The Brazilian VFX studio created the visual effects for 2 episodes in the Netflix limited series, recreating racing scenes entirely in CG from the 1984 and 1988 Monaco GPs with extreme historic accuracy.
Brazilian studio Miagui created the VFX for two episodes in the Netflix limited series Senna, which launched on November 29. Miagui makes its debut in the VFX market as one of the main vendors of the series, alongside Scanline.
The project is directed by Vicente Amorim and Júlia Rezende. Produced by Gullane, Senna tells the story of the late Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna.
Led by directors Cássio Braga and Carlos Kulpa, Miagui recreated racing scenes from the 1984 and 1988 Monaco GPs entirely in CG. The task took about a year to complete and brought together a team of around 60 Brazilian artists from several departments.
The VFX team recreated the streets of Monaco with historic accuracy, utilizing visual references from the period. Miagui digitally reconstructed more than 120 buildings surrounding the circuit, as well as hundreds of elements faithful to the period.
Miagui also digitally developed and created Formula 1 cars and their respective drivers based on photographic references and scans made from the prototypes used on the racing track. To animate the racing scenes, the team studied the choreography of the cars, overtakings, points of view on the track, details of the curves, and even the accidents for their digital recreations.
“For Miagui, the opportunity to collaborate with Senna is a dream that has been in the making for a decade and a half,” says Cássio Braga, Miagui’s CEO. “From the beginning, we knew it would be a huge challenge, but also an opportunity to use all of our creative and technical capabilities to help buildinga much bigger story,” he adds.
One of the main hurdles in the historic 1984 race was the rain, an element that further increased the technical challenge of producing the series. According to Kulpa, “one of the great challenges of creating realistic simulations like this is being able to break down the complexity of natural events into parts so that we can reconstruct each of these parts in a controlled manner so that they can later be added together in an integrated way, resulting in a visually interesting, but above all, convincing, aspect.”
For over 15 years, Miagui has developed projects for global automotive brands such as Honda, Ford, Jeep, Hyundai and Toyota. The company also creates animation and VFX for clients such as Whirlpool (Brastemp and Consul), Havaianas, Paramount+, Manscaped, Heineken, and more.
Check out Miagui’s VFX breakdown for Senna now:
Source: Miagui
Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.
