For Jerome Chen, visual effects have always involved some form of animation. He goes back to his work on the live-action Stuart Little, where the main character, a talking mouse, was created with animation and visual effects. © Columbia.

This year the Visual Effects Society added a new category: Outstanding Effects in an Animated Motion Picture, to be introduced at the 6th Annual VES Awards on Feb. 10, 2008. Meanwhile, the momentum carried Ratatouille and Beowulf to the VFX Oscar long list for bakeoff consideration, which is a further breakthrough.

With that in mind, I interviewed three visual effects supervisors who are more than likely to receive VES nominations for their work over the past year. We will take a look at how they have raised the bar in terms of their creativity and what sort of challenges and competition this opportunity for recognition presents.

First, I spoke with Jerome Chen, the visual effects supervisor on Beowulf.

J. Paul Peszko: How do you view the role of a visual effects supervisor in animated features as opposed to live-action?

Jerome Chen: I guess I can take a look at it from a personal perspective, probably back to Stuart Little, where it was a live-action movie, and the main character -- the talking mouse -- had to be created using visual effects. But it wasn't just visual effects. It was also obviously animation. So, when people talk about visual effects, animation almost always has to be included because visual effects have always involved a form of animation. Go back: let's say to King Kong, the original King Kong. The visual effects aspect was all stop-motion. You go to Star Wars, there's a lot of stop-motion, puppetry and some CG. And then you go to Jurassic Park. The visual effects illusion of the integration of a CG character into a live-action movie involved the animation of the CG character, and the compositing and lighting of the CG character. Then, as movies started to use more and more animation and CG integration in live-action, the role of the visual effects supervisor became much more involved in the rest of the live-action movie.

JPP: How has this changing landscape in visual effects influenced features in general and specifically your career?

JC: The transition point where my function as a visual effects supervisor started to expand probably began on Polar Express. (Robert) Zemeckis had a movie where he wanted it to have a live-action component in terms of the actors. His creative process is a live-action mentality, but he wanted the whole movie created in CG. Live-action directors rely on their vfx sups to help devise the techniques to accomplish their vision. By transitioning to full CG, Zemeckis still sought the collaboration of Ken Ralston and myself to develop the means to tell the story. It was during that process where our role went beyond the shooting of plates and became more immersed in both the pre-production and post-production process of helping to make every frame of the film.

JPP: And moving onto Beowulf, what was the prime intent there and how did it influence your role as a visual effects supervisor?

JC: Zemeckis employed the use of motion capture and CG because he wanted the world of Beowulf to feel homogenous. The humans and the creatures -- and the environment -- are all meant to have the same visual texture. The techniques we used blur the line between visual effects and animation. So, the whole thing becomes another level of illusion, which is what visual effects have always done.