‘Galapagos with David Attenborough’ Dives Deep on Biodiversity

Hidden in the Pacific, undiscovered by humans until only a few centuries ago, lies a group of strange volcanic islands: the Galapagos. In Galapagos with David Attenborough, the famed natural historian explores how life arrived and adapted to this hostile environment, creating a haven of biodiversity. Originally produced for television a decade ago, this new VR production seamlessly blends live-action footage with original and emotive illustrations made in VR with Quill by Smoothstep—a first for the stereoscopic documentary genre.

“Galapagos with David Attenborough gives you the chance to dive with penguins, walk with tortoises, and sit with iguanas,” says Atlantic Productions Director Iona McEwan. “The Galapagos are remote islands with some of the most extraordinary wildlife—this series gives you the chance to encounter them in a wholly new and immersive way. The series combines Atlantic’s custom set-extended stereoscopic footage, which allows for camera techniques not possible with traditional VR cameras, with stunning Quill animation to plunge viewers into the past four million years of the Galapagos Archipelago.”

When storyboarding the VR production, the creative team came up with a number of concepts they wanted to visually present that were nearly impossible to articulate through live-action film. They decided to tap into the unique capabilities of Quill by Smoothstep as a VR-native tool to communicate those new ideas.

“The use of Quill expands the possibilities of optical communication to immerse audiences in volcanic eruptions, Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection, and the Galapagos’ phytoplankton phenomenon,” explains Meta Director of Immersive Media Eric Cheng. “The Quill scenes were created by a team of four global artists. The designs of US-based Lebanese/Palestinian artist Samia Khalaf, Swiss artist Zoe Roellin, and Ireland-based Romanian artist Ruxandra Popescu are crucial to the immersive evolution of the series. 3D artist Dan Franke created the series intro in Quill, uniting the artists’ distinct, yet cohesive styles across the production. Each artist brought their own unique style to the production, but over the course of several months we all came together to discuss the scenes and refine the direction of the work.”

“One of the amazing things about the Galapagos is the huge diversity of animals that coexist in such a tiny space—it’s a strange place where penguins and iguanas can be sat on the same rock,” adds McEwan. “We wanted to reflect that variety in the visual style of the series, so we decided to have visually distinct animations scattered throughout. We’ve been a huge admirer of the incredible work created in Quill for the past few years and how stylistically varied it can be. We reached out to artists whose style we loved and asked them to design a scene for a concept or topic in their style and were blown away with the amount of imagination that they put into designing the scenes. We put together our favorite artists whose styles we loved and were really lucky to get them on board.”

Quill by Smoothstep was a natural choice, as it lets you think and create spatially even from your earliest sketches.

“Designing 3D scenes can be very challenging on a 2D screen, where you have to imagine how it feels,” McEwan explains. “I was really inspired by how the Quill artists designed straight into VR, with hugely imaginative staging, for example how Zoe Roellin showed a time span of 50 years through scale. We love the variety in how the artists used Quill, from Samia’s sketchy, humorous style with pirate rats and smiley phytoplankton and Ruxandra’s luscious, inviting environments with lava I’d almost want to touch to Zoe’s elegant use of color and beautifully animated tortoises.”

Khalaf brings a sketchy, graphic style to the series, which lends itself to the enigmatic aesthetic of the Galapagos’ phytoplankton phenomenon and giant tortoises. Popescu’s work portrays the evolution of a Galapagos island over the course of four million years. She takes the viewer on a ride through the volcanic eruption right up to the death of the island. And Roellin brings an ethereal, romantic style to the production, telling the story of when Darwin came to the islands.

“For me, the most interesting thing about working on this project was experimenting with different illustration styles,” Popescu says. “The back-and-forth between the Quill artists and the directors was exceptional, and it led to us creating a collaborative style that unites the whole series.”

”I spent a lot of time studying actual footage of the giant tortoises, to understand how they move, which informed the animation of my characters in Quill,” adds Roellin. “I wanted my VR tortoises to connect to their real-life counterparts, whilst also conveying a symbolic and emotional approach.”

“In my work, I focus on capturing a feeling,” adds Popescu. “I love creating experiences that are full of wonder and fantasy—no other ecosystem could be more fulfilling to portray than the Galapagos. In all of my previous projects there’s been a recurring element of nature. I was particularly drawn to this production as the wildlife on the Galapagos has to exist in the harshest of conditions—it’s amazing to see life thriving under these circumstances. Through this series, we get to tell such an important story, which is a real privilege.”

