Though the company ultimately ended up with just four shots in the film, they were key moments in an early sequence revealing how shy, sensitive graphic artist Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) becomes Catwoman. In the sequence, Patience is killed by her corrupt employers, and her body washes up on the banks of a reservoir under the watchful gaze of Midnight, an Egyptian Mau cat with mystical powers. The Mau beckons neighborhood cats to the scene, then walks up to Patience, climbs onto her chest and breathes life back into her, along with feline superpowers. "Pitof's camera moves in those shots were pretty ambitious," observed Friesch, "big elaborate moves that involved motion control -- which is why they couldn't use the real cats." The shots also included several extreme closeups of the cat's face, its eyes and nose even filling frame at one point. "We were a little hesitant about that. We thought we could do a pretty good photoreal CG cat, but we didn't want to go that close."

At the start of the production, Friesch traveled to Vancouver to take reference photos of the three Egyptian Maus used on set. Those photos, along with video reference and precise measurements of the real cats, were brought back to the studio, where Tippett crews built the CG replica. Modelmaker Jeff Unay made use of Tippett Studio's relatively new proprietary skin and muscle system, employed for the first time on Hellboy. "This was our first opportunity to use it on a photoreal animal," noted Friesch, "so we were pretty excited. Cats have this loose bag of skin, and when they move, the skin just slides over the muscles. Their knees almost vanish into their bodies when they move, because they have all this fur. We could achieve that kind of movement with this system."

The Tippett crew also employed its proprietary fur tool, first pressed into action for the 2001 film Cats & Dogs. "The Russian cat in Cats & Dogs had thick, gray, wooly fur," recalled Friesch, "whereas this was straight fur. So, we had to figure out a whole different texture. But we've learned a lot of tricks from using our fur tool on other shows. We keep refining it, and it just keeps getting better." Interestingly, the rare Mau breed's unusual coloring -- silver with black spots -- made the task easier. "We could hide a lot in the pattern. When you have something flat and single-colored, you tend to focus more on the surface and the quality of the hair. But when you have a pattern, there's so much more to look at."

For the cat's eyes, Tippett artists avoided refractions or fancy rendering techniques. "We did a sphere," explained Friesch, "and put a pupil on it that animators could animate dilating or constricting. Then we put a transparent lens over that and did a couple of different light passes, putting the whole thing together in compositing." Pitof directed Tippett to shorten the cat's teeth so as to give it a less threatening appearance when seen at close range. "Pitof wanted the cat to have charisma, but he didn't want it to look mean or scary -- just strong and confident."

Animators spent long hours observing real cats in order to copy the typical cues of feline behavior. "Because the camera is so close," said Friesch, "there was a lot of attention put on ear tics and little eye moves and whisker movement -- all the tiny details. Cats are constantly moving something. Their whiskers are picking up information, they're always scanning and checking out their surroundings. Of course, the big advantage of our CG cat was that we could maintain an eyeline on something, which a real cat wouldn't necessarily do."

For the shot of the cat breathing life into Patience, animators initially suggested adding a bit of subtle, but visible cat breath -- a suggestion that the production initially rejected. "We got a callback about two weeks after we delivered the shot," stated Friesch, "and they said: 'We want to see magical cat breath.' Fortunately, we had an element from a previous show, and our compositors were able to stick that in."

Another motion control shot had the CG Mau surrounded by a dozen or so real cats shot on the live-action set. "Production did six or seven takes of the real cats," said Friesch, "and in each take, some of them hit their marks, while others didn't. We had to go into all the different takes and pull out the ones that worked, then stick them in our shot. It involved a lot of plate building and retiming."

Though their work on Catwoman ended up being but a fraction of the overall visual effects undertaking, the Tippett crew welcomed the opportunity to refine their craft. "I always wanted to do a photoreal animal," Friesch remarked, "and to do one that is so recognizable was a big challenge. Then, to get that close -- it's hard to get anything CG to look that good that close."

Photo copyright © 2004 Warner Bros. Pictures.

Below is an article written by Estelle Shay at Cinefex. Cinefex used to do online weekly updates and "The Making of Catwoman" at Tippett Studio was one of the featured articles. Somewhere in there, my name is mentioned...again, that's Joel for the shout out!