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Can you tell us about craing the other wild animals that James and Odin encounter in the film? François Dumoulin: I really got a chance to explore a range of crea- ture work that went from Odin, our hero character—which needed to be grounded and exactly a match to the real dog with no stylization, no anthropomorphism, nothing cartoonish—and on the other end, all of the other animals were highly stylized. I think that's really the nature of Heart of the Beast. I was just coming out of Prehistoric Planet, and had just spent the last two years of my life doing the most photoreal animals you can think of. When I interviewed with David Ayer, one of the first things he told me was, "Look, François, you have to understand that I'm not doing a documentary. I'm not interested in making vanilla creatures that look like generic wolves or generic bears. I want to do something that is very stylized. Our movie is not a road trip in Alaska. It's a spir- itual journey, and everything in the movie needs to be a reflection of that spiritual journey." It's much more than just a survival story. The movie is not exactly our world—it's kind of a timeless place with animals that are not just animals. They're all spirits of nature, and they all reflect the trauma and the nightmares that both our characters are carrying. James and Odin are both war veterans, and they carry PTSD from their time in war. The more you progress into the story, the more you realize that the world around us, the creatures and the environment, are not just the normal world—they're actually a reflection of the trauma and nightmares. That's really interesting to do as a visual effects artist—to walk that line where you start from reality, but you slightly amp it up to- wards something that is almost fantasy. Because at the end of the day, it's not exactly our world. It's the world of the inner demons of James and Odin. It's a very special world. So all of our animals—ex- cept for Odin—are very stylized creatures, and it's something that I fully embrace. They are not completely vanilla, generic animals. They each have their own way of reflecting the personality and the night- mares of James. For instance, we have a grizzly bear that is bigger than normal and he has these very gruesome scars on his face. It's kind of a reflection of the character of James, actually, like an old war veteran. So they all have this slightly exaggerated aspect to them. There's a very bru- tal fight sequence with a pack of wolves, and each of these wolves has a very unique personality. They are black and white wolves, and we used patterns in the fur to create expressions. We actually took inspiration from Japanese Kabuki theater where you have those ex- pressions that are painted on masks. We used the fur markings to give them exaggerated expressions of anger or fear. They're not nor- mal wolves, they're nightmare creatures by design. How did you help bring the film's Alaskan wilderness environ- ments to life? François Dumoulin: We shot in New Zealand and our story is sup- posed to take place in Alaska. So when I joined the project, I also knew that there would be some kind of environmental augmenta- tion. But it's not just adding snowy mountains in the background, it's bigger than that. We actually ended up creating environments that