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n n n n Stop-Motion Visual Effects bit of grime and wonkiness. Threw in a few trees. Put water stains on the buildings." Textures and set dressing changed the look of individual streets. "We had the real houses on set to follow in terms of style, and we photographed swatches and material samples from the art department, as if we were doing a fantasy live- action film," Ledbury says. "We clipped sections of streets together, put a curve in the road, added a junction, and dressed the streets with bushes, trees, cars to change the look." When the camera was higher, the crew into Maya, and roughed them up," Ledbury says. "Sometimes we tweaked the mesh by hand to get rid of perfections. We might plus two frames together and get a jump. We' change the order of the frames. There weren't many procedural ways to do this, so we did it by hand." Similarly, it turned out that there were no d results are head and shoulders above the stan- dard approach. A group of four or five people had a go at it and got the right look. By the end of production, they could do a shot the first time. They got used to how fast the elec- tricity should move." procedural ways to create the electrical effects and the lightning. Throughout the film, lightning shoots through the sky and electricity dances across Left to right across the page spread: VFX artists built much of New Holland with CG. Victor in his attic pre- paring to revive Sparky. Painters inserted hand-drawn electrical effects frame by frame. Tim Burton, puppet master. Sparky the dog established the scale. composited lower-polygon versions of the town. For a wide view from the windmill on the hill, the artists put mountains be- hind the CG town. A rooftop shot also needed a big environment extension. "It's a shot with a kid on roller skates on top of a roof," Ledbury says. "They built only one side of the roof, so we ex- tended that, too. He's doing experiments with fizzy water. We had to do fluid sim- ulations, and CG spray and steam com- ing out of a bottle." Water and fire are never easy to simu- late with computer graphics, and this film has both. In stop motion. Frame-by-Frame Sim At one point in the film, Victor shines a flashlight beam into water to highlight an in- visible fish. "That was harder than it sounds," Ledbury says. "It took a lot of versions before Tim [Burton] picked a final one." Creating a fluid simulation with stop- motion characteristics was difficult. To shine a light on the water rippled by the invisible fish, the crew blended rendered passes of the water. But first, they had to create the water. The effects artists started with a CG fish and a water simulation created with Next Limit Technologies' RealFlow software. "We simu- lated the fluid really slow, brought the meshes 40 August/September 2012 metal objects. When Victor revives Sparky, the entire attic becomes electrified. "There are lots of ways to create electrical effects with CG, but you can spot them," Ledbury says. "We wanted something that would fit more into the stop-motion look. So, we painted all the effects frame by frame for something like 100 shots." In other words, they achieved the stop- motion look by mimicking the technique, by moving the electricity frame by frame. "It was quite painful," Ledbury says. "I did a couple myself, and it drives you up the wall. But the collapses. "Those were the shots that kept me awake," Ledbury points out. "We were all concerned about how we would achieve the fire. We toyed with using live-action el- ements, but in the end, we went full CG using Maya Fluids." Burning Windmill Sitting on a hill above the town is New Hol- land's monument, a wooden windmill. At the end of the film, it catches on fire and sizes appropriate for shots ranging from close- ups to wide shots. For example, one full wind- mill used for wide shots stood four-and-a-half feet tall; a separate top was in puppet scale. There were interior sets, as well. The visual effects crew built CG versions of The animators used windmills in various