Filmmakers considered Southeast Alaska's rainforests below the Arctic Circle close to the climate that the dinosaurs experienced, so they filmed there and in Southcentral Alaska. Specific locations included Crow Creek Mine near Girdwood, Alaska and the Kenai Peninsula. In 2012, the state government of Alaska awarded the production companies a subsidy of . Additional filming also took place in the South Island of New Zealand. For a river chase scene, filming was performed at rapids in New Zealand using a helicopter and with a 3D camera rig in a rubber boat. At the locations, the crew built dinosaur shapes out of PVC drain pipes to give the filmmakers a sense of the dinosaurs' scale when filming the live-action backdrop. Animation Animation work was done by the Australia-based company Animal Logic, which joined the production in January 2011. Its involvement with the production created 140 jobs in New South Wales. The company's animation director for Walking with Dinosaurs was Marco Marenghi, who had also worked on the BBC miniseries. The company collaborated with animation producer Jinko Gotoh, who contributed to Finding Nemo (2003) and 9 (2009). Character designer David Krentz, who also worked on Disney Animation's Dinosaur (2000), designed about for the film and worked with 5-6 palaeontologists. The characters were based on creatures found at fossil sites in Alaska and in Canada. Krentz initially designed the creatures in pencil then modeled them with the software ZBrush to send to animators. In addition, palaeontologists provided Animal Logic with technical drawings of dinosaur skeletons so animators could construct the skeletons virtually. The animators collaborated with the palaeontologists to validate the basic movements of the computer-animated dinosaurs. Software was used to overlay muscle to fit the movements. Animal Logic adapted the software Quill, which they used to animate penguin feathers in their work on Happy Feet (2006), into new software called RepTile to animate dinosaur skin and scales. It also added feathers for some dinosaurs, including the Troodon and the Hesperonychus. The color palette and feather pattern of a golden pheasant was used for the appearance of the Hesperonychus. The natural history unit archives were used to create a "behaviour matrix" that matched dinosaurs' anatomically correct gestures to their moods. Animal Logic ultimately created shots for the film, which director Cook said was a low number for an animated film. The 3D effects for the animation were achieved with the Fusion 3D system,