Blizzard blew into theaters Dec. 12, receiving good notices for its old-fashioned Yuletide yarn about a lonely girl and an outcast reindeer. Toronto’s Mr. X spearheaded the FX work on the Knightscove Entertainment/Holedigger Films/Alliance Atlantis feature, shot in Toronto and Quebec City.

Mr. X was charged with the task of digitally bringing to life 300 shots with talking, flying reindeer.

‘A 3D muzzle model was created,’ explains Mr. X operations manager David Singer, in reference to the work of the shop’s team. ‘They projected the film plate onto the 3D muzzle and basically lifted the texture directly from the film and then warped the model and the film.’ Fur textures were achieved using the Alias Maya fur pipeline, rendered in RenderMan. CG reindeer were created for the flying sequences.

Mr. X also had to build a digital Santa’s Village and aurora borealis. The FX studio provided the production with animatics, a full-motion storyboard with sound that helped in the filming of the environments for the CGI characters.

-www.mrxfx.com