Chicken Licken - Big John Mjohnana

​Chocolate Tribe was tasked with the visual effects and conceptual art design on this adventurous project. They Shoot Films and Joe Public teamed up with us in the beginning stages to create a realistic look and feel for the year 1650. The Tribe worked on more than 70 VFX shots creating matte paintings, conceptual designs of Big John’s village, CGI creatures, CGI Boat scenes, wave simulations and sky replacements. Our VFX Supervisor, Rob van den Bragt managed on-set supervision to ensure that all elements that were needed matched the vision of the director, Grant De Sousa. With the extensive amount of intricate detail of the creatures displayed on screen we used a combination of stock footage and in-house CGI to create the black panther, whale and shark.

Jelly fish were modelled and rigged individually and blended into their environment. Our compositors seamlessly added the monkey into the edit. We conceptualised all The Kraken shots from beginning to end and integrated it into the World of Big John. If a long list of creatures wasn’t enough, we also modeled Big John’s boat and placed Big John in the middle of a massive storm using liquid simulations. Big John’s seemingly arduous journey to a new land could not stop him, and eventually leads him to the land beyond the horizon. Europe. Our team managed to create a workflow and deliver the final project in just a few weeks. We love an adventurous project that challenges us to greater heights. Well done to the creative teams that made this a reality.