The forest is also teeming with CG creatures, large and small, particularly Beetles. And the dark fairies are comprised of shards of obsidian torn down from the ceiling, which then form together into massive humanoid form. The solution involved a combination of Maya and Houdini. The simulations could be controlled with multiple parameters to enable detailed direction of the look and behavior of the shards and to allow complex actions like breaking apart and reforming.

The Miyazki influence from Princess Mononoke for the mysterious Stag was a challenge in being fantastical yet believable.

Nicolas-Troyan also contributed crucial design work. "I designed the troll and the wood fairies in the enchanted forest," he says. "We wanted to go against the usual animal types. For example, the fairies are very childlike and, yes, the Stag is a definite nod to Miyazaki and the challenge was trying to come up with a graphic representation of Princess Mononoke in live-action."

Snow White (Kristen Stewart) and the mysterious Stag.

Meanwhile his troll becomes a figure of compassion. "We were given a lot backstory from Cedric about how this creature evolved, what mechanisms it uses for hunting, and why it has developed into the creature that it is," remarks Rhythm & Hues' visual effects supervisor Todd Shifflett. "This troll was not an evil character; the whole real focus they were trying to maintain for the film was these are just animals in the forest, and they have to live just like anything else has to live, and it [the bridge troll] happens to feed on other animals, and we shouldn't just look upon that as evil, it's just how this thing has developed. So it just happens to be that its camouflage is well suited for the banks and riverbeds and happens to fit in well for these stone bridges that civilization is building, so that's how the bridge troll gravitated towards that sort of environment."

Rhythm & Hues' bridge troll was not an evil character; he's a survivor with camouflage.

For the fairies, Rhythm & Hues worked with Nicolas-Troyan on the backstory: how they fly, how they communicate with one another, how they behave, even what they eat because we it affects how their teeth grow.

"We pushed for them to have some body hair on them: it adds a level of detail and texture to the characters," Shifflett continues. "They wanted some magical component in terms of their patterning, in other words, how they were able to blend into the forest in an interesting sort of animalistic pattern. We were able to use that body hair, to give subtle hair that gives you a pattern change you might see on a butterfly. They definitely have a pearlescent skin -- they're very small creatures, we wanted to get the sense that if you were in front of a bright light, you'd see some of their bones or internal structure. They wanted iridescence applied to the skin as well. It was a bit challenging because there wasn't enough time in the schedule to prepare that much animation. So we wound up using sections of mocap because we thought we'd be able to get more variations done more quickly."

The fairies of the enchanted forest were not animals -- they were more like innocent children.

As for the dwarfs, R&H attempted some cost-efficient 2D and 3D methods. "We went down some 3D paths, that we knew we probably wouldn't be using in the long run," Shifflett says, "but we wanted to find out what useful things are we going to learn going down this path? And so, in doing that, [digital supervisor] Harry [Lam] worked closely with the software department in developing our tools further, to have our 2D warp capability much more specialized so we could actually zero in on parts of the image, and have it non-uniformly warped while other parts of the image were locked and held down. So it was a lot of that R&D that gave a lot of knowledge to help Harry guide our software team because we're going to have to do this over and over again.

"And we chose to go with a 2D solution as opposed to a 3D rendered solution. Then, as the testing went on, we discovered that we can't go from a standing pose to a sitting pose. It became apparent that a lot of shots could be accomplished using traditional techniques."

--

Bill Desowitz is former senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld. He's the owner of the Immersed in Movies blog (www.billdesowitz.com), a regular contributor to Thompson on Hollywood at Indiewire and author of James Bond Unmasked (www.jamesbondunmasked.com), which chronicles the 50-year evolution of 007 on screen and features interviews with all six actors.