Eight Below: Creating Antarctic Animals with Practical & Digital FX

Eight Below: a Disney Film on Survival of the Fittest

The year 2006 started with the February release of Eight Below, directed by Frank Marshall, loosely based on a true story about a team of abandoned sled dogs at a hastily evacuated Antarctic science station. Left alone in the most inhospitable environment on the planet, the dogs survive for nearly five months before being rescued.

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• Building an Animatronic Leopard Seal
• Combining Live-action with Digital Effects for Eight Below
• Using CG Seagulls
• "Alright team, let's hike to the season."

(Live-action animatronic leopard seal test at Stan Winston Studio.)                                                                                                         

Building an Animatronic Leopard Seal

The movie was filmed in Canada and Greenland and had a scene in which the dogs, attempting to feed on a whale carcass, are confronted by an aggressive leopard seal. Unable to use an actual leopard seal due to the temperament of the animals, Frank Marshall engaged Stan Winston Studio to create a fully articulated seal puppet. Shane Mahan led the construction of an animatronic, hydraulically-powered leopard seal that was absolutely convincing to both the human and canine production members.

 (Joey Orosco and Jason B. Matthews at work on the leopard seal sculpt for Eight Below.)

“Some of the dogs were Huskies,” noted Trevor Hensley, one of the seal puppeteers, “which are very nervous, jumpy dogs. They aren’t comfortable when a new animal is suddenly thrown into the mix. So, when they saw this big seal with teeth like a dinosaur, they freaked out. They thought it was real. As soon as the puppet opened its mouth, the dogs started jumping and barking.”

 (Jamie S. Grove and Mark Jurinko paint the leopard seal puppet for Eight Below.)

Combining Live-action with Digital Effects for Eight Below

Ultimately, an artful combination of live animatronics and digital effects implemented by Stan Winston Digital gave the leopard seal its verisimilitude. For Eight Below, Stan Winston’s digital team added a computer-generated wet sheen to the foam rubber skin of the Studio’s leopard seal puppet. The digital artists honed their computer animation skills by modeling and animating an all-CG seal and seagulls. “We used our digital toolset to enhance the look of the seal,” said CG supervisor Jabbar Raisani, “to make it look slippery and wet--just as a live seal does--which is not easily done when working with foam rubber. We built a full CG version of the seal and used the skin characteristics of that CG model to lay back over the practical seal puppet.”

 (The animatronic leopard seal suddenly appears from within the carcass of a whale, scaring off a meal-seeking sled dog, played by a real husky, in Eight Below. Photos courtesy of ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

“Using digital,” Stan Winston added, “we were able to do things like paint out the wrinkles in the foam rubber skin of the animatronic and give it a more realistic sheen. And then, for some shots, we also did an all-digital seal. In the past, on shows like Jurassic Park, our Studio had done the live-action characters, and someone else had done the digital. On this show, all of it, live-action and digital, was done by us.”

 (A series of elements from a fully digital shot of the animated leopard seal swimming beneath the ice in Eight Below.)

The CG seal was used for actions that couldn’t be achieved with the practical puppet, such as shots of the seal sliding along the ice, dipping into a hole, and swimming underwater. “That was always meant to be a digital shot,” said Raisani. “In fact, for the shots underneath the ice, everything is completely computer-generated.”

 (A final composite from Eight Below's fully digital shot with the leopard seal. Photo courtesy of ©Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

Using CG Seagulls

Stan Winston Digital also computer-generated seagulls for a scene where the starving dogs attack a flock of birds in flight, jumping up and grabbing them in their jaws. “Obviously, you can’t have a dog jump up and bite a flying seagull,” Raisani said, “so, on set, the dogs jumped and bit into doggie treats. Those treats were replaced with a CG bird that flaps around and really moves with the dog’s action.” For closeups, the live-action creature effects crew built a seagull dummy that the dogs could actually bite on and chew.

 (Live plate, animation guide and final shot from the scene where starving dogs attack a flock of birds in flight in Eight Below.)

The Studio also built a dummy Husky for a shot where the seal takes a bite out of a dog. The inert orca carcass too was a practical prop created by the Studio team.

 (Jamie S. Grove and Mark Jurinko work on the orca carcass prop at Stan Winston Studio.)

 (Dummy Husky [Maya] built for the scene where she is attacked by the seal in Eight Below.)

"Alright team, let's hike to the season."

- Jerry Shepard (Paul Walker), EIGHT BELOW

Eight Below enjoyed good box-office and enthusiastic audience response both to its heartwarming story and to the entirely convincing scenes of the animals in peril--scenes made possible by Stan Winston Studio’s digital and animatronic work. “There are several sequences in the film where we have a practical animatronic cutting back-to-back with a digitally enhanced seal or a full digital seal,” noted Shane Mahan. “Watching those scenes play out, you can’t tell which is which, and at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. It’s an engaging performance, which is what we constantly strive for.”

 (Another Husky puppet [Dewey] built for the scene where he slips down an incline in Eight Below.)

Eight Below represented another step forward in the progression of the hybrid digital/live approach Stan Winston had been exploring at the Studio. “Eight Below was really a watershed film for us in integrating, in an organic way, the practical and digital arms of Stan Winston Studio. We combined those technologies to create animals that looked absolutely live and real. And," he proudly added, "we did it all in-house.”

(Another view of the live-action animatronic Leopard Seal at Stan Winston Studio.)

- Blog assembled by Adrienn Lingurár with selections from The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio by Jody Duncan

Courses with the Creators of Eight Below

• Special Effects Sequence Design with Shane Mahan
• Maquette Painting Techniques with Trevor L. Hensley
• Metallic Painting Techniques - Real Metal Effects with Jamie S. Grove
• Painting Silicone Skin - Realistic Flesh Tones with Jamie S. Grove
• Production Design: The Process Of Creating A World For Film with Jabbar Raisani and Eddie Yang
• Making Creature Eyes with John Cherevka
• How To Make Eyes: Puppets, Masks & Makeups with John Cherevka
• Character Makeup - Running Foam Appliances with Cory Czekaj
• Lab Work for Animatronic Characters Part 1: Making a Mechanical Core with Cory Czekaj
• Animatronics Design Basics with Richard Landon
• Cable Mechanism Basics - Tentacles with Richard Landon
• The  Art of the Fat Suit with Dawn Dininger
• FX Corset Harness with Amy Whetsel
• Creature Costume Basics with Dawn Dininger & Amy Whetsel
• Making a Stone Mold with Gary Yee

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