SoKrispyMedia, the creators behind Chalk Warfare, their Stick Figure series, and VFX work on major productions including HBO’s The Last of Us, released another viral short featuring Rick and Morty as part of their Chalk Warfare universe. Chalk Warfare is their most popular online series, with more than 350 million total views across platforms.
Known for blending live action, animation, and visual effects at a rapid pace, the team continues to push stylized character performance while maintaining believable movement and physicality. This latest short is no exception, combining fast-paced action, expressive gestures, and tightly choreographed interactions.
The SoKrispyMedia team focuses on speed, flexibility, and performance-driven storytelling. For Chalk Warfare, the goal is not hyperrealism, but clarity, personality, and timing. Every movement needs to read instantly, especially in short-form content where action and humor happen fast.
Behind the scenes, performers act out the sequences, delivering body language, timing, and intent. Motion capture allows the team to preserve those performances while translating them into animated characters that feel energetic, precise, and expressive.
To achieve detailed hand and finger animation, SoKrispyMedia used MANUS data gloves alongside Xsens full-body motion capture. While Xsens captured the full-body movement and overall action, MANUS gloves provided high-fidelity hand and finger data that brought the characters’ gestures, grips, and expressive beats to life.
This was especially important for Chalk Warfare, where hands are constantly interacting with props, weapons, and the environment. Finger articulation, timing of grips, and subtle hand motion help sell the illusion of physical interaction, even in a highly stylized visual world.
The MANUS gloves allowed performers to move naturally without restricting their performance. Clean hand data reduced the need for manual animation fixes and helped the animation team move quickly from capture to final shots.
One of the key advantages of the setup was freedom. With inertial motion capture and wearable hand tracking, the team could capture performances in almost any environment. This made it easier to iterate, adjust choreography, and focus on creative decisions rather than technical limitations.
The combination of MANUS hand capture and Xsens full-body data supported a streamlined workflow where performance stayed at the center of the process. Animators could build on a strong foundation of real motion instead of starting from scratch.
With Chalk Warfare reaching hundreds of millions of views, SoKrispyMedia has shown how performance-driven animation resonates with a massive audience. Detailed motion capture, including expressive hands and fingers, plays a critical role in making these characters feel alive, readable, and fun to watch.
This project highlights how MANUS data gloves fit seamlessly into high-speed, high-output creative pipelines, supporting teams who need precision without slowing down.
