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Character Animation ■ ■ ■ ■ -Man When Peter Parker and his arachnid alter ego jumped into theaters this summer, audiences saw a few changes in the depiction of Marvel's clas- sic comic-book superhero. Although much about Spider-Man is famil- iar in Th e Amazing Spider-Man, a new cast and crew aided by visual eff ects teams using the latest CG tools kept the material in this prequel fresh. Th ey had big boots to fi ll: Th e fi rst three fi lms in the franchise, all directed by Sam Rami, cast a web on audiences in 2002, 2004, and 2007 to the tune of approximately $800 million each at the worldwide box offi ce and received multiple awards for the visual eff ects. Produced by Marvel Entertainment in association with Columbia Pictures, and directed by Marc Webb, the fourth fi lm fi nds Peter Parker, played by Andrew Garfi eld in his fi rst Spider-Man role, still in high school. Abandoned by his parents and treated as an outcast by other teenagers, Peter comes of age in a most mysterious way. He discovers a briefcase that belonged to his father. Th e briefcase leads him to Os- corp and to Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), his father's former partner. When Connors evolves into the Lizard, Spider-Man must counter the threat—and Peter Parker must grow up. "Marc [Webb] had a vision of Spider-Man's character and the world he would be living in that was very organic and naturalistic," says Sony Pictures Imageworks' Jerome Chen, who supervised the visual eff ects created at 15 studios for Th e Amazing Spider-Man, "not as stylized as film in the Spider-Man franchise Imageworks leads the unique visual effects work on the fourth Sony Pictures By Barbara Robertson what the audience was used to." You see the result in the way Spider- Man moves, the texture of the suit he wears, his web, the detailed envi- ronments he inhabits, and the villain he must overcome. Chen, who received an Oscar nomination for Stuart Little, followed Imageworks' John Dykstra, the visual eff ects designer, and Scott Stok- dyk, visual eff ects supervisor, who both received Oscar nominations for the fi rst two Spider-Man fi lms and won Oscars for the second. Stokdyk was also the visual eff ects supervisor for Spider-Man 3, for which he received a BAFTA nomination. Webb joined the franchise after directing the critically acclaimed 500 Artists sculpted each scale on the Lizard's skin (top); dynamic muscle and skin sims kicked in after animation (bottom). Days of Summer ; Th e Amazing Spider-Man is his fi rst feature fi lm with visual eff ects, and the fi rst fi lm in the Spider-Man franchise shot in stereo 3D. "It's hard for a director to pick up the fourth movie in a popular franchise, but he was a good choice," Chen says. "In 500 Days of Summer, he focused on the love story, but he has also done prob- June/July 2012 27 Images ©2012 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group.