SCENE STEALER

Can a computer-generated character appear to evolve throughout its lifetime? That was the challenge facing Weta Digital’s visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri on “The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep,” the story of a boy, Angus, and his Loch Ness monster, Crusoe. Getting audiences to accept each phase of Crusoe’s development required an evolution in skill for Weta’s animators.

“The animators had to establish the bits of personality that carry through all four stages,” Letteri says.

Here’s how Weta’s team made audiences believe they were seeing the monster mature before their eyes.

-- Ron Magid