JUSTIN SADO
Technical Artist & Engineer
THE DREADMONGER
Procedural Animation | Camera Tracking | Compositing
Fig 1: Dreadmonger exposé
Witnessed thrice in the months from January to April of 2023, these squamous little creatures were met with some confusion and much fanfare as they flowered across America's concrete jungles.
Termed an "emergent form of post-urban flora," the Dreadmonger doesn't do much of anything but sit there and wriggle. Some have speculated that they represent a rupture in the psychosphere, with public unrest manifesting physically for us to then gawk at and, of course, record; others wonder whether they're the harbingers of an impending pan-organic calamity, when what thin skin separates us from the world of our making might finally tear asunder.
Most everyone agrees, however, that they're downright adorable.
Fig 2: The Dreadmonger sightings
Breakdown
The Dreadmonger was a fun foray into VFX compositing for me and my friends from home; after fiddling around in Blender's sculpting suite, a reasonably grotesque model was produced, then procedurally outfitted with its exoskeleton, maggots, and the titular tentacles.
Fig 2: Black and white depiction of a Dreadmonger
The fun part involved convincing my hometown friends to gesticulate and exclaim at empty parking-lots, then motion tracking the clips and compositing in their respective Dreadmongers via DaVinci Resolve (Fig 3).
