Massive Nature

422 South has completed a raft of animation and digital effects for a fascinating new series from BBC ONE. In six 30 minute episodes Massive Nature reveals the science and the secrets of animal behaviour during annual mass migrations.

422’s creative team, headed up by designer Leah Walker, worked closely
with the BBC Natural History Unit producers to create new ways of
visualising both the relationships between individual animals and the
predators that attack them, and the ‘big picture’ of countless
thousands of animals on the move.

Walker’s team devised a number of innovative signature techniques, one
of which is an arresting transition from moving wildlife footage into
a ‘time-slice’ sequence of one or more animals caught in a dream-like
suspended animation - a ‘Frozen Moment’ effect entirely generated
using Maya CGI modeling and animation tools.

In a television first, other sequences took scientifically-derived
flocking data, mapped from real observation, and used it to drive the
performance of CGI creatures in vast numbers, including flocks of bats
and shoals of sardines.

The creative team also devised a set of editing techniques to take
the action either backward or forward in time, allowing a staged
deconstruction of the critical moment of impact when an attack occurs.

In all some 25 minutes of animation and effects have been created for
the series.

author: DT
2005-01-07