Megalodon: a tale in 3D

How much did a megalodon need to eat every day to survive?

Recent research by the Pimiento Research Group has been able to answer this and other questions about the biggest shark to ever roam the seas. To increase the impact of their research, Dr Pimiento reached out to creative director of Cooked Illustrations, Ian Cooke-Tapia, to help produce an animated explainer documentary to support increased engagement targets with the paper in Science Advances The extinct shark Otodus megalodon was a transoceanic super-predator: inferences from 3D modelling and the wider as well as to support ongoing outreach strategies within the Pimiento Research Group.

The video presents the story of how the Research Group was able to bring in existing and new techniques together to create a reconstruction of the megalodon. The script was written by Ian Cooke-Tapia, with accuracy checks by Dr Pimiento. All digital illustrations were produced on ClipStudioPaint as our main software, and 3D models created in Blender by Jack Cooper. Voices provided by Pimiento Research Group scientists.

The video reached 70,000 views on YouTube between three language versions (Spanish, English and German) within three months on an entirely new YouTube channel. Since then, a version of this explainer was picked up by TED Education. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LGCk08zMbg&t=1s