Pepto Bismol "Turducken" || Deconstruct || Rigging + Animation

Having imagined, created and textured the 'mighty turducken', the next challenge facing the S&M CG team was to determine how such a beast might move.  The turducken's motion required a seamless and somewhat humorous combination of the waddle of a duck, the jerky gait of a chicken and the slow lumbering of a turkey.  Settling on these movement decisions affected the rigging of the creature.

With duck's feet, head and neck, a chicken's body and wings, a turkey's bum, and a chicken's facial and head accoutrements, each body part required it's own animal's style of movement.  The feet were rigged to allow for the flapping/clawing movement of a duck's webbed feet whilst the wing and bum feathers had to react and respond to the main body movement.  The chicken's comb and wattle required a hanging limp quality that would allow them to flail in accordance with the creature's head motion.  

We get a good taste of the Turducken's movement in this shot.  Meant to be dramatic in slow-motion, the Turducken has a frenetic but clumsy gait with wings flailing and flapping, webbed feet clawing through the air imitating a swimming motion and head jerking about causing the the flaccid comb and wattle to hang and sway heavily in it's face.  

The next shot in the spot shows a whole herd of turduckens flocking across the land.  The CG team created this herding motion by implementing five different walk cycles on five of the turduckens to provide sufficient variation in the movement of the group.  

Using XSI's ICE, the team then assigned one of the five walk cycles to each of the turduckens in the herd and then randomized the speed and placement of each of the beasts in the crowd as is moved across the landscape.  The end result is a gaggle of seemingly unique turduckens manically racing through uninhabited desert territory with their turkey feathers thrashing, their chicken heads jerking and their duck feet flapping in a frenzied pursuit.