Digital Animal Rescue

How the VFX team behind Apple TV+’s Jane created a world of CG animals for the acclaimed show.

- By Ramin Zahed -

We’ve learned to expect excellence when we see Jane Goodall’s name attached to a project. That’s certainly the case with the new Apple TV+ series Jane, a charming and informative series inspired by the work of world-renowned expert on chimpanzees and beloved conservationist and animal welfare activist.

Produced by Emmy winner J.J. Johnson (Dino Dana, Ghostwriter), Sinking Ship Entertainment and the Jane Goodall Institute, the series follows the adventures of a young girl named Jane Garcia (actress Ava Louise Murchison), her best friend David (Mason Blomberg) and a stuffed monkey named Greybeard, to help protect wild animals all over the globe. The show uses a clever blend of live action and CGI to bring Greybeard and the animals featured in each episode to life.

We had the chance to chat with the show’s four-time Emmy-winning producer Matthew

Bishop about the rewards of working on such a challenging and inspiring project. “Jane has been kind of a culmination on the last decade of live-action CGI shows that we’ve been doing at Sinking Ship,” says Bishop, who is based in Toronto. “J.J. Johnson, who’s my business partner, created the series and is the brain trust on so many of our live-action/CGI series, such as Dino Dana and Ghostwriter. All the work we’ve done led us to this show, and J.J. wanted the CG animals to be as close to photoreal as we could do, so I was excited and terrified at the exact same time because it’s all done in house.”

Learning Locomotion

Bishop points out that, at times, close to 150 artists and animators work on the show’s demanding CG effects. “We have had to create over 33 animals for the first season (10 episodes). On average, each half-hour episode has about 140 VFX shots. We’ve been working closely with biologists to learn all about the muscle structure of all these different creatures. We actually studied the gait and the locomotion of each of them, and we took the animators to the zoo to observe the animals up close. Animal locomotion experts helped us understand how different animals like wolves and lions and tigers move. Overall, it was really exciting to build on our previous experiences and create this world for kids to see things they hadn’t seen before and to get them excited about the content as well.”

Jane’s VFX team relied on Maya, as well as ZBrush and Substance on the asset side. They also used Ziva VFX for the muscle simulation, and the final render was done in Arnold. The final comp was done in Nuke. “We also have a great shader and render team to pull off the amount of shots we need per episode — not to mention, it’s all 4K and Dolby Vision with ACES (Academy Color Encoding System) color space,” Bishop points out.

To create the CG-animated version of the main character’s chimp doll, the animation team observed the original David Greybeard, the first chimpanzee studied by Goodall. Then, they built all the muscle structure, tissue and the ligaments. Scientific consultants were also used to build a full facial system, based on humans and chimpanzees, to bring him to life. “It took a village to put this together because we utilized a lot of newer technologies — even technology that’s used for autonomous cars to scan our locations so that we could have our Greybeard interact in the real world,” says show creator and producer J.J. Johnson. “And then, of course, every time Greybeard touches something, we’d have to build it.”

Bishop agrees. “Graybeard is kind of everywhere,” he says. “We really tried to lean heavily into the facial movements. Chimpanzees are the closest living relatives to humans, so we were lucky to have experts to kind of deal with human and chimp’s muscles and facial movements. We tried to add as much detail as we could within the TV timeline and budget. I’m just so proud of our team, and a massive hats off to our VFX supervisor Gary Bradley, who always strikes that right balance.”

Bishop says there are some episodes which have been more challenging than others. “We had underwater CG environments where we featured blue whales,” he recalls. “Then there was a scene with 37 sharks. Everything is kind of over-the-top crazy, but we love it because it lets you lean into that childhood imagination. It lets our audience experience what it would be like to be chased by sharks in the ocean.”

One of the most demanding episodes was the first half hour, which features the kids tracking a polar bear in the arctic circle. “It definitely required a lot of work and we had to send a team up the west coast of Canada to secure the plates and get the right angles for the shots. We had to simulate an entire avalanche and on top of it we have a CG polar bear running in the avalanche. Every time that character is running through snow, they’re kicking up the CG snow, so we really had to dial it up to make sure everything looks as realistic as possible.”

According to Bishop, everything had to come to life for the first season in about seven months. “That was a really tight timeline, and during that time we were developing all the characters. But everyone just rallied together because Jane Goodall is considered an icon by me and everyone who worked on the show. The fact that the show is pushing Jane’s positive messages about wildlife made everyone rally behind it. We’re not doing another zom- bie movie — we’re trying to make things better and get kids excited about the future. That’s what helped us put together such an amazing team, because I don’t think we’ve seen this level of visual effects in the kids’ TV space before.”

Praise from the G.O.A.T.

Bishop says one of the biggest proofs that the show’s visuals are outstanding came from Goodall herself. He recalls, “We showed her one of the CG renders, and she said it looked nice, but she thought it was actually a photograph. If you can fool Jane, who is the Greatest of All Time, then you know you’ve done a good job!”

Beyond the show’s cool visuals, Bishop hopes Jane will get kids excited about what they can do in their own backyard and community to help endangered animals and the planet. “Our goal with all our shows is to excite and educate them about things they can do to make an impact,” he says. “Hopefully, we will create some new environmentalists and get them pumped about animation in the process as well!” ◆

The first season of Jane is currently streaming on Apple TV+. A second season of the show is currently in production.

ANIMAL ATTRACTIONS: Each halfhour episode of Jane features about 140 VFX shots on average. These include CG versions of most of the animals, such as the lead character’s chimp doll which comes to life.