For audiences flocking to The Sheep Detectives and helping make the murder mystery comedy one of the sleeper (or should that be sheeper?) hits of the year, the question isn’t so much whodunit as how’d they do it?The short answer: without a single animal on set.Real as they look, every ewe, ram and lamb reared lovingly by loner shepherd George (Hugh Jackman) on his bucolic farm in Somerset is a fully digital creation. And while the film is an English production, many of those animals were created here, by a team that has done its best to raise the bar on visual effects.“We felt very privileged to get some of the really emotional parts of this film,” says Lara Hopkins, boss of the Australian branch of Framestore, the company that handled all the incredibly complex visual effects for the film across its offices in London (its headquarters), Montreal, Mumbai and Melbourne, with the Australian office taking the lead role.George (Hugh Jackman) feeds the winter lamb (voiced by Tommy Birchall) in a scene from The Sheep Detectives. APSebastian, the stoic and heroic outsider ram voiced by Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, was made here. So too were Reggie and Ronnie, the psycho twins (modelled on the Kray brothers of London’s 1960s crime scene), voiced by Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein. Those terrifying dogs on the property next door were created in Melbourne too.The Sheep Detectives requires a major suspension of disbelief by the viewer: you will believe a sheep can talk (and read and solve crimes). But that is made a lot easier by the fact the creatures look so lifelike.The filmmakers considered using real sheep, with mouth movements added in post-production. But, says VFX supervisor Josh Simmonds, “real sheep don’t take direction. They did do some tests with real sheep, and it was absolutely pointless, a total shambles. The only thing they’re interested in is eating.”Despite the complexity of running 135 people across 12 departments in Melbourne alone, and constantly tag-teaming with the international offices to keep the year-long project on track, it “just went so smoothly”, says Hopkins. “I think that was because there was real enjoyment of, and passion for, the creatures and characters we were creating.”There are dozens of sheep in the film, each one of them lovingly