Tooth Fairy.

Prime Focus recently had a bit of lighthearted fun by turning Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson into a magical childhood icon for director Michael Lembeck's Twentieth Century Fox release 'Tooth Fairy,' which hit theaters in the US Jan. 22.

In the movie Johnson plays Derek Thompson, a violence-prone hockey player with a reputation for separating opponents from their bicuspids, earning him the nickname Tooth Fairy. An unbeliever of magic, Derek is punished for his cynicism by having to spend a two-week sentence as a real tooth fairy, complete with tights, a tutu and wings. Along the way he meets the Fairy Queen, Lily (Julie Andrews), and her administrative fairy, Tracy (The Office's Stephen Merchant), and tries to hide his new appendages from his girlfriend Tess (Ashley Judd).

Prime Focus was one of the primary visual effects vendors on 'Tooth Fairy,' and contributed 90+ shots, the majority of which involved fairy dust simulations created with Prime Focus Software's particle simulation system Krakatoa. These effects ranged from simple magic wand dust to a gigantic dust vortex that serves as the portal between the human world and the fairy universe. Prime Focus also created a majority of the CG fairy wings and handled some digital double and matte painting shots.

Creating the fairy dust was an interesting challenge. The director [Michael Lembeck] wanted it to look beautiful and physical, yet magical, and it was in finding that balance where the difficulty lied. Prime Focus artists experimented with hundreds of simulations, varying colors and quantities of sparkle vs. powder and gravity.

Prime Focus also did the majority of digital wings for the film's lead fairy characters. These had to integrate seamlessly into scenes in which the actors were wearing practical wings, with a lot of cutting back and forth. Like fairy dust, each character's wings had their own unique personality and character, and Derek had two sets – smaller wings when he was a newbie fairy, and as he grows more powerful, he earns his super wings.

'Tooth Fairy' was handled out of Prime Focus’ North American VFX hub in Vancouver, with additional shots sprinkled across artists in Winnipeg.