Australia-based vfx company Animal Logic worked with a creature effects designer to give Aquamarine a 21st century spin on the lovely fish-out-of-water story. All images © 2006 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.

Stories of sea-women, or mermaids, have been captivating societies since the time of ancient Syria. Forever immortalized and romanticized in books, songs and more recently in Disney’s animated The Little Mermaid (1989), one truth has definitely evolved for modern filmmakers interested in tackling the challenge of bringing a half-woman/half-fish to life: it’s a lot easier in theory than in execution. Maybe that’s the reason there haven’t been many live-action, big-screen mermaid films since Splash (1984), but director Elizabeth Allen didn’t let that stop her when she dove into adapting Alice Hoffman’s book Aquamarine (Fox, opening March 3), which weaves the sunny story of a sassy, young mermaid that gets her human legs, finds two human best friends and captures the heart of a cute boy.

Actress Sara Paxton takes on the mermaid role in the movie version, while Australia-based visual effects company Animal Logic took on the test of making this human girl look anything but onscreen. Under the guidance of Animal Logic’s visual effects supervisor, Morgane Furio, coupled with the work of creature effects designer, Jason Baird, Aquamarine gives a 21st century spin on the lovely fish-out-of-water story. Furio talks with VFXWorld.com about his team’s work on Aquamarine.

Tara DiLullo: Aquamarine was shot primarily in Australia, so was that the immediate connection with Animal Logic doing the vfx work? If not, how did you get the project?

Morgane Furio: We enjoyed a number of discussions with Liz (Allen) and the studio about various approaches to the film. Those discussions led to us bidding and being awarded the project.

TD: The character of Aquamarine is a canny mix of practical effects and vfx. How did that mix evolve in the initial meetings?

MF: Overall, Aquamarine is a very 2D centered film. As the budget was limited, we had to find some clever solutions using Shake and a fantastic team of compositors. At an early stage it was decided that the tail would be prosthetic, since Aquamarine’s mermaid body would rarely be seen in full.

The biggest challenge was achieving Aquamarine’s death-defying somersault scene, when she meets Claire [Emma Roberts] and Hailey [JoJo] for the first time. Liz wanted to have this graceful somersault shown from the girl’s point of view and then from a bird’s eye view. Jumping out of the water, arching her back and re-entering the pool with the beautiful nightlight needed to be done under great control. As a full CG shot was not an option, the only way to achieve such a performance was through a combination of elements shot separately that would be put back together in Shake to form one single action. First we shot the background plate of the pool with a black dummy tail being pulled out of the water and a black sand bag being thrown from above to give us a nice splash.

When you have some interaction with water, I always prefer to shoot practical water and enhance it through CG if necessary. We decided to shoot Aquamarine in the studio on a special “rotisserie” rig that was designed to enable a 360-degree spin for both Sarah Paxton and the animatronics tail.