Superman’s Black Suit In Zack Snyder’s Justice League Was Digital

In an interview with Screenrant, Anders Langlands and Kevin Smith, the VFX supervisors for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, revealed that the black suit given to Superman in the film was done completely through digital effects in post-production. Here are highlights:

Langlands on if the suit could just be easily re-colored: “Yeah, making the suit black is relatively easy in that method. But making the S that silver color is not, just because it was getting brighter and more reflective. I think some shots, yes, we did use rotoscoping–your lasso tool–and change the color. There was that shot in the trailer of Superman coming out of the Scout Ship wearing the black suit for the first time, and that we did just by tracing around it and changing the color. A lot of the rest of them were fully digital suits, because it ends up being easier to get. Otherwise, you end up–especially when there’s lots of different lights on the character–in a situation where you’re pulling it around so much that it starts to look very muddy. You end up with something that’s a black suit, but it just looks a bit funky for some reason. It just doesn’t look very nice. Having it be fully digital gives you a lot more control, and it just looks better at the end of the day.”

Smith on other methods they used: “A lot of the stuff is so invisible. You have a shot with Superman, and we’ve replaced his body with the digi-double to get the suit black because it was easier that way. But he happens to be sharing the frame with an eight-foot-tall alien with a shiny metal moving suit. Where’s your eye going to go? It’s not going to be to the fact that we changed Superman to the black suit.”