Visual Effects Supervisor Todd Sheridan Perry was happy to have the “Okja” team, noting that little training was required to shift them over to Wakandan rhinos. He said:
“All of the animators and the modelers and so forth who had spent a year developing the ‘Okja’ character now had all of this experience doing these quadrupeds of that size and then the riggers and tech animators had the muscle systems already in place. […] And so some of our artists in the asset department, they just moved onto it and they just kind of knew what to do.”
The VFX Voice article pointed out that many of the on-set rhino stand-ins were merely rhino-sized stick models. There was a scene, however, wherein W’Kabi rode on the back of a rhino, and that required him to sit on the back of an actual Clydesdale horse. Sitting on horses provided greater spatial clarity within a scene for the photographers, as well as better lines of sight for the actors; it’s easier to fight an imaginary rhino when one knows where to look.
Perry also noted that, when a horse wasn’t quite feasible, he would rely on a CGI model of Daniel Kaluuya. But it was a “really, really well-developed W’Kabi digi-double,” he said. In order to avoid the notorious “dead eyes” that digitally created human doubles tend to sport, Perry actually removed (photographically) Kaluuya’s head and deposited it skillfully onto the CGI body double. It wasn’t Kaluuya’s body, but at the very least, it was his facial performance. The animators would animate the CGI Kaluuya up until the moment he stepped off the CGI rhino, and then sync up the real footage of the actor with it.
No rhinos, horses, or Okjas were harmed in the making of “Black Panther.”