Bert Yukich, co-founder of KromA, had to transition between CG and real body parts throughout the Britney Spears video.

Most of the work was completed using the “standard three” tools: Maya, Photoshop and Deep Paint. “We also used Boujou, a 3D camera tracking software that we use on almost anything we work on now. We’re usually working with live action, so you need to track it. We didn’t have time to experiment and come up with new ways to do things; in cases like that you fall back to what you know.”

One slight departure from the norm, at least for Debert, who’s used to working in the digital domain, was creating the dancing Hummer scene using a miniature model. It was originally intended as a CG effect, but the director had a change of heart and felt something a bit nuttier was needed for that scene.

“The Hummer was so bizarre. They built this really cool rig, a miniature two-foot long Hummer, mounted on a digital green stand with a paddle with four springs you can puppeteer with your hand. We made the craziest moves, but the hardest part was putting it in the shot. [Meyers] wanted it completely over the top. You can tell it’s fake but that was the idea. I was blown away by the rig; they put it together in two hours.”

For Britney Spears’ new single, Toxic, L.A.-based KromA pulled out all stops for the eye-popping visuals on the massive 3D undertaking.

“We had a crew of about 15 people, working through the night, 20-hour days for two weeks,” explains visual effects supervisor and lead compositor Bert Yukich, co-founder of the two-year-old facility. “There was a lot of stuff to build and each thing had to be done just right. We had to build a CG Paris, the tunnel setup, a CG London, a piece of interior CG plane, the CG motorcycle, CG cars, streets, two different CG Britneys, a CG Tyson [Beckford], and some elaborate effects with lasers and glass exploding. Then a lot of little extra things, like one scene where she pulls the rubber mask off the guy…that was CG and a head replacement. The character animation we did for that part where we transitioned from the CG body to a real body was something we hadn’t done like that before. And we added some CG hair in there that’s pretty cool. Each effect in itself was really a big deal.”

Yukich collaborated on the piece with music video director Joseph Kahn, who’s well known for his effects-heavy style. The pair’s recent collaborations include Ricky Martin’s Juramento, in which the Puerto Rican singer and his 99 identical twins dance in the desert with the female object of his affections — another huge undertaking.