The magic of computer-generated images is always right in front of you, from your smartphone to the big screen. But for Remington Scott, a freelance director from Hawaii Kai, much of the magic lives inside his active imagination.

A veteran in the field of computer graphic imagery, Scott crafts realistic digital performances. He can turn an actor in a skin suit into a monster the way he did with Andy Serkis, who became the creature Gollum in Peter Jackson’s "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

It’s a collaborative effort for artists, technicians and actors, with Scott at the center of it all.

"I have to really understand the goal of what this is going to look like," he said. "I need to understand their vision so I can help the performers realize how their performance is grounded in this technology."

In his new project, the video game "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," Scott directed actor Kevin Spacey as the cameras turned the two-time Oscar winner into an animated version of himself.

Although Spacey doesn’t become a monster, the transformation process was no less amazing, said the 45-year-old Scott, whose resume includes motion-capture work on "Spider-Man 2," "Spider-Man 3" and "Beowulf."

It started with Spacey wearing a dark skin suit dotted with white reflective spheres and a black helmet with a tiny camera aimed at his face to record his expressions. Batteries, data recording devices and a microphone were part of the suit.

But the finished product doesn’t make Spacey look like a futuristic ninja — he’s wearing a business suit as the ruthless CEO of a private military firm.

Spacey and the other actors in the scene worked in a 45-by-60-foot zone that could have up to 54 infrared cameras pointed in every direction. The cameras ran simultaneously as they recorded the markers on everyone in the scene.

The markers, which reflect light like a stop sign, are the key.

"By giving us the points on the outside of the body, what we can do is reconstruct the skeleton’s biomechanical movement," Scott said. "We are looking below the skin, below the muscle and recording the way your skeleton moves. We create a biomechanical skeleton in a computer that is accurate to the actor."

When that’s done, someone else crafts digital features onto the image.

"Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" is part of the hugely popular first-person shooter video game franchise from Activision and Sledgehammer Games.

Scott, who is married and has two young children, made Hawaii his permanent home five years ago. He’s been able to stay productive by working here and traveling to the mainland for production shoots.

"Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" took about three years to create, but Scott worked on it for only 18 months, finishing in August. It will be on the market Nov. 4.

Because it’s a video game, the experience of putting it together is more complex than a movie.

"It’s an animated movie that is interactive," Scott said. "You are immersed in this movie."

And it’s much longer — to make, watch and play, Scott said.

"It’s like a season of episodic television, and each episode has a scope that is like a feature film," he said. "When you play the game, it is not like you are watching a two-hour movie. You can play for 20 hours, and we had to create 20 hours of episodic content."

Much of the background — the futuristic battle scenes and combat equipment — is computer-generated as well, but Scott and his crew never go in blind.

"Sometimes we will draw upon reference scenes from movies that inspire us, or we will have artists create drawings and we will use them to help identify the color and lighting of the scene so we can understand the tone of the moment," he said.

He also has another tool: As Scott would shoot a scene of Spacey in his skin suit, he could look down at a computer monitor and see what the actor would look like as a finished product.

"I use that to open a window into the virtual world," Scott said. "It’s an augmented reality."

Or an active imagination. Take your pick.

And that’s a wrap …

Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.