MPC delivered over 700 shots and 55 assets across 20+ months. Our teams were led by Senior VFX Supervisor, David Sewell and later joined by VFX Supervisor, Oliver Winwood. We initially built seven ‘hero’ Trollocs, which are a biped bovine/human mix and very similar to a Minotaur but with twisted variations from wolf to boar to hog. We later added a further seven variations which we could mix and match to create an army of thousands.

We also worked on ‘The Fade’ a character that can control the Trollocs. An insipid, semi translucent, moist skinned creature with no nose or eyes and a mouth full of hundreds of razor-sharp teeth! ‘The Dark One’ character was a man with an aged leathery skin mask with eye and mouth holes full of fire. As well as these complex characters we also created wolves and seagulls.

The rigging followed the high standard that exists in film as we’re building it with our existing proven workflows and tools, so our creatures had the full array of face shapes as well as muscle simulations. For the animation we leveraged mocap as much as we could, holding a couple of internal mocap shoots lead by our Animation Supervisor Eduardo Castells. This would create the basis for a lot of shots, with the animation team refining that in shot, as well as creating bespoke animations for shot context. 

The crowd was a particularly challenging sequence because it was made up of furry creatures. The crowd simulations were carried out in Houdini using the mocap clips mentioned above, as well as custom clips created by animation with rag doll physics introduced where necessary.