Vfx supervisor Ed Jones praised the all-CG cityscape. All images © 2004 Warner Bros. Ent. Inc. — U.S., Canada, Bahamas & Bermuda. © 2004 Village Roadshow Films (BVI) Ltd. — All other territories. All rights reserved. Photo credit:

Halle Berry is no longer just eye candy. She bears the most coveted honor an actress can receive: an Oscar. Catwoman, however, is sadly just eye candy. Not even Berry’s responsive acting and acrobatic acumen can elevate Warner Bros.’ latest comic adaptation to the echelon it aspires to be. However, a cavalcade of nine distinguished and up-and-coming vfx studios, led by ESC Ent., formulate near-seamless visuals.

On paper at least, the introspective struggle for identity echoes the crux of Spider-Man 2. But in reality there are no comparisons. Nevertheless, one cannot help contemplate other comic-to-film incarnations, especially as Berry also dons some black leather as Storm in the X-Men franchise. So while Catwoman overall is incomparable to other comic films, its visual effects are first rate.

The 15 months of vfx began in April 2003, outputting a total of 870 shots. With a crew of more than 400, the hodgepodge of vfx studios besides ESC included Tippett Studio, Meteor Studios, Matte World Digital, Frantic Films, Radium, Pacific Title & Art Studio and Circle-S Studios. The vfx studios used Alias’s industry standard Maya for modeling, rigging and animating. The studios also incorporated myriad proprietary plug-ins for muscle and skin enhancements. Both RenderMan and mental ray were used for rendering.

A vfx veteran, Catwoman’s French director Pitof had no problem crossing the language barrier to communicate his vision to the crew.

At the vfx helm for Warner Bros. was associate producer and visual effects supervisor Ed Jones, who began his career as an ILM lab tech on The Empire Strikes Back and won an Oscar in 1989 for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Jones was primarily responsible for disseminating vfx direction from the directorial level down to the supervisors at the sundry vfx studios. “The expertise of certain studios and the time involved based on the capacity of certain studios are the reasons for the piecemeal approach to the visuals. We started with 380 shots in our original breakdown and ended up with 870. With that kind of growth, we had to figure out what additional facilities can assist in getting work done.”

There are four main vfx shots in Catwoman: fight scenes, cityscape transitions, cats and the CGI version of Catwoman herself. As is the case with most animation, the CG modelers had to study extensively their subjects’ movements in order to synthesize the realism of motion. Jones clarified this process: “During the preproduction phase, there was a lot of work done on understanding the catlike movements for Catwoman. So there were studies done of real cats, both wild and domestic, which were rotoscoped. We then placed a previous model of Catwoman overtop to begin establishing what her signature movements as Catwoman would be. From there it grew into previews and sequences and principle photography in shooting the plates, and starting to put together the whole thing. Obviously, it’s a cut and paste process. Catwoman’s movements that are Halle’s actual movements were never enhanced. How we interspersed that with CG catlike movements had the signature look of what we had developed. We worked very closely with choreographers Anne Fletcher and Nito Larioza. We initially worked on a motion capture section involving a lot of fighters to figure out what we wanted in terms of a look when she fought and when she walked. From there we developed our library. Then Anne worked with Halle and her stunt double to make sure that they had their movements down to integrate with our CG Catwoman.”

The integration of Berry, her stunt double and the CG Catwoman is as good as Spider-Man 2 and much less noticeable than The Matrix: Reloaded. The CG integration should look reminiscent of The Matrix trilogy since ESC was created as an offshoot of Warner Bros. in order to facilitate paramount vfx without outsourcing. Jones concurs: “It’s like The Matrix where we utilize the ESC Ent. with universal capture facial animation system with a combination of motion capture and keyframe animation. Obviously, the first time you see Halle as CG Catwoman is when she comes back and jumps to the back window of her apartment and breaks the window. When she goes to the jewelry store, there are quite a few, almost 17 CG shots of her in there, as well as CG environments intercut with live-action plates.” Only one rooftop cut focuses on the CG Catwoman long enough to recognize that Halle Berry is not on screen, which is a substantial improvement since ESC’s work on The Matrix: Reloaded.