Stuart's Not-So-Little Journey To The Big Screen

Stuart's Not-So-Little Journey To The Big Screen
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After Anderson and Minkoff approved the animation, the scenes were then sent onto Jim Berney, the Computer Graphics Supervisor, who essentially dressed and put fur -- more than 300,000 hairs -- on the heretofore naked Stuart. Clothing and fur, while not new to computer animation, had never been attempted quite on this scale before.

In addition to consistency of character, clothing was another extremely difficult and challenging task because "you're doing so many layers of computer generation," Anderson explains. "As amazing as computers are as calculating tools, sometimes they're very dumb. It's very hard for them to detect where one layer of clothing bumps up against another, where it bumps up against skin.

"There were a few instances where we needed to go back to the animation stage and modify a pose here or a pose there to accommodate the calculation of the cloth," he adds. "That was rare. Most of the time the animators were able to focus on the performance first and foremost and the clothing was modified to fit the performance."

So where did Stuart shop for his cool threads? Though the artists admit that some of his clothes were Gap-inspired, Stuart actually had his own costume designer, Joseph Porro (Godzilla, Independence Day), who did all the costumes for the movie. "He would give us his sketches for the different outfits," says Berney. "We'd get miniature versions of cut-out panels, the same as you would have for anything you would sew. We would put those on the maquette. If they fitted all right, we would scan the sketches into the computer and then trace out and model each of the panels with a program that was built, Alias|Wavefront, that would basically stitch it together and put it into animation."

Naturally, the costuming didn't always go smoothly. Berney remembers a few simulations were Stuart inadvertently walked out of his clothes. "We tried leaving his jacket unbuttoned for a casual look. But when we tested this, his jacket slipped off him and he just stepped out of it," he recalls with a chuckle. "There were also moments when his clothes wouldn't stop moving," adds Berney. "That was kind of scary for a while. But we soon overcame those problems."

The Final Stages: Lighting and Integrating Stuart
While Stuart was getting dressed, the color and lighting artists were placing the appropriate, photo-realistic lights on him. They needed to ensure that Stuart received the exact same lighting as his live-action counterparts. "We'd look at how Geena and Hugh or the other actors were lit in a scene and have Stuart lit from the same direction so that when they cut back and forth he feels like he's actually there with them," remarks Chen.

Once Stuart and his clothes were lighted properly, the scene would then go on to the compositing stage which, Chen explains, "combines all the different elements that the artists create that make up Stuart. They create everything separately. His head is on one layer or element, his eyes are a separate element, his whiskers are a separate element, even his teeth are a separate element. And all the layers of clothing are a separate element. We create these separately and combine them in this compositing stage because it gives more control to finesse each individual layer.

"This way, if we have to re-create one part of Stuart -- maybe his tie is wrong, or his hands are too dark -- we can focus on the small pieces and recombine them. We don't have to re-render everything."

Finally, Stuart was integrated into the live-action scenes in such a way as to make the audience believe he had been there all along -- showing up for those long and exhausting days on the set even though he never really sat in a actor's chair, occupied a posh trailer or nibbled on camembert from the catering truck. Remarkably, his performance reads as natural and convincing as Davis' and Laurie's, drawing us not only into his home and situation but into his genuine emotions as well. As far as we're concerned, he's a regular actor with a SAG card.

"The strongest thing I can say about the film," concludes Weiss, "is that after about a minute or two you stop gaping at this technical achievement. You don't notice that he's a digital character. Any visual effects person worth their salt will tell you, `If you didn't notice what we did, then we did a good job.'"

Ilene Renee Gannaway is a freelance writer who served as Director of Development for Turner Feature Animation and as Manager of Development, Motion Pictures for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. She is currently pursuing her Master's Degree in English Literature and likes mice okay but thinks squirrels really rock.