As filmmakers and advertisers we use different tools to convey our message and in the past if you wanted to use animals you had to use animals, but we've reached a tipping point with technology; we don't actually have to use animals in advertising. We want to show it is possible to do feature film quality emotion and story telling with CGI animals, without necessarily costing that much.

To create PETA ‘98% Human’ we created a totally believable, photo-real CG Chimp. This has never been fully undertaken by any VFX studio before; all previous primates include some form of motion capture, making this project one of the most detailed and technically challenging jobs we have ever taken on.

To create this photo-real CG Chimp we decided to use full animation, not the more traditional form of motion capture. This was for two reasons; as the purpose of the commercial is to highlight the cause of using primates in commercials so we would not use a real chimpanzee, and using humans with Motion Capture can be too constraining; a human cannot effectively portray a primate's movements or nuances with the amount of realism that we, and the client wanted.

Conventionally, as with Gollum in Lord of the Rings, or Caesar in Planet of the Apes the animation is normally captured through the process of Mo-Cap but we wanted the flexibility to experiment with a shot and not be locked into a performance of someone pretending to be a chimp would give. So we shot an actor without the use of motion capture to use him just as a base reference for the animation, composition and placement. This provided our team of animators with the ability to mimic chimp like movement with far greater accuracy.

Our animators executed all movement from ground up without tracking. Animation began by watching hours and hours of reference material. A previz was created, organizing and mapping the development of the story and action of the chimp.

The largest battle going on within the animation department was finding a balance between human and chimp movement. Unlike humans, chimps don't show a great amount of emotion in their face. They do not furrow their brows for instance. So in order to create sadness in the chimps face while also keeping him realistic and believable, the director and animation team had to explore both sides of human and chimp facial expressions before landing on a perfect balance. Much of this back and forth work went into the eyes, which took more time than any other part of the body. Chimps' eyes stay the same. They are round and stay round. At almost all times they dart around, looking at everything, with lots of energy. In order to express sadness and the emotion of a kept animal the eyes had to be slowed down and the gaze had to become dull. In the end these were the most distinct human elements added to the chimp. A lot of time was spent animating the limbs and muscles of the chimps body, concentrating on slowing him down and making every movement pathetic. His limbs appear tired, downtrodden, and lifeless, the opposite of a healthy being.

The largest technical challenge was certainly the face. The amount of detail in the face made it difficult to rig. Using rendered proxies of the face, at first so much was lost that it could be compared with placing pins in the dark. In order to solve this problem the animation team did extensive render tests until they created proxies that contained enough information to show a significant representation of the complete head.

The lack of an opposable thumb became a reality the animation team soon shared with their brother chimps. The team did extensive research into the movement of chimp hands picking up and working with blocks. Using the Actor's motion as a starting block, the team then went finger by finger, manipulating the dexterity and creating the most realistic looking movement without overstretching the abilities of a real chip.

The animation team said that the best part of the project was developing an in depth and close understanding of such a wonderful creature.