Sammael

The Desolate One,

Lord of the Shadows,

Son of Nergal,

Harbinger of Pestilence,

Seed of Destruction,

Hound of Resurrection.

“A huge pale CREATURE hangs from the ceiling, chewing slowly. SAMMAEL: equipped with powerful arms, a head full of tentacles and two well-muscled hind legs. Most of its face is hidden, but the jaws are shiny with blood.” This is how a Lovecraftian and monstrous entity, Sammael, is introduced to the Screen in one of Guillermo del Toro’s script drafts for HellBoy. In Judaism, Samael was the Archangel of death — a destroyer, ruler of the Fifth Heaven and served by two million Angels. The name of this being is derived from the Hebrew word סמאל, which stands for divine punishment — or retribution.

Unlike all the other characters featured in the film, Sammael was not conceived by the mind of Mike Mignola, author of the original comic series. It was, instead, a completely original addition to HellBoy. Despite this, the creature covers a fairly similar role to the frog monsters, a race of sentient amphibian creatures linked to the Ogdru Jahad. In addition to that, one of the epythets of the fearsome Monster is ‘Son of Nergal’: Nergal is a solar deity with control over the netherworld in Babylonian lore. The same name, however, is also used in the HellBoy comics to label one of the Ogdru Jahad — Nergal-Jahad. Sammael is also referred to as the ‘Seed of Destruction’ — the title of the original comic arc on which the film adaptation is partially based upon.

The entire design team involved in HellBoy tried to envision this outlandish creature — including designers such as Constantine Sekeris and Mike Mignola himself. The designs of the HellBoy character’s creator were discarded, as “[they] were deemed as ‘too nice’. Del Toro would often comment, ‘I want to have a drink with them.’” One of Mignola’s concept drawings would, however, be featured in a cameo — 4 years after the production of the film. In Universal’s sequel, HellBoy: The Golden Army, said design was refined and presented as a background character in the BPRD. It was brought to the screen using a single computer generated model.

Sammael underwent the longest design process in the entirety of the production of HellBoy — and went through a wide array of different incarnations before the final design assumed a shape. The first concept for the Monster was drawn by Constantine Sekeris, and included wings — discarded for later designs — and a cephalopod-esque head. The creature seen in the film is the result of long brainstorming sessions between Del Toro and Wayne Barlowe — who had already collaborated with the director on the set of Blade II. Sammael’s unique asymmetry was implemented not only to make its appearence more interesting and unrecognizable, but also as part of a recurring theme of traits — starting with HellBoy’s right hand of Doom; the Behemoth at the end of the film also displayed a similar, subtle asymmetry. As per many other designs and storyline aspects of HellBoy, Sammael was heavily influenced by Howard Philips Lovecraft’s tales of cosmic horror in its conception. The monsters described in his various literary works often displayed incredibly bizarre and otherwordly traits, and were in many cases characterized by the presence of tentacles. “Guillermo wanted to do something really different with Sammael,” said Elizalde to Cinefex, “because he is a leading character in the film – which he is not in the comic. In designing Sammael, the word ‘Lovecraftian’ kept coming up in production meetings, which I interpreted as something very dark, ancient and demonic, with a lot of tentacles.”

Early Sammael head concept by Wayne Barlowe.

“The initial parameters included a C’thulhu-like [sic] head festooned with lots of dangling bits and tentacles, scimitar-like fingers, and a large paunch; gone were the wings from the original painting [Sekeris'], but the multiple eyes remained. It all sounded intriguing to me. I thought the idea of breaking from the norm — the predictable, heavily muscled villain — was refreshing. And so I began what would turn out to be something of a personal quest, a search with the director for the proper balance between the horrific and the unorthodox. Our goal was to scare the audience with a nightmare creature unlike any they had seen before.”

-Wayne Barlowe, HellBoy: The Art of the Film

Once the final appearence of the design was approved by the director, construction of full-size creature suits was committed to Spectral Motion Incorporated. The special effects team built a total of 5 suits, worn by Brian Steele, the main performer, and other stuntmen. Only one of the suits was a fully mechanized hero creature, weighing about 60 pounds by itself. It required 4 puppeteers to be maneuvered: one for the head and jaws, one for the complex eye mechanisms and two for the arms, which featured articulated fingers. The stunt heads maintained only basic movement, and their eyes could be puppeteered. “[The stunt suits] could take a lot of punishment but were lightweight enough that the stuntmen wouldn’t be injured,” said Mike Elizalde, “We made them out of a soft polyfoam that can take a pretty good bump without anybody getting hurt or the head being crushed.”  In addition to the suits, Spectral Motion also built 2 stunt heads — the purpose of which was to receive damage — and 2 hero heads.

