Rampage

Rampage was the first project of my assignment at Wētā Digital, now Wētā FX, in New Zealand. Directed by Brad Peyton and starring Dwayne Johnson and Naomie Harris, the film hit cinemas in the spring of 2018, just as I was coming home.

How did I get there? I have a hunch it was thanks to the breakdown I made of my Watch Dogs: Bad Blood cinematic, showing the raw mocap and my final animation. Nobody ever told me so, but I like to think this little video caught their eye.

George, a gorilla out of control

The film follows George, an albino silverback gorilla raised by a primatologist played by Dwayne Johnson, who starts growing out of control after a genetic experiment goes wrong. Wētā brought George to the screen in CG, and my job was to make him move like the real thing.

From crutches to knuckles

Once again my work was motion editing, but with a twist: George was performed in motion capture by a man walking on crutches, to simulate a gorilla walking on its knuckles.

The capture gave the body its weight and its timing, but a man on crutches is not a gorilla, and that is where I could really bring my own touch, starting with the hands: the fingers, and all the complexity of fingers crushing against the ground under the weight of the animal.

To get there, we had an incredible reference library of videos of gorillas and other apes to study, and here again, immersing myself in the way a gorilla moves, how it shifts its weight, how it uses its hands, was hugely enriching. The shots I worked on were very short, sometimes two or three seconds, but long and intense to animate, because every frame had to convey the reality of a gorilla.

After nearly ten years in 3D animation, Rampage gave me back the excitement of a first project, and working with a hugely talented team from all over the world was the cherry on top. It is also, for the record, a genuinely funny film.

The trailer below even includes a few of my shots, and you can imagine how proud I was.