Several years ago, a film like "Shadowplay" may not have been feasible to produce at a student or independent level, but because of the advances in digital film making, the film could be produced without an entire studio. A Mac computer was all that was needed for the special effects and compositing that were required on nearly every shot in the film. Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop were the main tools for the effects and cleanups. One of the many discoveries during post-production, the mouths of the characters were able to be retouched and better blended onto their faces. During the animation, a set of numerous plastic mouthpieces for each character were created, and were removed and replaced as necessary. Then, the seams that the replacement mouths had left could be digitally painted out. This created a more natural and expressive mouth movement, rather than the "lip replacement" technique of "Gumby" and "Davey & Goliath"-style animation, so common to lower-budget stop-motion animation.