With this project I wanted to express the primal and imposing energy of cinematic dinosaurs as seen in movies and video-game cinematics, so I studied the Jurassic World films and started to layer my animation step by step, by setting up blockings first, then adding appealing breakdown poses that could capture the raw presence of two apex predators facing off. The refining stage took longer than originally planned, but I can say the learning process was absolutely worth the effort.
I present my latest keyframe animation project titled "MOMMA-REX", which expresses all my love and interest for dinosaurs. It is a work inspired by the Jurassic Park and World franchises, which provided awesome reference material for my shots.
As usual, I started with the observation of references, followed by rigs testing and setting the scenes and cameras to work properly. I wanted my short to feel like a "composite new short film", but without loosing the raw emotional impact.
The fight shot was the most challenging one, especially due to contacts and body weights clashing against each other. After weeks of adjustments and refining, I managed to capture the effect I wanted, in order to convey that primal energy I envisioned.
Walk cycles were the starting point, which turned out to be extremely helpful in order to further strenghten my skills and to deeply understand how muscles, skin and body fat actually work and interact.