Ratburger

Overview

WINNER OF THE 2018 INTERNATIONAL EMMY KIDS AWARDS – TV Movie/Mini-Series

King Bert Productions invited Lola to create a dancing rat for RATBURGER, a 60 minute special for Sky1, based on the David Walliams children’s book.

RATBURGER is the story of Zoe (Talia Barnett), a young girl with a stepmother (Sheridan Smith) that despises her and a dad (Mark Benton) who’s never around. When Zoe discovers a baby rat in her bedroom, she names him Armitage and they quickly become firm friends, especially when she discovers that Armitage is no ordinary rat – he’s a rat that can dance. Zoe wants to show off her rodent pal’s skill at the school talent show but her stepmother and shifty burger man Burt (David Walliams) have other ideas, which include throwing Armitage into the mincer and putting rat burgers on the menu…

Lola’s 3D team built and rigged a photo real CG rat and Richard Costin used Houdini’s new fur shader to groom the model to match the real on-set Armitage. Lola’s animation team led by Helen Bucknall and Ivor Middleton worked on over 100 shots, showing Armitage’s dance odyssey from Zoe’s bedroom to the talent show stage. In addition to the dance scenes, our CG stand in was used to perform stunts that would make the RSPCA quite cross.

Lola’s Rob Harvey was the overall VFX Supervisor attending the shoot in glamorous Stockport, and Max Wright and Joe Cork blended CG Armitage into the live action using Nuke. Head of Production Rebecca Kelly made sure we didn’t put a foot wrong… unless it was in the script.