Natural forces: Industrial Light & Magic and Tippett Studio create delicate, monstrous, and cunning CG fairies for the live-action film Spiderwick Chronicles.(CG Characters)

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The conceit in the film The Spiderwick Chronicles is that fairies inhabit the real world--they live in our backyards in Anytown USA. Some are friendly flower sprites: others are definitely not. And one. at least, is hungry for power.

Based on a series of books of the same name by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. the story begins as the nine-year-old twins Jared and Simon Grace, their older sister Mallory, and their mother move into great-aura Lucinda's creepy, old. run-down house, the Spiderwick Estate. somewhere in New England. When Jared discovers great-uncle Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You in a secret room, the children's adventure begins. "This is a story about the ordinary becoming extraordinary,'" says Mark Waters, who directed the Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies film.

Actor Freddie Highmore plays both twin boys. Sarah Boiger is Mallory, Mary-Louise Parker is their mother, and Joan Plowright is their aunt Lucinda. In addition the film features a cast of CG fairies. Indeed, most of the 500 visual effects shots center on adding these fairy characters various types of goblins. a troll, an ogre, flower sprites, a griffin, and so forth--to live-action scenes. Industrial Light & Magic and Tippett Studio created the 500 visual effects shots, and of those, shared approximately 15 shots.

Three of the fairy characters talk: Mulgrath (Nick Nolte), Thimbletack (Martin Short), and Hogsqueal (Seth Rogen). Mulgrath, designed and created at ILM, is a nine-foot-six-inchtall ogre that can transform into such other creatures as a snake, animated at ILM, or a crow, animated at Tippett. Thimbletack is an eight-inch-tall brownie (a house elf) who, when anyone treats him unkindly, has a fit and transforms into his alter ego, the nasty, green Boggart. Tippett created Thimbletack's original design; 1LM brought the character to life. Hogsqueal, meanwhile, is a jolly two-and-a-half-foot-tall hobgoblin, designed and performed at Tippett.

In addition to these talking fairies, both studios designed and created several other species: at ILM, a variety of flower and insect sprites, a half-lion/half-eagle griffin with a 25-foot wingspan, and tiny dandelion-seed sylphs; at Tippett, multiple nasty goblins, a bullgoblin, and a troll.

Thimbletack and Boggart