All told, the artists spent about one month painting and animating in Quill by Smoothstep, followed by the VFX process.

“The Quill artists worked with our VFX department to create the renders for the final VR180 film,” explains McEwan. “Our VFX department can add effects such as glow that aren’t easily natively available in Quill. We were amazed at how quickly the artists managed to ideate and block a scene—it is so much faster to plan a VR scene when creating in VR. Refinement, as always, was 80% of the work.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though: The introductory sequence posed a unique challenge, as the team wanted to combine multiple elements used in the Galapagos series to set the stage. Early tests relying more heavily on CG lost the more intimate, crafted feeling of the hand-painted Quill scenes.

“There was a lot of figuring out how many effects to add to the Quill scenes,” notes McEwan. “For the clouds that our hero animals sit in during the intro sequence, we played with making the clouds really fluffy and quite lifelike. While that was beautiful, you lost the sense of the artist’s hand in the scene, so we reverted to more visibly hand-painted clouds. We were really lucky to have Dan Franke working on the intro sequence. His beautiful, loose use of strokes and stunning palette worked really well combined with the CG assets in the scene.”

The new Quill by Smoothstep animations aren’t the only additions that Atlantic Productions made to the Galapagos experience. It’s been a decade since David Attenborough visited the islands to film the original production for 3D (and 2D) TV. The technology has evolved a fair bit in that time, and the team at Atlantic was ready to put those advancements to good use.

“We wanted to not only show people the Galapagos but take them there,” McEwan explains. “We use a technique called ‘set extension’ to build out the edges of D rectilinear footage to immerse viewers in the scene. The benefit of using this technique is you can bring viewers much closer to the action, using closeups to really bring the viewer into the world of the Galapagos inhabitants.”

The end result is a more intimate, playful, and immersive experience than would be possible otherwise.

“There are a lot of narrative considerations for VR that are different from TV,” says McEwan. “In TV, you cut quite fast between scenes, whereas in VR you need to give people time to ground themselves in the environment. VR films can also be so intense that it’s often better to create shorter experiences. When looking through hours of footage, we knew we wanted to create concise introductions to the characters of the Galapagos. While the TV series was a sweeping story of the scientific interest in the Galapagos Islands, the VR series is a much more intimate introduction to the characters that live there.”

Rather than simply viewing the scene, VR lets you feel like you’re right there on the islands. Presented in 8K 180° with third-order ambisonics created in partnership with Q Department, Galapagos in VR puts you within believable touching distance of some of the rarest creatures on the planet.

“As a former professional wildlife photographer, I’ve been to the Galapagos numerous times, and although I captured some pictures that I really like, getting to work on a VR version of Galapagos with David Attenborough was different in that it stirred up feelings of being there in person,” says Cheng. “I hope that this production gives viewers some of those feelings as well!”

A VR remake that stands the test of time, Galapagos with David Attenborough is also a stunning example of the value Meta Quest 3 can add to an immersive viewing experience.

“We’re hearing across the board that the media experience on Meta Quest 3 benefits from the headset’s higher-resolution display and improved optics, but Galapagos with David Attenborough and some of the previous projects we’ve done with Atlantic Productions like Micro Monsters and Conquest of the Skies are particularly effective showcases because they were originally captured in stereoscopic 3D using high-end cinema cameras. The high source quality shines, giving viewers a more immersive Galapagos experience than would be possible by watching on flat screens.”

“Galapagos with David Attenborough sets a new precedent for immersive stereoscopic productions,” adds Meta Art Director Goro Fujita. “This is the first time hand-drawn VR animated content has been used in a 180-degree stereoscopic documentary, opening new doors for creativity and exploration in immersive filmmaking.”

The three-part VR docu-series launches as the effects of El Niño continue to negatively impact the survival of the wildlife of the Galapagos. The threats of El Niño are particularly catastrophic, not only for ravaging the islands’ rare habitats, but potentially destroying this one-of-a-kind ecosystem. The World Meteorological Organization has declared that global warming is likely increasing the impacts of the geographical phenomenon, causing more intense heat and heavier precipitation. With experts fearing this will be the most intense El Niño in decades, Galapagos with David Attenborough emphasizes the vital importance and global significance of this unparalleled ecosystem.

“The Galapagos ecosystem is full of truly unique life, but it is also fragile,” says McEwan. “When making natural history documentaries, you cannot help but be aware of our human impact on the delicate balance of life. It is important, now more than ever, to try and understand the natural world and connect with the other forms of life we share this earth with.”