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tures, and we've gone to the ends of the world to film it," says Cook (Mulan, Arthur Christmas, Aladdin, TRON). Cook's digital vision is complemented by Nightin- gale's ability to capture nature's wonders in unique ways. "Life's fundamentals have not really changed since the time of the dinosaurs," says Nightingale, who is creative director at BBC Earth, where he spearheads development of new forms of com- mercial content. "Thankfully, we don't face perilous pursuit by hungry Gorgosaurs [as do the characters in the film], but audiences can identify with Patchi's quest for survival. We meet him as a hatchling and watch him learn to navigate his environment and face the primary challenges of finding enough to eat, evade predators, and rise above his rivals in order to win a mate." Marco Marenghi, Animal Logic's animation director on Walking with Dinosaurs, credits two rendering breakthroughs as being "game-changing" in the stu- dio's ability to bring the realistic CG dinosaurs to life in what amounted to more than 800 animated shots. "The two big ones," he elaborates, "were the skin/ scale system and the muscle system our team of character setup artists created for us, which enabled us to show how these amazing creatures were built, moved, and interacted." Story Evolution The BBC's 1999 award-winning TV production brought realistic dinosaurs to life in a nature-style documentary where the only voice was that of the narrator, Kenneth Branagh (for the UK) and Avery Brooks (for the US). In other words, the dinosaurs did not speak, which made them all the more believable in the series. In this latest project, the characters' mouths do not move, nor do they speak per se. An Alexomis bird name Alex (John Leguizamo) serves as the film's narrator, telling the story of the three main Pachyrhinosaurs, although the beasts can be heard in voice-overs expressing their thoughts, in a move to make what was originally a silent film more acces- sible to children. While there are many similarities between the television series and the film, there are just as many differences. And, according to Animal Logic's Will Reichelt, VFX supervisor, the film – while an exten- sion of the TV series – was devised as its own proj- ect. "We were approached by Evergreen Films and the BBC with the idea of doing a dinosaur movie in 3D. There wasn't any script, and we were brought on to help discuss the idea and develop it," he says. As a result, the studio was involved from the early stages with the evolution of the story and charac- ters, and worked with paleontologists to ensure that the information being presented was scientifically accurate and sound. David Krentz also worked with scientists to create designs for each of the main species, which he then handed over to the team at Animal Logic to base their models on (see "Dinosaur Designs," page 28). From there, the crew started working on character development and scene previs. "Our goal was to be as photorealistic as possible with the creations and as scientifically accurate as possible," says Reichelt. As is often the case, the BBC selected lesser-known but interesting species for the movie, and put the CG artists in touch with the leading relevant paleontologists and experts so the modelers and animators had the most extensive and up-to-date information to make the most realistic versions of the characters – realistic in terms of scientific accuracy and aesthetics. To this end, the scientists provided substantial data from fossil finds, papers, and other sources on skeletal reconstruction, muscles, skin definition, and more, which Animal Logic used during the modeling phase. C G W Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 ■ 25 ■ THE ENVIRONMENTS in the film are shot live action with three exceptions, including this scene as the dinosaurs traverse the frozen lake.