LetíCia Matsuoka

A Thousand Blows is a British historical drama series created by Steven Knight and based on the Forty Elephants, an all-female crime syndicate who clash with the world of illegal bare-knuckle boxing in 1880s London.

Led by VFX Supervisor Richard Frazer, BlueBolt delivered 232 VFX shots as main vendor for the two seasons. Known for its meticulous work on invisible visual effects (the kind that knits seamlessly with the real environment) for high-end film and television, the studio has delivered VFX across a wide range of historical productions, including Peaky Blinders, The Last Kingdom, The Great, The Northman, Napoleon, and Nosferatu.

The studios's work consisted of digital extensions of period warehouse buildings and a full CG dockside environment, resembling the Wapping Docks of East London in the late 1800s. In 2023, while working remotely at Bluebolt as a 3D Generalist, I was responsible for the digital reconstruction of the rooftops. Richard Frazer provided me with many contemporary photographs to understand and replicate the architecture, the irregular pattern of the roofs tiles, and the rows of chimneys.

Present-day London still has many preserved victorian terraces. Since I was working remotely, the Supervisor and the Head of 3D Nic Birmingham provided me with photos of rooftops taken during their commute to improve my references with details that were not possible to see on black-and-white photos, such as the colors of bricks and roof tiles, the pattern of stains and the lead flashings.

I digitally reconstructed the rooftops (chimneys, wooden walls, windows, and roof tiles) through 3D modeling in Maya, texturing in Substance Painter, and did their lookdev in Arnold. The procedural scattering of roof tiles was done in MASH. Although the rooftops were not presented in close-ups, the Supervisor's approach was to create them as physically and historically accurate as possible, ensuring their seamless integration with the real environment.