MPC’s team completed more than 200 shots for Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, working closely with Production VFX Supervisor Frazer Churchill. A variety of effects were created including some of the children’s strange abilities, digital set extensions and FX work.
One of the largest sequences MPC undertook takes place in a circus arena, where the children confront the hallowghasts. For this scene, MPC’s environment team created set extensions for the circus environment and abilities for Fiona, Claire, Millard, the twins and Miss Edwards.
Fiona throws seeds at the ground and a mass of vines rapidly entangles a villain, sprouting leaves and flowers. MPC’s assets team built the plants, which were then animated using a tool specifically created for the effect.
Toward the end of the sequence, the twins reveal their faces, turning the villainous Miss Edwards to stone. MPC created various concepts for the twins’ faces, receiving final approval from Tim Burton on a design where they have huge snake-like eyes, sharp teeth and scaly skin.
For Miss Edward’s transformation into stone a life-size stone statue was created on set and MPC’s task was to achieve a realistic transformation from the actress into the stone prop.
Another character MPC’s team had a lot of fun helping create was Claire, a little girl with a large mouth full of teeth in the back of her head. A practical head was created for the assets team to use as reference for the CG mouth and then animated to bring it to life. In a scene where the children are having dinner, Claire pulls back her hair to reveal the mouth and proceeds to feed it a turkey drumstick to devour. MPC’s team created the mouth, teeth and CG bites of turkey flying out.
Additional effects work for the movie created by MPC included creating a long CG tail for Miss Edwards, ‘invisible’ effects for Millard and created a CG version of a full size prop of an elephant mannequin at the circus.
