The Future Is Wild

The Future Is Wild takes animal animation into a previously-unexplored dimension – the future.

The Furure Is Wild is a co-production between European and American broadcasters (including ZDF and Animal Planet). Specialist scientific consultants are asked to predict how the earth will look in 5 million, 100 million and 200 million years. The answer that comes back is – very different !

With man long gone and continents and climates generating very different pressures on evolution, weird and wonderful creatures emerge; the toraton – weighing 120 tons, the largest animal ever to walk the Earth; the swampus - a 40 lb octopus that can survive out of water, the squibbon; a tree-swinging squid which exhibits the highest form of intelligence since humans inhabited the Earth.

As series designers and providers of CGI, 422 South developed and animated the cast of creatures that are the series main focus. The main tools of production were Maya for 3D animation, with Combustion for compositing CGI animals with live-action backplates. At peak a team of 60 people were engaged in the production of nearly 50 creatures and 60 minutes of full animation showing the lifestyles of these weird creatures. An additional forty minutes of 2D animation, showing drifting continents and diagrammatic body plans completed a huge commission that took a year to produce.

When aired on Animal Planet the series gained the channel’s biggest ever audience.

author: DT
2002-08-21