Pumbaa Lion King 2019

Yesterday was one of the most surreal days in my life. It was my birthday and myself and 16 supportive friends went to go see The Lion King in theatres.

While I was in London, UK, I had the great honor of sculpting and modelling my childhood favorite character, PUMBAA, for the 2019 fully CG remake. William Bell started the Pumbaa model and it was passed to me as he moved onto another character. Sculpting a character like this takes hundreds of hours and it’s just a drop in the pond of how much effort has to be put forth by the whole team. It was truly a breathtaking experience seeing Pumbaa up on the big screen, representing all the hard work by all departments. From concepting, modelling, retopo, UVing, texturing, shading, lookdev, fur, lighting, rendering and compositing.

LION KING WAS ABSOLUTELY STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. It felt like I was watching a nature documentary. All characters and environments knocked it out of the park with my favs being Scar, Timone, Pumbaa and Mufasa.