VFX teams are brilliant at shaders, muscle sims, and fur. But they rarely know whether a T. rex’s pupil should dilate during a kill, or how a sabre-toothed cat’s shoulder blade should roll as it walks. It is easy to default to what you know. The result? The uncanny valley you can’t quite name.

We are the bridge between photoreal rendering and real biology.

Years in the field = deep knowledge of how real animals move and react.

If it is realism you are after, we won’t let cliche trump the truth.

"Everyone loves to do a roaring head shaking T-Rex.
This is not what this show’s about."
Elliot Newman, VFX Supervisor on Prehistoric Planet

“We worked with Dr. Darren Naish – A world-renowned palaeontologist. His insight and guidance were vital to us reaching the highest level of accuracy and detail with the latest research in the field. There is much pressure to get it right. The scientific community can be quite loud. If you don’t have them on your side, the project will fall flat. With Darren and his team of scientists’ insight, we knew we were getting as close as possible to what these animals were really like.” 

Andy Jones, Director and VFX Legend, on the importance of accuracy.
From BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER

Challenge: The Triceratops cave sequence requires the animals to walk down a slope and negotiate obstacles like a fallen tree. An initial animation assumed that the animals used an erect, rhino-like forelimb pose, which allowed all of this locomotor behaviour and looked fine but was absolutely out of keeping with scientific data on forelimb pose and ranges of motion.

Our input: by sourcing anatomically correct skeletal models (including a 3D reconstruction of the forelimbs, ribcage and shoulder girdle), we built correctly proportionally and posed forelimbs and shoulders for our Triceratops. This involves a flexed (bent) elbow joint, a slightly sprawling (and not fully erect) forelimb pose, and a shoulder girdle where the scapula is fixed in place and cannot rotate across the ribcage (as it can in many mammals). These constraints were initially regarded as a major problem in that they might prevent the animals from doing interesting things (like walking downhill or clearing obstacles). But these animals simply must have been able to do such things; we had to keep experimenting, and looking at living animals (like crocodylians, which can walk with a high gait on occasion), to work it out. Extensive discussion, sharing of diagrams, references and explanations eventually allowed the creation of a sequence where the animals performed all the actions required for the sequence and were also fully operating within rigorous scientific boundaries.

Extinct:

Theropods (tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurs, spinosaurs)

Sauropods (locomotion and herding dynamics)

Sabre-toothed cats (Smilodon, Homotherium)

Ice Age megafauna (mammoths, ground sloths, dire wolves)

Living: (for fantasy/sci-fi analogues):

Canids (wolf, painted wolf, jackal, fox – including submissive/dominant hierarchies)

Felids (lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar – ambush vs. chase morphologies)

Ursids (brown bear, polar bear – gait and seasonal fat changes)

Mustelids (wolverine, badger – aggression and digging mechanics)

Corvids (raven, crow – problem-solving and tool use)

Cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish – colour change and intelligence)

Great apes (orangutan, gorilla – arboreal vs. terrestrial locomotion)

Don’t see your creature? Ask. We likely have footage or published research to hand.