Phlesch Bubble: "Ancient Seas" animation

In 2009 we produced an animated mural of the Churchill Formation (a preserved Ordovician shoreline) for the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg.
"Ancient Seas" is an eerily realistic animation of a real marine community that inhabited the sea covering the Churchill area 450 million years ago.
The three-screen panorama spans a 7.5 metre arc and plays in a seamless five-minute loop.

Photographs courtesy the Manitoba Museum.

Working with palaeontologist Graham Young, we reconstructed and animated twenty-three plants and animals from pictures
of their fossil remains. The result is the most accurate depiction of Ordovician marine life in the world.
Our long-time collaborator Jesse Stiles created the soundtrack for us, and our good friends The Elumenati designed and installed the playback system.

"Ancient Seas" was awarded a "Best of the Fest" award for Scientific Visualization at the Red Stick International Animation Festival in 2010,
a 2010 Sci-An Award for Excellence in Scientific Animation, and is a finalist in the National Science Foundation's prestigious
International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for 2010.

Click on the image below to view a few highlights from the movie (67MB), or right click to save it to your computer.
Click here for a high-rez still image of the panorama.