The Nightmare - Animated Horror Short

This project was created as part of my study; the point was to make a frozen action scene brought to life with camera movement.

In the concept phase I thought up a horror story for my creature: The Nightmare, a horrific sloth-horse hybrid that preys on unfortunate souls lured into the woods by its voice mimicry.
Through a first-person camera movement and multiple shots, I'm trying to tell the story of a brave hunter who took it upon himself to slay the creature in the forest. He decides to camp out in hopes of tracking the creature down, but finds himself haunted by nightmares and awakes to the creature outside his tent.

I used ZBrush to sculpt the beast, Houdini to create the pyro sim, scene and camera movement and used RenderMan for the first time to render. For previsualization I used Photoshop and Maya and the whole video is brought to life by Nuke.