Jungle Beat: The Movie

One morning, the animals of the jungle wake up to discover that they can speak. They're even more amazed when they learn the reason why: There's an alien in the jungle. Little Fneep has come to conquer the earth and has brought some crazy tech with him, including a translation device that lets them talk for the first time. Unfortunately for the intergalactic Scaldronian empire, but fortunately for the jungle, Fneep is a terrible conqueror He's homesick who crashed his ship, and he's no match for the antics of Munki, Trunk and the gang. Our heroes won't let a little alien conquest get in the way of a good time or a new friend. As the animals help him on his journey home, he learns that friendship could be the greatest force in the universe. But is it a match for a planet full of invaders?

• David Menkin as Munki, a shy and good-hearted monkey, and as Rocky, a playful Southern white rhinoceros.
• Ina Marie Smith as Trunk, an female African bush elephant.
• Ed Kear as Fneep, an extraterrestrial creature from the species of "Scaldronian", who landed up in the jungle after he accidentally crashed his spacecraft.
• Gavin Peter as Tallbert, a reticulated giraffe.
• Adam Neill as Ribbert, an tree frog, who likes to eat objects, including Scaldronian weapons.
• John Guerrasio as Humph, a hedgehog.
• David Rintoul as Grogon, the evil captain of the Scaldronian empire.
• Emma Lungiswa De Vet as Ray, a firefly.
• Mattew Gair, Jason Pennycooke, Lynton Levengood and Claire Johnston as Wildebeests.
• Florrie Wilkinson as Baby Ostrich.
• Lucy Montgomery as Mama Ostrich.
• Brent Dawes as hugging Scaldronian.
• Ryno Ritter as Scaldronian crowd member.

The director Brant Dawes founded Sandcastle Studios in September 2017, during his trip to Forbach, a village located near the Circle Square Retail Park of the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. As their first feature film, the studio partnered with Sunrise Studios. Production started in April 2018 and finished in December 2019, creating the first Mauritian animated film.

“I wrote and made this movie so that anyone who watches it will enjoy it. It was important to me that as a father of four, I always try to find a movie that we can all watch. I’ve got a range of ages too, 5 to 15 years old, so finding a movie we can all watch, where a 5-year-old isn't too scared and the 15-year-old isn't bored, is tricky. This movie is definitely for a broad audience.”, according to director Brant Dawes.

The movie was animated using Autodesk Maya & rendered on Houdini's render farm GPU Mantra to create realistic hair on the animals and the aliens' "Glitter"-like slimy skin. Each animator used render farm machines with 96GB RAM-equipped Dell computers connected by Houdini grooming tools. For example, all the scenes set in the Scaldronian mothership provide thousands of moving complex effect sources, each reflecting back and forth off the background, the ship's lights and the characters' shadows. Each scene of the film took around 4 hours to be rendered and composed.

While most of the modelling, texture, animation and lighting was created in Mauritius, half of the entire production of the movie was produced in South Africa, with the post-production, voices and sound effects done in London, England, at Soho Square Studios.

• Jungle Beat: The Movie on IMDb