BBC Studios’ Science Unit has reimagined one of its most iconic titles with a bold new vision in Walking with Dinosaurs, a six-part series that blends the latest scientific discoveries with natural history storytelling.
The production was created in close collaboration with Lola Post (now marking its 25th year), who crafted the visual effects and animation for the series. Working together with the BBC Science Unit throughout production, Lola delivered scientifically authentic sequences that bring the prehistoric world to life.
Led by Executive VFX Supervisor Rob Harvey, VFX Supervisors He Sun, Sam Reed, and Cesar Nunes, Executive Producer Katherine Smith and VFX Producers Lizzie Hill, Sam Rocca and Rebecca Kelly, Lola completed 791 shots. More than 200 VFX artists contributed to the project, working across every stage of the pipeline, from preproduction to final frame, to deliver a scientifically accurate prehistoric experience.
Lola’s work began with storyboarding and real-time previsualisation in Unreal Engine. Using the series director’s vision and scripts, the team planned out sequences ahead of global location shoots in the UK, Portugal, Canada, Scotland, and Spain. Lola’s data capture team visited each location to gather reference photos, lighting information, and details about the local environment and vegetation, everything needed to help the digital dinosaurs blend naturally into the real-world scenes.
Working closely with the BBC Studios Science Unit, Lola created 21 unique dinosaur species — including Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Albertosaurus, and Gastonia. Each creature was meticulously built from the inside out, layering bone, muscle, skin, scales, and feathers. Guided by the latest scientific research in close collaboration with leading palaeontologists, the team realised the dinosaurs based on the most current understanding of their anatomy and behaviour.
For each shot, Lola’s animation team followed extensive studies in real-world animal behaviour, allowing even the subtlest gestures, a head twitch, an alert posture, a cautious glance, to convey credible emotion and intention. Custom animation cycles, reviewed and approved by scientific advisors, were developed for a wide range of behaviours including hunting, herding, and courtship rituals. These cycles fed into Lola’s crowd systems, enabling realistic simulations of mass migrations involving thousands of independently behaving Edmontosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus.
Several key sequences pushed the boundaries of creative and technical execution. The pond sequence was especially complex, spanning three environments, above water, underwater, and shoreline, and required precise environmental blending and FX integration. The burning forest sequence combined practical fire elements with dense CG foliage and volumetric effects, rendered in Unreal Engine. For the climactic Triceratops battle, Lola stitched together multiple live-action plates in Nuke to create expansive environments that supported dynamic dinosaur movement and staging. The series culminates in the final hunt, featuring CG stampedes and dramatic creature interactions.
Walking With Dinosaurs marked a milestone for Lola, with Unreal Engine used not only for previsualisation but also for some shot’s final pixel renders. Full sequences, including underwater and forest environments, were developed entirely in-engine, accelerating workflows and enabling rapid iteration while maintaining cinematic quality. To ensure visual cohesion between live-action and CG, lens data from physical cameras was applied to Unreal-rendered shots, allowing seamless cuts between formats.
