VFX team behind iconic Xena: Warrior Princess TV series reunites for 25th anniversary event

The session was a highlight of Creation Entertainment’s “A Salute to Xena: 25th Anniversary” convention, in which several thousand Xena fans attended the weekend-long event. In addition to the Kutchaver/VFX session, the con also featured live appearances by every major cast member from the series, along with photo and autograph opportunities, and the sale of hundreds of memorabilia items. 

 

During the VFX presentation, Kutchaver, Clement and Blevins displayed numerous clay-sculptured models and “maquettes” – and explained how they had had to devise new methods by which to digitize those props into computers. “Back in 1995, 96, 97, we literally had to invent new ways to tell Xena’s stories,” Kutchaver said. “As visual effects work had just started to move to the desktop, it was literally like the wild west of computer technology. People have since asked us, ‘Why weren’t Xena’s episodes shot in HD?’ to which I always reply, ‘Because HD wasn’t even invented yet!”

 

Kutchaver recounted how he was walking once with Rob Tapert, who was, at the time, the executive producer of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, for which Kutchaver’s company, Flat Earth Productions, was providing VFX. “I remember Rob saying to me, ‘I have this idea for, like, a female Hercules character, what do you think?’ to which I replied, ‘Rob, that’s a terrible idea!’ Fortunately, Rob didn’t listen to my bad advice!”

“I owe my VFX career to Kevin Kutchaver,” added Blevins. “He gave me my first big break on Hercules and Xena when he owned Flat Earth Productions. We had to create A LOT of digital effects for those shows under very tight budgets and quick deadlines. In the early days of Xena, each episode had only a few VFX shots, but by the end of the last season – well, there were 500 shots in the very last episode!”

“You don’t get anything on screen that feels more organic than when you sculpt a physical maquette and then digitize it,” added Andy Clement. “I did sculpting on a lot of creatures for Xena, along with a good deal of 3D animation work. In the early days of computers, it could take a VERY long time to map and grid each of the physical models and maquettes. Then rendering them took forever. But as Xena’s seasons progressed, so did computers and the software, which helped speed things up.”

“In retrospect, we really had a great time doing Xena, Kutchaver notes. “Both Hercules and Xena were huge hits for Universal Television and Rob Tapert’s company, Renaissance Pictures, and Rob was interested in putting as much as he could into every episode. Each season we’d get a fairly locked budget, and we’d say, ‘Well, what do we HAVE to do this week? What does the story call for? And what, given our talents and our tech, can we do to make those FX look as realistic as possible?’ I’m proud to say we never gave up, even with those limited budgets and ungodly deadlines. I like to think we played a nice role in TV history with the hundreds and hundreds of creative images we contributed to Xena: Warrior Princess.”