Vancouver post shop Artifex Studios worked on a dozen FX scenes on Julia Kwan's festival darling Eve & the Fire Horse, including a dream sequence of horses running underwater, and an opera-singing goldfish that is attracting a lot of attention.

Artifex, which turns 10 next year, pooled the efforts of VFX supervisor Adam Stern, compositor Jeremy Kehler and 3D artists Jason Nystrom and Paul Hegg for the film. Although the company undertook other challenges on Eve, such as showing a plant growing in digital time-lapse and bringing a statue to life, the goldfish was perhaps the most difficult.

"The 3D goldfish was quite a challenge for us, as it was required to behave in a photo-realistic manner," says Stern, also Artifex's founder. He and his team used software including Shake and After Effects for compositing, Maya for 3D modeling and animation, and mental ray for rendering on the fish and other key FX sequences. Eve won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Artifex is currently doing FX on the Sci-Fi Channel series Meltdown, and the opening and FX for CTV's upcoming comedy Alice, I Think.

www.artifexstudios.com