“This creature was a massive undertaking”, said creature design supervisor Steve Wang on his MySpace page about Sammael. “It is by far the most complicated creature I ever had to build.” Steve Wang sculpted the head of the monster, whereas Hiroshi Katagiri, Moto Hata, Norman Cabrera, Don Lanning and Jeff Buccacio sculpted its body. The creature needed various components to be molded and built separately and then assembled into the suit, which covered an undestructure composed of support elements underneath that held the external features in place. Steve Wang used a peculiar technique, which shaved down the body core — in order for the suit to fit considerably tightly on the actor. Every piece of the understructure followed realistically the performer’s movements. The technique also achieved the realistic effect of rendering the actor’s breathing visible from the outside of the suit. The performer’s breathing would simply puppeteer the suit, without the necessity for additional bladder mechanisms. The creature’s skin was made of foam latex, whereas its color scheme was designed and painted by Russ Lukich.

Sammael’s eyes were embedded in a fiberglass headpiece, fabricated and painted by Steve Wang. They featured a fleshy membrane that covered the creature’s eyeballs, and could retract and open — much like a biological camera iris. Said nictitating membrane was made of silicone. The eyes themselves — that featured a constricting pupil — also protruded and retracted as the creature ‘blinked’. The eye mechanism was designed and built by veteran Jon Dawe, who had precedently worked on the eyes of many other movie monsters and creatures, including the Jurassic Park Dinosaurs. Sammael’s eyes were also influenced by predatory birds — vultures, specifically.

“He [Del Toro] told us to take a look at Mackenna’s Gold, an old western film. And at the beginning of the film there’s a really beautiful close-up shot of a vulture blinking. And you can really see this membrane just sweeping over the bird’s eye, and we used that as a reference for Sammael’s eye.”
-Mike Elizalde, Sammael, the Desolate One featurette

What animated the peculiar, undulating movement of the tentacles protruding from Sammael’s head was a servomechanism specifically designed for the film. It was conceived by Mark Setrakian, another Lovecraft enthusiast among the film crew. The mechanisms extended within the tentacles’ length, and allowed them to move on an estabilished scheme (a similar mechanism was later added to create the movement of Abe Sapien’s gills). A circuit board drove the tentacles and controlled their sequential movement.  “There are micro-controllers in the tentacles themselves,” explained Setrakian to MakeUp Magazine, “so when you’re puppeteering, you’re controlling 75 servos. They’re all doing this mass of almost random-looking but very controlled undulating motion, and it looks like he’s got a bunch of eels on his head squirming around. It brings the character to life in a way that I’d hoped for but hadn’t necessarily expected to turn out as well as it did.”  As per Sammael’s skin, the tentacles were made of foam latex, allowing a more fluid and smooth movement.

“When you see 15 of these things all lubed up with slime and all moving apparently individually, it’s really interesting. It looks like Sammael had an array of eels hanging off the back of his head. They’re all writhing at the same time. We even had people asking us during dailies how they had time to put the CG tentacles in. And obviously they weren’t CG. They were the real things. So that was a very proud moment of us.”
-Mike Elizalde, Sammael, the Desolate One featurette

Added to Sammael’s neck were also jowls made of therma-gel, which achieved a semi-transparent effect. Mark Setrakian and Kyle Martin designed how the Creature’s ulna-club weapon was incorporated into the suit; the performer could easily extend it and retract it during filming. The 7-feet long tongue of the monster originally featured more protuberances and appendages; it was described in the script as ‘arm-thick’, and featuring ‘yellow sacs billowing from its sides.’  It was simplified in its final incarnation. Three versions of the tongue were built: a poseable model, a cable-controlled animatronic and a ramrod model, which was unused in the final film. Additionally, a digital counterpart was used for many shots — both as part of the CG model and as an addition to a practical creature. Most of the shots featured the digital extension, animated by Kevin Kutchaver’s HimAni Productions. Sammael uses its tongue to attach an egg-laying sting section — which was created as a simple puppet with bladders. Otherwise, the creature can just lay the eggs in a nest. The Sammael eggs were made as small, semi-transparent props. In the scene set in the egg chamber, they were all singlehandledly glued into large formations, which were lit from below with red light sources — to give the impression the eggs themselves were glowing in an otherwordly manner.

For the more dynamic shots of the creature, Tippett Studios was hired to create a wholly digital counterpart for Sammael. “Sammael had to be a CG character only when he was doing something extraordinary,” Blair Clark told to Cinefex, “such as when we first meet him crouching in the shadows of the library, chewing on a guard. Playing around with the CG puppet during the animatics phase, I had thought it might be best to keep Sammael as abstract as possible, especially in these first shots, so the audience wouldn’t be able to see exactly what this thing was. So, after consulting Guillermo, we twisted him [Sammael] up into the rafters and had him hanging by a talon. Then, later, he unfurls and reveals his form.” Much like the practical suit, the computer generated creature featured an understructure of ‘muscles’ that reacted realistically when the character made a certain movement. Curiously enough, a single understructure portion covered the Monster’s abdomen. This organization of the digital model allowed the animators to focus more on the performance, free of concern for having to create a realistic phisiology for each shot. Because of Sammael’s unique ability to dislocate its joints at will and its peculiar anatomy, animation supervisor Todd Labonte found him interesting and rather complex to animate. Initially, the movements of the computer generated Sammael were heavily influenced from those of arachnids, such as spiders. Tests of Brian Steele’s performance in the suit, which were more primate-like, were later used as reference and implemented into the movements of the computer generated Sammael.

