Notice also, the out-of-focus birds and small butterflies which disappear/reappear from 'behind' the flowers and foliage. This effect was achieved using 'alpha channel masks' (that's my name for 'em anyway), which I had to construct in Modeler to match as near as possible the shape of the flower petals, etc. You'll also see that the animated characters are casting shadows on selected areas of the original photograph. This is achieved through Alpha Shadowing.
As for the ladybird (ladybug for American viewers) on the leaf, I hope you'll see that this actually has tiny animated legs, which look quite convincing. It quickly goes out of focus as it wanders away from you and into the sunshine, finally disappearing over the far edge of the leaf. I really looks alive! The butterfly (a swallowtail) is animated using LightWave 'Bones' and was integrated with the rest of the animation using a separate alpha channel. This image actually has six different layers added one at a time. I watched a wild life film of butterflies in slow motion to replicate the wing actions. All the LightWave 'Objects' seen here are of my own design. I used Photogenics (a brilliant painting and image manipulation package) to create colour maps for the swallowtail. The animation took several weeks to choreograph and render. This may not be the final version. I hope this will have some appropriate soundFX, buzzing bees and some skylarks perhaps?
Finally, I'd like to thank MainConcept GmbH for permission to upload the MainView utility. I couldn't have done any of this without MainActor!