Utahraptor may have met with Tim Haines approval, but we wouldn't want to take him out to lunch, thank you. (c)1999 BBC

D.I.G.  What was Tim Haines' (the Producer of Walking With Dinosaurs) input on this?

D.H.: Tim would sometimes start off by suggesting a look that he had in mind, but usually I'd do a visual, show it to him & he's pass comment on what he liked, or didn't like, and  then I'd rework it. We would e-mail back and forth until I had a design pinned down that he liked. Sometimes we'd agree on a design really quickly, Utahraptor was approved almost straight away, but inevitably others weren't so easy. Tim favoured the colorful whereas I preferred the muted look. It made for a dynamic tension that worked out well as he pulled in one direction & I pulled in another. We ended up with a nice
mix of different looks, as is the way in nature.

D.I.G. Can you describe, briefly, your background in CG rendering?

D.H.:  I actually had no background in CG before starting this project. I thank
Mike Milne  ( Framestore's computer animation director) for his foresight in
spotting that I had the potential to do this kind of work. I trained as an illustrator & spent about seven years as a freelance artist painting in traditional acrylic, airbrush & oil techniques, working on book covers and advertising. Then I decided that digital painting was the way foreward so I taught myself Photoshop and worked in computer games for a couple of years.

D.I.G. So, how did you come to this project?

D.H.: I saw an ad that Framestore placed in a computer graphics magazine. I have
always been fascinated by dinosaurs and often wished that someone would do a
natural history / wildlife film maker's approach to the subject. Seeing this ad nearly made my eyes pop out of my head! Not only was it going to happen but they needed a digital paint artist. I sent my portfolio to them straight away. When I met Mike at the interview, who filled me in on the details of the project & showed me some incredible test animations, I  had to restrain myself from falling to my knees & begging to work on the series! Luckily I kept cool and  ended up getting the job.

D.I.G.  Did you enjoy it? or did it keep you awake nights tearing your hair out?

D.H.:  Did I enjoy it? Absolutely! It was the best experience of my career so far. I have to admit that when I started on the project I was rather intimidated by the sheer size of the task, and add to that the fact that I'd never painted a computer model in my life, I was nervous as hell! But once I got into the swing of it I have to say that I loved every minute. The more I painted the more confident & quicker I got, also the experience taught me the best techniques for the task, what worked & what didn't. I think it was the same for everyone on the team, we all got better & quicker as time went on. The
first episode took us way over schedule, but we soon made up for lost time, in fact we delivered early. (Walking With Dinosaurs was shown in most countries as a 6 part series, each episode being 30 minutes long. The US will show it in one, edited down, chunk) It did get pretty intense for the last few months though. We discovered that the models had to be built and painted a lot earlier that was thought because of the accompanying book stills so it was a tough end to the project.

D.I.G.  We heard that something  funny happened while the staff figured out how the dinosaurs walked?

D.H.:  Something that will stay in my mind forever is the sight of grown men down
on all fours galloping around the studio trying to simulate dinosaur walks! This was pretty bizarre but apparently an essential part of the animation process! The animators also tried this method to figure out a pterosaur walk, up on the roof of the building. They stopped short of actually jumping off, that's not the best way to figure out a flight animation!

It was pretty hard (and pretty funny) to figure out how this Ornithocheirus might walked when it was on the ground. (c)1999 BBC

D.I.G.  Are there some new challenges in your future?

D.H.:  We are working on other creature heavy projects & aim to raise the bar further, improve on our previous efforts. Fur is a big part of the next series, that's a real challenge can't properly express just what a massive amount of work is involved in these kind of effects, but I now look at other people's CG (Computer Graphics)  work in a new light of appreciation.The footage I've seen so far of Disney's 'Dinosaur' looks absolutely beutiful. A whole 90 minutes of that on the big screen is my idea of heaven! I can't wait.

D.I.G. Thanks so much for your time and energy. We all think that this show is AWESOME and thank you for your wonderful work. You've upped the quality of all sorts of things by a notch. Can't wait to see Dinotopia in 2002 as we've been chatting with Jim Gurney about it for quite some time. It should be incredible!

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