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.”