STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS SEASON 3 VFX

Giving Gambal a dark energy that felt alive

The first challenge was a dark energy that read as a natural extension of the character. We echoed the mood and energy of the performance on the day, using it to drive the shape, velocity and colour of the effect.

Developing Gambal’s dark energy was a collaborative process with the production team from the outset. Working through concept development together, we explored how the effect should look, move and respond to the character’s performance before refining it through look development and FX iterations.

Rather than simply animating a finished design, we helped shape how the energy behaved in motion. Through ongoing collaboration with the client, we refined its scale, density and movement until it felt like a natural extension of Gambal himself.

The final look was built from layered volumetric and particle elements, each tuned for scale, density and motion, with precise matchmove and animation underneath, because any drift in tracking or timing breaks the illusion.

From an FX perspective, this was exactly the kind of challenge I find most engaging, technically demanding, creatively open, and deeply tied to performance. Built from the ground up to respond to the character, rather than sit on top of them, the result is an effect that really feels alive. I’m proud of both the quality of the individual shots and the efficiency of the pipeline that got us there.

– Glenn Darwick, FX Artist

Burnt out eyes: the villain’s signature look

When the Vezda entered Gambal through his eyes, it left only darkness behind. Rather than blinding the actor on set, we removed his eyes in post, leaving burnt out sockets, a look then carried across many shots through the finale.

Building it digitally kept the effect consistent and controllable across the sequence, and let the other finale elements integrate cleanly around it.

Batel’s light, and the Beholder

Set against Gambal’s dark force, Batel’s energy was designed as its visual opposite: softer, brighter and more internal, with a subsurface light quality rather than the heavier volumetric treatment used for Gambal.

As the battle turns, Batel sacrifices herself to seal the interdimensional gateway and becomes the guardian statue, the Beholder, that keeps the Vezda trapped. We lit the statue from within, with light emitting through cracks in the stone, and built the beat where Gambal’s strikes on the statue also wound Batel.

Scaling one look across 15 shots

The effect had to maintain continuity, holding up across 15 shots without drifting, so we built a templated workflow that let the dark energy roll out efficiently while keeping a unified look across the whole sequence.

The process started with our supervisor selecting references and stills with the production, then moved into an active lookdev to find the movement and feel of the energy. We worked through iterations with the FX team before tracking and match move, sharing with the Star Trek team at each stage before rolling out across the sequence.

CG was led by Chris Lyne, with the production side VFX overseen by VFX Supervisor Brian Tatosky.

Extending the work across the Star Trek universe

Our contribution to Strange New Worlds extended well beyond a single sequence. Across the season we partnered closely with the production team on a range of visual effects work, with the Season 3 finale bringing many of those elements together in one technically ambitious episode. It was another step forward in our ongoing collaboration across the Star Trek franchise.

Our Season 3 Episode 10 villain needed horrifying burnt out eyes among several FX elements for the episode, which instead of blinding the actor, CFX gave us a creepy look across multiple shots, and our other FX elements integrated into shots with ease.

– Brian Tatosky, VFX Supervisor, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3