How Ted's VFX Supervisor Blair Clark Makes You Believe Ted is Real

      Visual effects supervisor Blair Clark has worked alongside Seth MacFarlane, the creator, director, and star of Ted, to animate the crude, marijuana-smoking teddy bear across two films and two seasons of the Ted TV series. His task has consistently been to ensure that viewers forget they are watching an animated bear.

      “We never want the audience to be distracted by what they see,” Clark explains. “We want them to engage with the comedy in the scene.”

      For Season 2 of the show, Clark and his team of VFX artists dedicated nearly a year in post-production to ensure that Ted’s facial expressions, mannerisms, and outfits—from overalls to a firefighter suit—did not overshadow MacFarlane’s performance.

      “Ted is wearing the clothes,” Clark emphasizes. “The clothes do not define him.”

      The two Ted films debuted in 2012 and 2015, collectively earning over $750 million. Before the series, and a prequel set in Framingham, Massachusetts in the 1990s, Clark had no experience in television. He was warned that television production operates at a faster pace than films, with less time to focus on details. However, colleagues assured him that the series felt “more like a feature than a television show,” he recalls.

      “For me, that was great,” he shares. “It felt comfortable because I knew what we needed to accomplish.”

      Blair Clark on the Animation of Ted

      Ted and Max Burkholder as John. Peacock

      Seasons 1 and 2 required over 3,000 VFX shots to animate the lead character. Additionally, MacFarlane completed two hours of motion capture each week for around 22 weeks.

      “It takes months and months because we have to match all the shots so that Ted can be seamlessly integrated into any scene,” Clark explains. “When he performs the motion capture, we also have cameras on him to review the footage and make adjustments based on the nuances of his performance.”

      Despite the advancements in VFX technology, Clark has worked diligently to preserve the bear’s distinct traits over the past 14 years.

      “Ted has different mannerisms compared to Seth,” Clark remarks. “This was developed and refined during the first film. We have aimed to keep that consistency throughout the entire narrative arc, across both films and seasons.”

      One of the most discussed scenes in Season 2 involved using AI to create a convincing portrayal of Bill Clinton as he appeared in 1995. Initially, Clark and VFX supervisor Hoyt Yeatman considered using prosthetics and a wig to transform MacFarlane into the former president, but it didn’t look convincing.

      While Clark's team sourced numerous high-resolution images of Bill Clinton from the mid-1990s, footage of him was “very low quality.” Unable to achieve a realistic representation of Clinton through standard CGI alone, Clark and his VFX team resorted to AI.

      “When people hear AI, they tend to dismiss it,” he says. “Yes, we used AI, but it was a tool that required extensive effort from many people. It wasn’t simply a matter of entering a prompt and getting Bill Clinton.”

      Another challenging scene in Season 2 involved Ted making out with a married woman. On set, a stuffed animal with removable parts was operated by a puppeteer.

      “For some shots, we had the actor hold the stuffed bear’s head and kiss it,” Clark explains. “At other times, we used just the bear's torso so she could manipulate that.”

      The difficulty arose during post-production.

      “When she reaches for Ted’s shoulders, the actress accidentally passes through his head with one hand for a few frames, so we had to correct that,” Clark states. “It required meticulous adjustments to those small moments.”

      Ted is currently available for streaming on Peacock. You can explore more of our Emmy contender interviews here.