James Gunn Shares Guardians Of Galaxy Vol. 2 Baby Groot Scene Sketch

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 writer/director James Gunn has it down to a science: he can be extremely open, sharing from the set on a regular basis, while also being secretive enough that you couldn’t quite call it forthcoming. He added to his open mystique Wednesday with a tweet of a sketch.

“We just shot this (from my original thumbnail sketch),” Gunn tweeted with this image:

So what is it? Well, that’s pretty clearly Baby Groot, or, now toddler Groot it seems (he has legs and is walking around on his own, afterall), and it seems that he’s carrying someone or something – the someone has a tail and is shouting “Aaaah” so best guess is it’s a crudely drawn Rocket.

As for them shooting it, well, that has to be entertaining on its own, considering those two characters are CGI – did the on-set stand-ins, of which we know Sean Gunn, James’ actor brother is one (he performs for Rocket on set), actually perform this scene? Okay, James, now we want the picture of two guys in mocap suits carrying each other, please.

On his facebook post sharing the same image, Gunn elaborated considerably. He draws every shot before they shoot, he revealed. “I’ll spread whole scenes over my office floor or all around the walls, sometimes hundreds of shots, and it will give me an idea of how the scene flows, what’s smooth, what’s jumbled, and even what works comedically.”

He’ll draw “thousands of thumbnails” over the course of a film. “Many of them are messy and it’s impossible for anyone other than me to tell what they are. Some of them get turned over to accomplished storyboard artists to flesh out. Some of them go directly to our pre-visualization team to turn into animated storyboards. And others just stay in their primitive state,” he wrote.

He also said he’ll be continuing to post these thumbnail sketches throughout filming on #WhatWeShotWednesday, so look for more each week.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is filming now for a May 5, 2017 release.