Mapinguari – Urban Folklore VFX
Categories
AI Cinematics
Client
Confidential / Unreleased Project
Project
Concept Development for Film Pitch
Services
Creature Design
VFX Compositing
AI Video Generation
Year
2025
The Proposal
Developed in collaboration with Fernando Sette, this project was a visual exploration for a proposed film concept: bringing the Amazonian legend of the Mapinguari to a contemporary and raw urban setting in Belém, Pará. The scene depicts the mythical creature navigating the city’s nightlife, creating a stark contrast between folklore and modern reality.
The Creature Design Challenge
Generative AI models lack specific knowledge of deep Brazilian folklore. The commands consistently failed to render the Mapinguari’s unique anatomy, resorting to generic “Bigfoot” archetypes. To solve this, we adopted a hybrid pipeline based on the studio’s own artistic legacy. We used one of our previous hand-drawn Mapinguari illustrations as a structural reference (“Old Work”), proving that AI works best when guided by a solid artistic foundation. Next, we manually applied digital overlays to sculpt the correct anatomical features—a single eye and a mouth on the belly—that the AI couldn’t conceive on its own.
Technical Direction: Guiding the Light
Integrating a CGI-style monster into low-light footage is notoriously difficult. Our solution was to “embed” the lighting into the original image. Before animation, we manually painted specific nighttime contour lighting (backlight) onto the static character in Photoshop. When processed by the video generation model, these painted light cues acted as anchor points, forcing the AI to respect the atmosphere of the scene and maintain consistent lighting throughout the movement.