Bulma and Goku must retrieve Dragonballs that control the fate of the universe. All images © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. TM & © Bird Studio/Shueisha Inc.

A worldwide phenomenon is getting translated to the big screen this weekend and believe it or not, the property isn't based on a superhero, a boy wizard or a teen vampire. Dragonball Evolution is actually based on the Dragonball Japanese manga that debuted as a weekly serial back in 1984. It told the story of a young boy named Goku that traveled the world in search of seven mystical objects called Dragonballs that in turn grant wishes. Since its debut, the Dragonball manga series has sold more than 150 million copies around the world, spawning anime films, anime TV series and videogames.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the mythology made it to Hollywood and a live-action format. In Dragonball Evolution, the story doesn't stray too far from the source material: young martial arts expert Goku (Justin Chatwin) is tasked by his dying grandfather to seek out Master Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat) and round up the protectors of the Dragonballs in order to protect the orbs from the evil plans of Lord Piccolo (James Marsters). What ensues are many gravity-defying fights, extreme martial arts melee and plenty of vfx wonders.

Together director James Wong and Overall Visual Effects Supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw rounded up a small army of vfx vendors and artists to create the world envisioned on the manga page and anime for a whole new audience. VFXWorld talked to three of the vendors: Hybride, Frantic Films VFX and CafeFX to discover the behind-the-scenes secrets of this mystical world.

Hybride worked on R&D in order to develop the look of the different energy blasts such as Ki, Shadow Crane and Ma Fu Ba. Courtesy of Hybride.

Hybride of Quebec was brought on early in the pre-production phase to help establish the visual parameters of the film. Pierre Raymond, Hybride founder and CEO, explains their initial connection to the project after being hired by Fox's VFX Producer Janet Hamilton and VFX Supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw.

"Being involved in the very early stage of the production was great for Hybride because it gave us the chance to work on R&D in order to develop the look of the different energy blasts such as Ki, Shadow Crane and Ma Fu Ba," Raymond offers. "We also worked on look development for the Dragon Temple, as well as for the Flying Hummer and Lord Piccolo's dirigible. Having our staff on-stage working closely with Ariel Velasco-Shaw alongside director James Wong, was very helpful in achieving our goal."

Raymond says 20 Hybride artists, not including supervisors or their administrative team, worked on the 48 visual effects for the film. "Most of our work consisted of developing different looks for different parts of the movie, which we then shared with third-party post-houses. We were mainly involved on shots where tracking interaction is required. Generating animation interacting with the actors' performances is very frequent in most of the movies that we work on, but this kind of interaction was more difficult to achieve. The energy force took different steps and evolves shot by shot to represent the learning process of our young master. Both the look and the animation were customized and many versions were produced in order to attain the final result. So the amount of shots is quite irrelevant for this movie, as it required a decent amount of investments in R&D."