Then and now: Stuart Little (left) started it all for Sony Imageworks, and Big Fish is one of its latest features. Stuart Little © Columbia Pictures; Big Fish photo credit: Sony Imageworks © 2003 Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved.

There’s a unique symbiotic relationship between Sony Pictures Imageworks and Animation in the way they approach 3D characters and environments, share pipelines (with vfx comprising 65% and animation 35%) and certain animators too. Diversity is the key at both companies. The goal for Imageworks and Animation is to embrace synthetic characters and stylized environments whenever possible, and for Imageworks to continue growing as a healthy, viable vfx house. The mandate of Animation is to go through Imageworks, keeping the work in the U.S. As with Revolution Studios, Animation has no intention of developing a Sony brand and will depend upon Sony’s successful marketing machine to give each director-driven feature the individual attention it deserves.

“Our goal within Imageworks clearly has been — and it started about seven years ago when we were really embarking on the first Stuart Little — is to place 3D characters in environments that help tell the story,” explained Imageworks president Tim Sarnoff. “And, for Stuart, it was an environment in which we lived. For The Polar Express, it’s going to be an environment that is stylized from the original book [by Chris Van Allsburg]. And the nice part about Imageworks at this point is that we will not develop a specific style for specific types of animation. There’s a huge difference between Spider-Man, Polar Express and the first Sony Pictures Animation project [which has yet to be determined]. And we’re also unique in that we’re not doing it for just one company. Polar Express is for Warner Bros., the Spider-Man franchise is for Columbia and Sony Pictures Animation will be doing their own projects here.”

Tim Sarnoff, president of Sony Imageworks, wants to push the envelope with the placement of photorealistic effects in live-action films.

Sarnoff added that Imageworks has been tested in recent years with both 3D characters and environments and combinations of the two, and will continue enhancing live-action films with seamless photorealistic effects and pushing the envelope with stylized CG films. “Starting with Stuart Little, clearly people thought of that as a 3D mouse in a photorealistic environment, but what most people don’t know is a great number of those environments were also 3D too,” Sarnoff said. “And so to a lot of extent — and certainly on Stuart Little 2 — it truly was an animated film because there were no plates provided to us on a number of those sequences. We literally created it from whole cloth. Both the park as the plane is flying through with Stuart and Margalo [the bird] trying to save Stuart. There was nothing there other than paintings. Yet people think, well, they shot the plane and when you think about it that would have been a lot harder to do than just drawing pictures and making it look like it was real. And on Spider-Man, clearly you’re not allowed to shoot in New York City the way we actually have Spider-Man move, so we had to make a lot of 3D buildings and that was actually one of the harder parts of that movie than just making Spider-Man as a character. On Spider-Man II, there is probably at least double the number of [effects] shots, and there is double the number of times where we’re doing 3D characters and 3D environment at the same time.”

As expected, the vfx shots are a lot more complicated in Spider-Man II, both in terms of manipulating cameras through real and through 3D environments. There has been a learning curve on this franchise for director Sam Raimi, the crew and Imageworks. Fittingly, on the first film there were baby steps in terms of swinging on the web, but in the sequel, the effects achieve more of a thrill ride. “The audience is going to literally sit there and fly with him through the city a lot more,” Sarnoff suggested. “And there is a very complex character as the villain [Dr. Octopus, played by Alfred Molina]. Far more complex because he has a number of arms; he’s, you know, busy. It’s really hard to make that person exist in real life unless you have a digital enhancement to him.”