×2160. This gives me more creative freedom with my framing, particularly in post-production. The final cut is 1920×1080, so if a single scene is 10 seconds long, I can switch up between Close Ups, Mediums, and Wide Shots. With a little editing magic, you could turn a 10 second clip into a longer scene.

We start with a dark gray sky.

We fill the background with gratuitous amounts of smoke and mushroom clouds because it’s the end of the world. For the smoke plume, I took a still image of a VFX asset of a smoke cloud in motion.

Tokyo is inserted. There’s no need to digitally alter the city by adding cracks and/or rubble as the dark gray tone suffices.

Our first kaiju! My S.H. MonsterArts SpaceGodzilla was filmed in front of a green screen on a clear platform. I shoot in 4K on my iPhone X, eventually breaking down my favorite poses into 1-frame works of wonder.

Green screen/clear platform have been removed. Kaiju figures with tails are notoriously difficult to animate, so SG’s tail was inserted separately.

SpaceGodzilla is placed in the shot, with glowing shoulder crystals. The latter effect can be achieved by either duplicating the SG layer (like I did) or creating a new Solid Layer. Either way, you’ll want the Mode type to be Add or Screen. Then you add a nifty Glow effect to play around with until you get exactly what you want. In this shot, SG’s crystals are glowing, so I programmed their Opacity to change every few seconds.

There’s so much happening here! In the background, a Tokyo Tower.png has been inserted. I licensed a 3D model of Tokyo Tower on Adobe’s Stock Images. With Photoshop, I removed its white background, and turned it into an image w/ a transparent background. Next, massive clouds of smoke were added in, along with an eerie crimson glow. The glow was a cloud lightning VFX asset (motion graphics you can drag and drop into your project).

Rows of ravaged buildings have been strategically placed in the foreground. Like Tokyo Tower, I licensed these images, and then digitally removed the white backgrounds to make them transparent.

It’s time for Destoroyah!

S.H. MonsterArts Destoroyah joins the shot. Like SpaceGodzilla, glow effects (eyes and horn) are added.

Gigan is here as well! Now it’s time for the Big Bad of the story…

Legendary Godzilla is the exquisite Hiya Toys figure. The green screen is removed, but eerie red eyes are added. There could be more to his glowing eyes than him simply being evil. Just sayin’.

For our final shot, we spiff up the compositing; we use light wrap, haze, optical glow, volume fog, diffusion, and color correction to enhance the immersive experience. With a little time and ingenuity, you can make the audience believe they’re looking at something right out of the movies.