Look closely at the characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, and you’ll notice the herky-jerky fluttering fur. It’s a dead giveaway that the film was shot using stop-motion animation. For director Anderson, the imperfections of this century-old technique are a feature, not a bug. “That’s why I like stop-motion,” he says. “There’s great charm in a process that’s done with someone’s hands. In old stop-motion films, you could even see fingerprints.”

The meticulous moviemaker is known for leaving his own fingerprints all over his films—painstakingly designed sets, carefully selected props, and fussily symmetric visuals. But the pace of the animation process was too laborious and drawn out even for Anderson. While the yearlong shoot was happening in a London studio, he was crisscrossing the globe. But thanks to a constellation of data-delivery systems, he was still able to micromanage the production.

“Because there are so many people working at once, and because there’s so much detail, the system of communicating everything was crucial,” says Anderson, who was able to supervise production from a “virtual command center.” He could weigh in instantly on QuickTime clips sent straight to his iPhone or watch dailies that were emailed to him at all hours. “I could even pull up a unit’s live feed and see how things were shaping up,” he says. If a prop or character didn’t suit his famously fastidious eye, he would ask individual set designers and animators for an immediate fix. When a character’s mannerisms were off, Anderson would whip out his Flip videocam and record himself acting out the part.

Anderson did make sure to go on location for the voice-over sessions with George Clooney, Meryl Streep, and Bill Murray. To match the rustic setting of the film, Anderson recorded audio in a creaky old Connecticut farmhouse. If the storyboard called for Mr. Fox (Clooney) to lean against a fence, the filmmaker would have the actor lean against the fence while delivering his lines. In this real environment, the sound effects are serendipitous but arbitrary—the antithesis of the hypercontrolled stop-motion process. “In a live setting,” Anderson says, “accidents and surprises come from different places.”

Actor Bill Murray reaches into a set to tinker with Badger, the character he voices in the film. To keep the production on schedule, the crew had as many as 30 of these tiny units simultaneously shooting various scenes from the film.

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Director Wes Anderson (right) reviews shots with an animator while visiting the “cider house” set. The FishCat film and image management system let animators drag and drop individual stills and scenes, allowing them to create working rough cuts for Anderson in realtime.

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Anderson inspects the puppet for one of Mr. Fox ‘s numerous human antagonists. To create the illusion of distance for some of the larger set pieces, puppeteers built some of the characters at five different scales.

No stone was left unturned when it came to creating Mr. Fox ‘s atmosphere. “We didn’t really have a plan for how the movie ought to look,” Anderson says. “We had some ideas, but we had a very fun process of figuring out what everything should look like.”

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

One of Mr. Fox ‘s quirks is embracing closeup (and stop-motion revealing) shots of its characters. For Anderson, undesired effects like “boiling” — the noticeable flutter of materials like fur in between frames — were meant to be part of the film’s visual charm.

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

In addition to directing actors and animators, Anderson also handpicked the miniature props that populate Mr. Fox ‘s world. Suits, ties, buttons, and even accessories like sunglasses and wristwatches were all reviewed by the fastidious director.

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures

The aural texture of Fox was manufactured just as carefully as its visuals. For scenes like this where characters are indoors, Anderson not only ensured voice actors recorded their dialog in an actual house, but also captured atmospheric sounds like the echo from the walls and the creaking of floorboards.

Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures