Director Thea Sharrock walks us through the process of bringing The One And Only Ivan to life

Originally slated to hit theaters, the visual effects of The One And Only Ivan looked no less dazzling when the film began streaming into homes this past Friday via Disney+. Director Thea Sharrock’s take on the beloved children’s novel used a blend of live action and motion capture performances to bring its characters to life, including two dogs, two elephants, a seal, a baseball-playing chicken, a fire truck-riding rabbit, and its titular artistic gorilla. With her background in British theater, The One And Only Ivan’s menagerie of a cast proved to be an exciting technical undertaking for Sharrock, making her first venture into special-effects-heavy filmmaking. During the recent Disney+ press junket, The A.V. Club had Sharrock talk us through the process of bringing Ivan and his animal friends to life, from the voice performance recording, to the motion-capture work, to the lifelike, puppet-esque props known as “stuffies.”