100 crew members from Weta worked for the movie. Weta was doing the animations when the movie was being shot. Weta crew members saw the shooting of all scenes involving these creatures. Weta's Matt Aitken said the process of animation was "split into two steps". First, natural-looking creatures were created based on pencil sketches by Csupó and Malanitchev. Photoshop pictures made by visual effects art director Michael Pangrazio was used for this. The second step was to use the best animation and motion style for the creatures.