 While in the comics Shaw's absorption power was depicted by having him grow up to ten times his original size, First Class instead does what company Digital Domain called a "kinetic echo", where a digital Kevin Bacon would be rippled, deformed and at times multiplied in repeated "iterations" that appear in a short period, to "see [Shaw] displace and deform in a kinetic and organic way". According to Dykstra, the biggest problem with Frost's diamond body was depicting it "without looking like she was made of Jell-o or the polygon model of a human being". The morphed Frost, which the visual effects tried to make look more like a faceted crystal than glass, was rotomated into Jones in the live-action plates, while still retaining the actress'eyes and lips. As the character kept on going in and out of her diamond form, a motion capture tracking suit could not be employed, so instead the effects team used both gray and chrome balls and a jumpsuit covered in mirrors — which also served as a lighting reference. For Angel's digital wings, the animators studied slow-motion footage of dragonflies to create the wing pattern in a realistic way, and the designers added iridescence to "make the wings prettier". The visual of Banshee's screams was done through a digital ring-like structure based on renderings of sound waves such as Schlieren photography. The visual for Havok's blasts employed similar rings, concentrated in beams or rings of light which were then match moved into Till's mimed throwing. For Banshee's flight, the visual effects team used digital doubles only for distant shots, with closer ones employing Jones shot in a special flight rig. Azazel's teleporting was made to resemble the "inky smoky effects" used with Nightcrawler, who appeared in X2 and is Azazel's son in the comics. However, while Nightcrawler only left a smoke trail, the visual effects team had Azazel accompanied by digital fire and smoke "because he was more closely aligned with the devil". The fire was also used "as a mask to hide or reveal the body", according to effects supervisor Matt Johnson. Since the visible part of whirlwinds are the dust and dirt sucked up by them, the ones Riptide produces were made to resemble "a tornado of gas, made out of nothingness" by visual effects supervisor Nicolas Aithadi. The final product was mostly a practical effect made with dry ice, which was augmented by computer-generated imagery. The visual effects team portrayed Mystique's abilities slightly differently due to this being a younger version, with "the scales being slightly longer and the transformation being slightly showier than when she became the more mature Rebecca." For Beast, computer graphics depicted his simian-like feet, the transformation sequence, and a few facial replacements for when Beast opened his mouth wider than the mask on Hoult's face allowed.
