Computer animation can make dinosaurs seem real once again, and the animation team at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa has been recognized as the best there is at this kind of work.
Its not just entertainment - it's advancing scientific research.
The National Geographic organization gave the first-ever award for computer animation in science to the 3D lab located at the Gatineau complex of the museum.
The work involved scanning the images of actual dinosaur bones into a computer, then figuring out just how this particular animal walked the earth millions of years ago.
The man who pulled it all together is Alex Tirabasso, who said it's definitely a cool job.
"From the scientists you get to meet, to what you learn . . . I sort of marry science, technology and art," he said.
Using the same kind of software as the movie industry, Tirabasso also relies on books and manuals about how animals move, plus his degree in biology.
However, the key element is the bones of an animal's skeleton.
That is where Paul Bloskie comes in, as he puts the bones on a special laser scanner which creates a high definition image of the fossil - the building block for the computer work.
The scanning equipment was built by an Ottawa firm and this 3D lab is one of just a handful in the world doing this work. Bloskie said has a sense of the history.
"Sometimes I get very nervous," he said. "When the scientist says this is the only one of its kind, it defines a species and is worth millions, it's a real honour to handle the material and to make a copy of it so it can be shared with everyone."
Bloskie and Tirabasso have been a team for nearly eight years. Their next project opens at the museum next month and will showcase an animal, believed to be the genetic model for the seal and otter, which lived in Canada's Arctic when it was a tropical zone.
Tirabasso said the images they are creating are for the public.
"We focus on the entertainment side when we can," he said. "Science these days it available in so many places and people want a quick understanding or summary of the science and animations can help in that."
"Taking a set of bones and turning it into something that people can see, to put it through the filter of the scientist who stood at the bone bed and could see what was was lying as a pile of bones... that is what we do," said Roger Baird, the museum's director of collections.
Baird calls this computer work a sort of alchemy, a way to turn lead into gold ...to turn a jigsaw puzzle of bones into a moving animal, and in so doing speed up the understanding of scientists and let generations learn.
