Ultimately, an artful combination of live animatronics and digital effects implemented by Stan Winston Digital gave the leopard seal its verisimilitude. Stan Winston's digital team added a computer-generated wet sheen to the foam rubber skin of the Studio's leopard seal puppet. The digital artists honed their computer animation skills by modeling and animating an all-CG seal and seagulls. "We used our digital toolset to enhance the look of the seal," said CG supervisor Jabbar Raisani, "to make it look slippery and wet--just as a live seal does--which is not easily done when working with foam rubber. We built a full CG version of the seal and used the skin characteristics of that CG model to lay back over the practical seal puppet." "Using digital," Stan Winston added, "we were able to do things like paint out the wrinkles in the foam rubber skin of the animatronic and give it a more realistic sheen. And then, for some shots, we also did an all-digital seal. In the past, on shows like Jurassic Park, our Studio had done the live-action characters, and someone else had done the digital. On this show, all of it, live-action and digital, was done by us." The CG seal was used for actions that couldn't be achieved with the practical puppet, such as shots of the seal sliding along the ice, dipping into a hole, and swimming underwater. "That was always meant to be a digital shot," said Raisani. "In fact, for the shots underneath the ice, everything is completely computer-generated."

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