Experts have used the last available tape of the animal, dating from 1933, as a basis to create this new video in which we can see the incredible colored images of Benjamin, the last known Tasmanian tiger, in high definition.
The Tasmanian tiger ( Thylacinus cynocephalus ), also known as the marsupial wolf or thylacine, became extinct mainly because of man. European settlers in the 19th century killed thousands of them to keep them from attacking their sheep.
The last known thylacine was Benjamin who died at the Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936. Naturalist David Fleay recorded several minutes of this animal in black and white, and now, for the first time, we can veil in motion and in color.
Although there have been reports of thylacine sightings since 1936, and even some blurry images, the Tasmanian tiger is generally considered to have become extinct with Benjamin’s death or shortly thereafter.
Composite Films director François-Steininger chose images of Benjamin taken in 1933, rather than the more famous, but lower quality, 1935 images for coloring. “It was very difficult to color because, apart from the animal, there were few elements in the frame, ” François-Steininger explained in a statement. “And due to the resolution and the quality of the image, there were a lot of details: the fur was dense and a lot of hair had to be detailed and animated. As for the coloring options, we were able to find many different leathers in different museums that were well preserved in the dark and kept their colors . “
“From a technological point of view, we did everything digitally, combining digital restoration, rotoscopy and 2D animation, lighting, AI algorithms for movement and noise, composition and digital classification,” the expert clarified.
It took more than 200 hours of work to achieve this result.
