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The Mill's mammoth project, so watch it tonight on BBC2 at 9pm

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

As we all know, the woolly mammoth is extinct. And we know we don't have any photo real images of the mammoth. Or do we? We've been working with the BBC and Producer/Director Tim Walker to delve into our planet's natural history and bring you "Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice".

Our team headed up by VFX Supervisor Jean Claude Deguara explains: "This was a fascinating project from the start and Tim and BBC team were absolutely brilliant to work with.  Tim was totally focussed and determined for us to really push the boundaries and create the most realistic mammoth ever seen on screen.  Our R&D led us to many world renowned experts on the mammoth, and we had detailed descriptions on how they looked and how they behaved from The BBC Natural History team".

One of the main challenges was creating the photo real CG fur.  In order to match our and Tim's ambition the fur had to look totally convincing and needed to be able to move and react to itself and to its natural environment, this was particularly difficult during the fight sequence which required careful manipulation to ensure the fur moved and reacted in the most realistic way possible. The mammoth fur was groomed over a period of four weeks using Shave and Haircut, with each mammoth groom consisting of more than 2 million hairs per creature.

As a team we were delighted with the results and  would like to thank Tim, Katie, Jo and all those at BBC Natural History for the opportunity to work on such a unique and creative project.

You can catch "Woolly Mammoth: Secrets from the Ice" tonight on BBC2 at 9pm and see what it was like when these relatives of the elephant roamed across what is now Europe and Asia.