"Fur is one of the hardest things to create with computer graphics," Dadras continues. "You have to take into consideration its visual properties, its sheen, the way it reflects light, and the fact that it’s composed of millions of individual hairs." The team ultimately developed its own fur shader for the process.
Another design challenge was the trap-door spider, which Goulekas dealt with in post-production. "He was a tricky one, he needed some work," she says. "Trap-door spiders have a soft look in their natural state. They’re predominantly orange, almost pastel and very nearly transparent. We struggled with the color until we arrived at a deeper shade of orange and gave the body the appearance of a harder shell, more armored, sort of like a crab."
Goulekas estimates that approximately 50 brand new shots were added to the film in post-production, a good indication of how difficult it was to turn off the flow of ideas generated by the project. She credits the filmmakers for fostering a creative collaborative atmosphere in which she and the animators felt comfortable pitching their thoughts. "Sometimes the effects team doesn’t get enough director feedback," she says, "but that was definitely not the case here. Every day we had walk-throughs with Ellory and Dean. I wasn’t afraid to show them sketches and material in very rough form, because they were not only open to it but were immediately able to visualize and understand the potential. Someone would say ‘how about if we get the spider caught in the wheel of the truck,’ and someone else would add to that, ‘we can make him spin out like this and come barreling forward.’ Kelvin encouraged the animators to contribute their ideas as well. Consequently, everyone was excited about the work and we laughed a lot."
One scene born of this kind of brainstorming deftly employed CGI to give the illusion of a cat battling a giant spider within the walls of a house while its dumbfounded human occupants look on in terror and disbelief. Devlin proposed the idea to Goulekas, who had never prepared such a shot but immediately set to work on it and was thrilled with the result. Neither cat nor spider is seen, but evidence of their dramatic life-and-death struggle is revealed in an hilarious series of cat-shaped and spider-shaped bumps that appear in the plaster.
According to Goulekas’ running tally, more than 2,000 animated arachnids were created for Eight Legged Freaks. Meanwhile, as the towering tarantulas and their pals waited in the virtual green room for their cue, the human actors were required to progress through their scenes while reacting in horrified fear to thin air.
"We were shown a test of the CGI material," says David Arquette, "so we knew how the spiders were going to look and move. We kept those images in our heads and relied upon direction from Ellory, who would tell us ‘the spider is there and your life is threatened,’ and then just used our imaginations."
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