Greg McKee
CG/animatronics/whale expert
Latest Project: PBS’s Killers in Eden
How often does a nature doc demand CG work? Killers in Eden airs this month on PBS’s Nature, with whale expert and historian Greg McKee also doing CG and animatronics.
F&V: How is your interest in whales related to your FX expertise?
I intended to be a whale scientist and ended up in the movie industry doing visual effects and design. I studied Zoology at Sydney University and also have an industrial design degree from the University of Technology, Sydney. The combination has come in handy doing visual effects. My first attempts at making lip-synching animatronics for a feature film were for Babe.
F&V: What was your workflow like?
My animator friend Al Ferguson and I did the modeling and rigging, I did all the camera tracking, textures and animation, and a few other guys did most of the compositing into background plates. We used a friend’s Internet server to exchange files.
F&V: What about "Old Tom"?
There wasn’t time to build flexible silicone or urethane skins, but [we built] a fairly rigid fiberglass orca that would only appear in quick cuts. We knew we could intercut and compensate somewhat with 3D animation. We fibreglassed a full-size replica of Tom and a separate head and tail. We towed him behind a boat and he could dive and surface at will with a control system. When full of water he was effectively a six-ton torpedo and rather intimidating.