Spielberg and Jackson Unite for Tintin Animation

Blistering barnacles! He's been to the darkest jungle, the deepest ocean, the furthest corner of Asia and the surface of the Moon. Now Tintin is going to Hollywood.

The young do-gooder with the tufty hair will be transformed by Steven Spielberg and the Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson from a two-dimensional comic book hero into a 3D, digitally enhanced animated movie star.

The two directors will each make a feature based on the Tintin stories as part of a three-film deal announced on Monday. The identity of the director of the third instalment was not revealed.

But Spielberg and Jackson were less interested in speculating on the intricacies of their vision for the characters originally drawn by Hergé for a Belgian newspaper than in talking about the technology behind the films.

Spielberg told Variety magazine: "We want Tintin's adventures to have the reality of a live-action film, and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honour the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created."

Jackson's special effects company made a 20-minute test reel based on the stories. "We're making them look photo-realistic," he said. "The fibres of their clothing, the pores of their skin and each individual hair. They look exactly like real people - but real Hergé people."