Prehistoric Bird Hunting Rat

This is an animated shot, made with the guidance of Griffin Animation Academy founder and mentor Eddie Chew. This is one shot out of a sequence of 4, the rest of which are still in progress. Muscle simulation, skin simulation and lookdev are also still in progress for this shot. Animation is final :)
Special thanks to modeller Nick Gaul and cfx and TD Chay Johansson for these amazing rigs. Can't wait to update with the final product!

To plan out my animation I always like to make a 2D animatic first, so I can let me creativity flow freely. When I like the general idea and pacing of my animatic, I start looking for reference to match my animatic, and start blocking out in 3D. I collect and use reference as a guideline to help make my animation as believable as possible.

while I'm working on the animation, Chay is working on the muscle simulation! Here is the skeleton and muscle set up.

When I'm working on the animation, I see the skin mesh, which will not be used in the final render. What Chay extracts is the skeleton animation. Here is an initial rat run cycle test with only the skeleton.

With the muscles attached to the skeleton, the rat is starting to look alive!

The muscles on the chicken are looking so awesome!

Lookdev of what the bird might look like in the final render! We will be working on the environment concepts and creation in the next steps, once animation is finished for all 4 shots! This project is super fun to work on, and I am so excited to push it towards the finish line :)
Thank you so much for taking the time to look through the project!