Emmy Award-winning VFX house Zoic Studios has teamed up with CBS to blur the lines between reality and zoological fiction in their VFX work for the thriller series “Zoo.” Based on the #1 selling novel by James Patterson, “Zoo” is a global thriller about a wave of violent animal attacks against humans sweeping the planet. In Season 3, the year is 2027, and the world has reached a tipping point: the human population continues to dwindle due to the sterility problem, and an equally devastating threat rises in the form of “the hybrids,” an army of unstoppable lab-made creatures, hell-bent on destroying mankind.
Zoic worked with VFX Supervisors Kurt Miller and Mark Savela to bring an extra force of creature and character design expertise to the project. Together, they collaborated with the CBS creative team to deliver an aesthetic that is grounded in realism. Zoic crafted the work out of their Vancouver studio, designing and delivering a wide range of animals across the spectrum of natural and fantastical, including a hybrid wolf, mountain lion, dog/bird hybrid and lions. Zoic also created a CG plane crashing into a wall and provided CG environment work and several drone shots, delivering up to 70 shots per episode.
In order to craft animals that viewers would perceive as realistic, despite being hybrid, the Zoic team did extensive previs work, ensuring that the look and movements of the creatures were carefully researched and executed. The dynamics and particle effects team worked tirelessly to ensure that the aesthetic of the fur and feathers on the animals were as lifelike as possible, truly luring viewers into this near-future, altered reality of the series.
Once the animals were designed, Zoic was tasked with bringing them to life as characters in the scenes. Working hand-in-hand with each episode’s director, they approached the animation process as a performance, ensuring that all the key beats were hit to progress the storyline.
No stranger to post-apocalyptic creatures, Zoic has collaborated with Miller extensively on a number of series, including all five seasons of FX’s “Falling Skies,” scoring two Emmy nominations for their menacing alien work.