The Adventures of Tintin

Steven Spielberg’s 2011 film was shot with performance capture, but calling it entirely motion capture is wrong. Weta Digital did not pipe the capture through; it used the data as reference and keyframed by hand. Snowy was hand animated from the start, with a Weta Workshop stand in dog model on the capture stage so the actors had an eyeline. Animation supervisor Jamie Beard calls Snowy the hardest character to build: Hergé drew him too cartoony, eyes too close together, lips too shallow, nose above the muzzle, ears forever forming a box. Weta’s Joe Letteri stresses that performance capture is artistic, not mechanical. The calendar explains the look. Spielberg finished with the actors in thirty two days in early 2009; the film reached cinemas at the end of 2011. Capture happened in Los Angeles, animation in New Zealand; the years between were fur and light. The script folds three albums together: The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. It opened in Brussels in October 2011, in North America two months later, and took four fifths of its gross abroad. A good fit if three albums folded into one story, and Snowy acting with no capture behind him, are their own pleasure. Not for a reader wanting Hergé’s flat colour held on screen.