Bringing the Jötunn to life

Working closely with Director David Bruckner and Imaginarium Studios, NVIZ helped bring Keith Thompson’s striking and iconic creature to life using a combination of motion capture and traditional animation.

Starting with motion studies based around a rough model and rig, it became apparent that anatomical changes would be needed in order to accurately convey the Director's vision for the character of the creature. Our team altered the design slightly using reference of a Giraffe skeleton, which enabled the creature to still appear graceful even when running.

Although in some of the shots the Jötunn was fully CG, NVIZ also augmented the on-set prosthetic head and arms for close-up shots, and in some wider shots  seamlessly blended them into the CG creature. For some shots the prosthetics were also used as a lighting reference, by walking it through the scene in full.

Read more about our creature work on The Ritual here.

The Ritual on IMDB.