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Monkeys: An Amazing Animal Family

VFX and Compositing

VVFXAfter the success of SKY ONE’s Cats: An Amazing Animal Family, we were commissioned by Bristol based Offspring Films to create an iconic family tree that would house all the primate species of the world in a single scene to help tell the story of Primate evolution through a sequence of shots for a SKY ONE family audience.

Delivered in UHD and filmed across 3-continents, footage was carefully selected that would allow us to extract the primates from their original environment. These were then scaled and repositioned and integrated fully with our CG tree that was created using specialist software. This provided the flexibility to grow and animate the the tree in an organic way from sapling to fully grown.  Wind movement was also applied to the branches and the leaves for realism and optical effects applied to emulate lens characteristics.

Detailed texturing was captured with hi resolution HDRI photography and mapped to the model for added photorealism and to provide a complimentary style to the live action. The tree model had to be sufficiently detailed to allow ‘hero’ tracking shots of primates on single branches.

Environments were crafted with photogrammetry and detailed modelling, all the vegetation had to be created as CG models but based on real references.

Key Credits


Broadcaster: Sky One
Production Company: Offspring Films
Executive Producer: Alex Willamson
Series Producer: Sam Hodgson
VFX Creative Director: Simon Clarke
VFX Supervisor: Graham Stott
3D Supervisor: Jem Grimshaw
VFX Producer: Jon Grafton