A lot of what we do for Robert Rodriguez at Troublemaker is to help him visualize ideas even before a script exists. Spy Kids 4 had a clock gear theme. I had this idea for a globe of gears but was killing myself to realize it in a 3d orb. Alan Jones wrote an xsi ice compound that takes a flat plane of animated gears and deforms them in to a sphere. It worked amazingly well and I was able to successfully pitch the idea with Alan's help in less than a week.