Did you have any idea about how to go about making a dog and baby talk?

I had some idea and researched what others had done for the same kind of effect - I read the Cinefex issue on Babe, for instance. Initially it was a question of "is this even possible in LightWave?" The whole project was produced at film resolution rather than video, making it even more challenging. I got my live action plate at film resolution and tracked the dog’s head against my model and used the front projection map to match up with the background plate. The front projection map was baked into the object as an image sequence, giving me more flexibility.

How did you get the job?

I did a test shot when they first approached me because they were concerned whether I could even do this. It was very tricky to convince them because I have nothing in my portfolio that is even vaguely like this. So I filmed a neighbour’s baby and the producer saying things like "I could murder a pint" and we used LightWave to make it all work. That convinced them!

How do you go about tracking a shot using LightWave?

You track a point in the background of the 2D image, such as the dog’s eye and then stabilise the whole plate around that point. Then when you load your 3D head in, you just have to match the movement by hand considering that the one point you’ve tracked will remain in place and revolving and scaling the head around that. I spent two weeks with a checkerboard-textured head just making sure it lined up.