Launched a year ago by 3D animation and F/X house TOPIX and president and F/X supervisor Dennis Berardi, Toronto-based Mr. X is racking up an impressive list of clients. The feature film and music video shop is hard at work on Cube 2: Hypercube, the Lions Gate Films sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 sci-fi surprise hit; Serendipity Point Films’ highly anticipated Ararat, writer/director Atom Egoyan’s forthcoming epic about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923; and Men with Brooms, a curling comedy, also from Serendipity.

On Hypercube, Mr. X is responsible for F/X supervision and the production of character animation, photo-realistic environments and F/X animation. The Mr. X team is closely collaborating with director Andrzej Sekula in developing 3D storyboards for all the complex sequences. Equipped with an on-set compositing platform, they are using a video tap from the 35mm motion-picture camera to ensure the shots are logistically feasible before moving on to the next setup.

The company is simultaneously creating digital environments and building CG armies for Ararat, which was filmed largely in Toronto. The film cuts frequently from past to present, and for the numerous flashback scenes, Mr. X is recreating the Armenian city of Van as it was in 1915 before the mass killings by the Ottoman Empire. The shop is building the city with digital matte paintings and 3D animation software.

Mr. X is also responsible for assembling one of the film’s final scenes, in which the persecuted Armenians are driven out of Turkey. Shot with about 200 extras on location in Alberta, the crowd is supposed to number in the thousands. Mr. X increased the volume of bodies with digital animation.

The digital domain not only allows cost saving, but also enables moviemakers to get on film what would otherwise be impossible to shoot. This was the case in another ‘sweeping’ epic, the curling flick Men with Brooms, the directorial debut of Due South’s Paul Gross, who costars with Leslie Nielsen and Molly Parker.

Mr. X’s biggest challenge on this truly Canadian story was building CG beavers, which seem to function as a sort of Greek chorus in the film.

‘We’re doing a lot of research and development on fur, making it look as photographically real as possible,’ says Berardi. ‘Our biggest challenge is that our digital beavers play right next to real animals, so we have to be bang on.’

Additionally, the studio did some trick work on those flying curling rocks, making them achieve shots not even Colleen Jones could pull off.

-www.mrxfx.com