Insight · 2025-06-04
Behind the Horse Collapse in 1923
Yellowstone's 1923 Kills 7 Characters: Who Is Dead Before Finale? | Us Weekly
Seven Characters and a Horse Die in Latest Episode of '1923' Ahead of Taylor Sheridan's Two-Hour Season Finale | DeepNewz TV
Animating the Frontier: Realism and Rigging in 1923 with WeFX
The goal of visual effects in film and on the small screen is to enhance the story without taking the viewer out of the moment.
In the case of a horse’s demise in ‘1923’ season two, WeFX did just that.
Blending live action and visual effects, the scene of Pete Plenty Clouds, fleeing from Marshal Kent and Father Renaud on horseback, needed to be a tragic, emotionally charged moment that demanded unflinching realism.
Our team holds itself to an extremely high standard, but we knew that making a photoreal horse for Taylor Sheridan, the creator behind the ‘Yellowstone’ universe, and his team required a whole other level of scrutiny.
For Sheridan, horses aren’t just a hobby, they are life.
If our work wasn’t perfect, it would be glaringly obvious.
WeFX’s 50-person team , led by VFX Supervisor Ryan Ng, went into full research mode for this sequence. The artists studied real-life horse racing accidents to understand how horses fall, roll, and collapse. While reviewing these videos of racetrack accidents was not the most pleasant task for our artists, it was important to make sure that the way the horse falls is believable. From muscle contractions to hair physics to dust kicks, every detail mattered.
Full digital doubles of both Pete and his horse were created, complete with:
● Muscle and skin simulations
● Dynamic hair and tail physics
● Saddle modeling and accurate cloth dynamics
● Full CG environment asset for dust and ground interaction
One of the biggest challenges was blending the CG elements with the practical environment. A special effects dummy horse was used on set, and the CG animation had to match its movement and final resting position precisely.
Thanks to visual effects, scenes like this one, depicting the injury and death of an animal, are created with no injury to the performers while allowing the creatives to tell their story exactly how they imagined it.
When viewers took to Reddit to question if what they had just seen was real, the WeFX team knew they had done their job .
Bringing this sequence to life required the full VFX toolbox:
● ZBrush for sculpting anatomical details
● Maya for animation
● Houdini for simulations (muscle, hair, dust)
● Nuke for compositing
● Arnold for rendering
Having the opportunity to work on this sequence in 1923 Season 2 was a privilege and the team at WeFX is thrilled to have left such an impression.
On August 26, 2025, WeFX joined Autodesk for a webinar to discuss how a 50 person team brought the 1923 horse chase sequence to life for season 2. WeFX used Autodesk Maya to model, animate, and rig the horse, Autodesk Flow Production Tracking for Production Management, and Autodesk Arnold Renderer to lookdev, light and render this work. The WeFX Panel Included :
Ryan Ng, VFX Supervisor
Steve Stransman, Executive Producer
Lynn Sibley, Production Manager
Viduttam Katkar, Lighting Supervisor
Fernando Gallo, Senior Animator
Igor Avdyushin, Head of CG
Watch Here : Animating the Frontier: Realism and Rigging in 1923 with WeFX