For Matt Bishop and his artistic team, creating 39 different wildlife creatures, some highly endangered with little available reference, for Apple TV+’s live-action/CGI hybrid series inspired by the life and work of Dr. Jane Goodall, was a rewarding, collaborative effort that hopefully helps inspire people to better understand kids’ relationship with our planet; the show premieres on the streamer April 14.
For all the kids of the world who sat in an IMAX theater dreaming about adventures in Africa, walking in the footsteps of the world's foremost, award-winning expert on chimpanzees, there’s a new Apple TV+ series that’s just for them.
Jane, a live-action/CGI blended series from Sinking Ship Entertainment, releases Friday, April 14 on Apple TV+. Reacher’s Ava Louise Murchison stars as Jane Garcia, a nine-year-old budding environmentalist on a quest to save endangered animals. Using her powerful imagination, Jane takes her best friends David (Shameless’ Mason Blomberg) and chimpanzee Greybeard on epic adventures to help protect wild animals all around the world because, according to her idol Dr. Jane Goodall, “Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, can they be saved.”
Created by Sinking Ship partner J.J. Johnson, Jane is executive produced by Christin Simms, Blair Powers, Matt Bishop, and Andria Teather from the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI). Bishop also serves as the show’s VFX/Animation Executive Producer; his team was responsible for the CGI wildlife that appears from Jane Garcia’s imagination.
“Dr. Jane is an icon and definitely one of my heroes from childhood to today,” says Bishop. “I was also excited to bring a new level of CGI to the kid's television space.”
Though Bishop says Sinking Ship, known for other live-action/CGI hybrid series such as Endlings and Dino Dana, always aims “a bit outside our grasp,” the producer admits the task he faced on Jane was both exciting and terrifying.
“It feels bizarre at first to see a great white shark in the supermarket, or a blue whale flying in the sky, or perhaps a spaceship flying through a beehive,” says Bishop. “Yet, we wanted these visuals to appear to be as natural and realistic as possible. We want the experience to be playfully seamless.”
Working closely with JGI and noted animal anatomy and locomotion expert Dr. Stuart Sumida from California State University, Bishop and crew aimed to learn as much as they could to believably incarnate 39 different creatures for the series, some of which are highly endangered with little-to-no images or research available for reference.
“On average a creature took about six months from beginning to end to bring to life and the team used countless photo and video references that were available to dive deep into their look and feel,” explains Bishop. “The team also took a fun, in-depth tour of the Toronto and Vancouver Zoos to watch and study how the creatures move, along with over 25 hours of lectures and locomotion studies with the amazing Dr. Sumida. I feel some of the artists could have had a minor in animal studies by the end of this project.”
ZBrush, Mari, Substance Painter, and Ziva were used for asset building, Houdini for the FX, and Maya for the animation, with compositing done in NukeX. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) image capture was also used frequently to accurately place animals into the scenes.
“This involves a large spinning laser that captures millions of points of data and allows us to accurately know the distance and location of everything in the scene,” Bishop says. “This is similar to how autonomous cars drive but we use it to know where a chimpanzee would be in the scene.”
Bishop describes the experience as “a great team effort” led by Head of Studio Terry Bradley. “We also used a lot of 3D printing techniques to attempt to give the actors and on-set crew a visual representation of what the creatures would be,” notes Bishop. “Often you see a tennis ball on the stick, and we want to have more accurate images, so we would 3D print the heads and full bodies of some of the smaller creatures so the team would have more to react to. There are so many behind the scenes artists on a show like this and it really took a village to bring it to life and I am so proud of each of them.”
From furry and friendly land mammals to deep water apex predators, every bone and major muscle had to be sculpted for the renders. And while each creature posed its own unique challenges, the biggest team rally revolved around recurring animal character, Greybeard.
“Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives, so we constantly tried to keep Greybeard a little in both worlds,” says Bishop. “The build involved hundreds of facial blend shapes that were put together in a FACS (Facial Action Coding System) setup that is originally based on humans which we ported to chimps. This took months to create.”
He continues, “Our Head of Asset, James Wallace, was the fearless leader moving the asset and project forward into new territories. Character FX Lead Pedro Vilas really pushed hard to develop a muscle system that would work over thousands of shots and still deliver great results in a tight timeline. Greybeard’s groom and fur development also took months to resolve as early testing was taking over 20 hours per frame to render, which would have destroyed the show. The team worked tirelessly to get the average render time to around 20 minutes per frame, which is amazing for a creature of that detail.”
But for all his challenges, Greybeard was also the most rewarding animal to put together, a triumph in the eyes of the many artists who contributed to his production.
“This creature became a massive leap forward for Sinking Ship,” shares Bishop. “Over 20 artists contributed to different parts of bringing him to life and on a very tight schedule. A few final renders fooled me as to which was the reference, and which was real and we hope Greybeard is as loved by the audience as he is by us.”
The visual effects and animation efforts, Bishop confirms, were as tiring as they sound. But the blood, sweat and tears weren’t without cause, as Jane’s animals are meant to inspire generations to understand young peoples’ relationships with the planet, and to take action through movements like JGI’s Roots & Shoots. The program, created by Goodall in 1991, brings together youth, from preschool to university ages, to work on environmental, conservation, and humanitarian issues. The organization has local chapters in over 140 countries with over 8,000 local groups worldwide that involve nearly 150,000 youth.
“Personally, I hope it sparks the next Jane and Jim Goodalls of the world,” says Bishop of both the series and its wild, CGI wonders. I hope the audience is excited to let their imagination run wild and that kids start to visualize their own animal adventures.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
