Constructiong four-foot-tall heads that nod, making it snow in the summer and storm on sunny days, or building an animatronics cow only to drop it on a car may seem unlikely pursuits in an increasingly CG world, but physical and mechanical F/X house, The FX Guys, is staking its claim in Vancouver’s once again busy special effects market and is looking to build bridges between old and new.

Although the F/X business was slow early last year, things have really picked up, says partner and special F/X coordinator James Fisher. After less than a year in operation, the shop has made kids fly for Nabisco and Nestle and created a moving storm for BMW. Working with Rogue Artists, it rigged a fire hydrant’s water pressure to knock over stuntmen disguised as ice cream cones. With Circle Productions, it made it snow for London Drugs, created an explosion for Nokia and built motorized remote-control devises for a kitchen sink, trashcan and laundry basket to travel down streets for a Saturn SUV spot. It even made a guy slap himself in the face with his own foot for Scholl’s with prodco Apple Box Productions and has worked on more than 15 additional spots, seven long-form projects and three live events.

‘We like to say that we’ll give you anything you want. If you give us enough time and money, we’ll do it. That’s really our only limitation,’ says partner and special F/X coordinator Robert Yeager.

While advances in CGI technology might have left physical F/X artists worried that CGI would replace their skills, what has happened instead has been a merging of the two to produce hybrid effects that are of higher quality than either on its own. And for The FX Guys, commercial business is booming.

‘CG is getting a lot better and is making leaps and bounds technologically. Possibly one day they will not need any [physical F/X artists], but for the time being they still need us,’ says Fisher.

And according to Fisher, there are many advantages to working closely with digital F/X artists. He says it is important for physical and digital F/X artists to collaborate, especially in the early stages of a project.

‘When their needs and our needs are not discussed, money can be spent on counterproductive measures,’ says Fisher. ‘Each person has their own way of doing things and their own programs, but through conversation all this information comes out in the beginning and it makes for a better product in the end.’

The FX Guys business manager Wendy Mentiply Fisher recently initiated talks with Vancouver post house Rainmaker Entertainment, looking to form strategic relationships with companies on the digital side of F/X.

According to Bob Scarabelli, president and CEO of Rainmaker, effects-heavy production is busy again in Vancouver and physical/mechanical F/X are in demand. He says that although forming such a relationship with The FX Guys is in preliminary stages, it would help alleviate the common situation where physical and special effects are developed in isolation of each other and only come together at the end of a project.

‘What we’re trying to do is head that off at the pass. We’re going to get a script to break down, let’s break it down together,’ says Scarabelli. ‘It’s really just a collaboration of the skill sets to come up with the best solutions… I really respect the guys that work there, they’ve done a lot of work over the years.’

Scarabelli says such a relationship would allow Rainmaker to service its clients better and may bring it some business from producers and directors who are still unfamiliar with digital F/X capabilities. And The FX Guys could be in a position to offer their clients a better product, lower prices or more efficient production schedules by helping them understand what can be done digitally and how that can be integrated with physical F/X.

Before launching The FX Guys, Fisher and Yeager were both at Vancouver’s Thomas Special Effects, but decided to move out on their own after the company closed the doors on its technical division to focus on other business.

‘We recognized the opportunities they were giving up,’ says James Fisher. ‘Suddenly there was all this work to do and no one to do it.’