The Five Key Rules of Animal Anatomy

Stuart Sumida

One of the highlights of today's Annecy film festival was the talk by palaeontologist Stuart Sumida. Stuart is a world expert on animal anatomy and creature locomotion, widely consulted for his technical expertise on animated feature films like “Spirit”- Stallion of the Cimarron”, "Beauty and the Beast" “Lion King”, "Zootopia" and and “How to Train Your Dragon”.

In a packed room on the third floor of the Imperial Hotel, with lines snaking out into the halls (and no doubt a few fire regs being bent in the process), Stuart gave a talk titled "The Five Most Important Anatomical Rules for Animators".  

Stuart Sumida Reveals the Secrets of How Animals Move

Stuart Sumida

Stuart Sumida is the go-to guy in Hollywood for animal locomotion. He has worked on many feature films, including “Spirit”- Stallion of the Cimarron”, “Lion King”, and DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon”.

Stuart says he is “a paleontologist who gets to work with animators” and, while his day job is to teach anatomy to medical students, he also consults on movies for Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. I was personally lucky enough to work with him both on "Lion King" and also on "Spirit". On both pictures he helped the animators to push the levels of realism in our work.

At last week's VFX Festival in Dublin, Stuart showed what makes him such a unique resource for animators dealing with the complexities of animal locomotion.