The Valkyries were designed by illustrators Chris Roswarne and Rob McCallum. Their performances were created using keyframe animation. 

"There is one 'hero' shot in which a character is pulled out of his apartment window by one of the creatures. We shot the plate at 150 fps using a high speed rail called 'DoggiCam'. As the camera dollied very rapidly through the set, the actor was pulled by a cable out the window onto a green screen exterior. Once a take was picked by the director, SPIN tracked the shot and animated the Valkyrie pulling the actor out of the window. They also added a CG city environment and CG snow."

Drug Vision
Besides the Valkyries, the film's other major vfx challenge was creating the strange drug-induced hallucinations that some characters experience. The visions were based on concept art developed by the director and his team. Burrell started by selecting an appropriate vendor for this unusual vfx. "When we started preparing the movie, one of the first things that we did was to shoot some elements with my HD camera of the docksides and city skyline. We also shot John's assistant on greenscreen to double for Max Payne. With all these elements and the concept art, we sent the test packages out to various vendors. There were about 10 vfx vendors around the world, and the best test was to win the gig. Spin's test turned out to be the most promising.

"The main visual theme in Max Payne is snow and the storm around New York," Burrell explains. "When the drug vision kicks in, the snow changes from snowflakes to embers. The sky then turns into flames, and we see Valkyries swarming in the sky. Spin created all these elements, including the matte painting of the New York skyline. The snow and embers were done as a particle simulation in Maya."

The other major vfx challenge was the drug-induced hallucinations which change the snowflakes to embers. Spin created all these elements, including the matte painting of the New York skyline. Courtesy of Spin.

In the key hallucination scene, we see Max in a room that is being torn apart by a supernatural fire while the camera circles around him. To create this shot, the team filmed Wahlberg on set with a circular track around him and a bright light above his head to simulate the sky on fire. Spin then rotoscoped the actor out and recreated the ceiling in CG, so it could break away and reveal the Valkyrie world above. "John wanted it to appear as if the camera was in the eye of a hurricane in Hell. Spin used rigid body simulations to tear the ceiling apart. The fire was created by mixing and compositing practical flame and explosion elements on an Inferno. The Valkyries were all added in via keyframe animation."

CG building
Although the supernatural formed the most creative and visible aspect of the film's visual effects, the team also digitally crafted realistic city environments. A lot of city enhancements involved making Toronto, where the film was shot, look like New York City. "John had some early concept art of what he called the Ghost City," Burrell says. "It was this back-lit monolith type of buildings that looked really unique. So, all of the buildings in the city extensions are slightly stylized to give them that 'Ghost City' look."

There was a particular building that needed to be created from scratch: the Aesir Corporation headquarters, where a major action sequence takes place. John Moore found a building in downtown Toronto that was suitable, but he requested a CG extension to give it a more high tech look. "The upper half of the Aesir building is all CG," Burrell notes. "It was built by Mr. X. For the explosion sequence, we shot quite a few practical explosion elements that Mr. X used and enhanced with various CG elements, which included concrete, glass and paper. The helicopter was real at all times, as John is a very big fan of aerial footage and keeping it real as possible. We tried to have a big light go off inside the building as a cue for the explosion, but it was not possible. It helped that we blew up the CG part and not the real part of the building, as we could light it correctly. Another really cool trick was that we got the geometry from the building by looking for it on Google Earth, and using Google SketchUp to download the 3D geometry."