Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/9706
CG replacement wings that perfectly matched the practical wings so that from shot to shot, you wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart.” One interesting note that came back from the fi lmmakers, Harvey recalls, concerned how the wings looked “ ‘amazing, but that they looked too real and too practical, and needed to be more magical.’ So while that was great feedback—that the shot was kicked back because it looked too real—we had to constantly maintain a balance between photorealism and a more magical aesthetic.” For Tooth Fairy, the artists also created digital matte paint- ings. In the pivotal scene in which a stadium roof opens and a giant dust vortex sucks Derek up and transports him into the pastel alternate universe known as Fairyland, they built the roof digitally, and re-projected and matte-painted it so they could then rip it apart. In addition, they created the digital debris fl ying about, and meticulously art-directed the swirling dust effect. Finally, they enhanced scenes in which Derek fl ies over a cityscape by augmenting the sky and atmosphere, as well as the city below. The bulk of the work was done out of Prime Focus’ primary North American VFX hub in Vancouver, British Columbia, with additional shots sprinkled across the facility’s artists in Winni- peg, Manitoba. All told, the team comprised approximately seven 3D artists, six compositors, and two VFX supervisors working on the show from January until July 2009. The primary software packages used by the artists on this show include Prime Focus Software’s proprietary high-volume particle system, Krakatoa, Autodesk’s 3ds Max modeling software, and Eyeon Fusion for compositing. The fi lmmakers shot the majority of the movie in Harvey’s hometown of Vancouver. Mammoth Studios, one of the city’s largest soundstages, served as the location for fi lming the Fairyland scenes, while the new Olympic ice rink provided the setting for the movie’s action-packed hockey sequences. As someone who has been with Prime Focus since its days as Frantic Films VFX, going all the way back to 2003, “it’s been exciting to be a part of the thriving Vancouver fi lmmaking scene and seeing how the industry has brought in so much talent and revenue to our city,” Harvey says. “And being able to take my kid to the movie theater to watch something our team worked on is, of course, an added bonus.” ■ Windows-32 /Windows-64 / OSX-32 /OS X-64 32-bitonly $399 High Performance CameraTracking Use SynthEyes for animated critter insertion, fixing shaky shots, virtual set extensions, making 3Dmovies, architectural previews, accident reconstruction,virtual product placement, face and body capture, andmore. Includes Stereoscopic features used in AVATAR April 2010 11