The CG model was obtained primarily from a scan of the suits, enhanced with displacement maps — an advanced CGI texturing method. “Some of that detail was modeled,” said Joel Friesch to Cinefex, “but at Tippett Studio, we rely heavily on displacement and our painters. When Sammael was moving fast, motion blur tended to soften him; so we were always tinkering with the displacement numbers to make sure that he retained that detail.” For the first Sammael’s ‘death’, a combination of a touched-up stunt suit and a complex decomposition animation were used.

In the climax of the film, Elizabeth Sherman burns and kills the creatures and their eggs (although not every single one, as suggested by the mid-credits sequence); a specific burnt-skin CG model was created for this sequence. Ed Irastorza explained to Cinefex: “by doing some matchamation with their model on the practical Sammaels that we had in the plate, they were able to reveal a crusty skin that then became the animated character. The camera pulled back as that character started to disintegrate, revealing his skull and guts”. To represent the creatures’ remains in the aftermath, Spectral Motion built skulls, ribcages and other bones in resin and foam, with additional rubber organs, and scattered across the set.

“Working with Del Toro has to stand as one of the high points of my career. He is an extraordinarily visual director whose on-screen aesthetic must be considered unique among his peers. Understanding his desire to make imagined film characters as interesting and surprising to the viewer as possible is critical to beginning [sic] any design curve with him.”
-Wayne Barlowe, HellBoy: The Art of the Film

For more images of Sammael, visit the Monster Gallery.

Pictures of Abe Sapien and the Ogdru Jahad will be added once an article covering the subjects is published.

June the 12th, 1987 saw the first introduction to the cinematic screen of one of the most memorable and well known Movie Monsters to date — El Diablo Cazador de Hombres: the Predator. Since then, the species of Intergalactic Hunters has appeared in a total of 5 films, with the most recent chapter, Predators, released in 2010. Divided in 6 parts spanning through all of them (including the original Steve Johnson Monster), the Predator Metamorphosis Essay analyzes the process which brought each of the incarnations of the character to life.

Please note that each part has not yet been finished. With the release of each article, the links below will be updated.

Prologue: Hunter

Part 1: Predator [COMING SOON]

Part 2: Predator 2 [COMING SOON]

Part 3: Alien Vs. Predator [COMING SOON]

Part 4: Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem [COMING SOON]

Part 5: Predators [COMING SOON]

Last Updated: 08/03/2013

“I have a background in genetic engineering,” said Kevin Grevioux, co-writer of Underworld — and the actor portraying Raze in the series. “Given that, I wanted to take a different approach to the worlds of Werewolves and Vampires in this film. I wanted to use science as a basis, rather than mysticism.” However powerful and durable in nature, the Werewolves of the Underworld films are not supernatural entities, but rather “oddities of nature” — as Alexander Corvinus states in the second chapter of the series — grounded in the ‘unlikely’ reality of Science Fiction. Even before the design process for the monsters actually started, director Len Wiseman was adamant about how his Werewolves should be brought to the screen: practical effects — performers inside suits — were to be the main technique used to bring the monsters to life. “When we were going around pitching this idea for Underworld,” Wiseman recalled, “I did really want everybody to know that I wanted to go back to just doing practical creatures. I wanted a guy in a suit. We brought in footage, actually, of, you know, Alien or Aliens, or Pumpkinhead, or Predator. I just think there’s something that you get only in a guy in a suit, and I wanted to bring that back. I never really saw that as something wrong. Now a lot of movies have gone CGI and I actually thought we were getting better with the prosthetics.” The director later added: “I really wanted to combine the concept of using practical creatures — guys in suits — with the wire work that we have today, and just be able to get the movement, to make a Werewolf be able to bound in a hallway or jump to one wall to the next. You don’t actually need to use CGI to do that, and I think that’s a big push.”

Patrick Tatopoulos and his special effects studios were hired by Wiseman to bring the creatures of the Underworld to life. The two had met many years before on the set of Roland Emmerich’s StarGate. “I met in person Patrick when I was on StarGate,” Wiseman recalled, “working as a prop guy; and I fell in love with his design work and drawings in the art department.”

The fundamental intentions that drove Patrick Tatopoulos, much like in other cases, were to create an unique Werewolf design unlike any other seen precedently in a film. He also incorporated feline traits and influences into his design, believing they would add more agility and  dynamicity to the character. “We wanted to do something new and unique,” he said. “We didn’t want to do a type of wolf you see in every movie. The wolf suits had mechanical leg extensions and animatronic extensions for snarls and whatnot. I wanted to go something more catlike for the wolf. Obviously, werewolves are doglike, but I was going for something in between. Adding catlike qualities to a wolf [makes] for a more sleek look and a more agile animal.”

Original Lycan concepts.

Given a Werewolf is, by all intents and purposes, a hybrid of man and wolf, Tatopoulos and Wiseman decided to focus on this aspect of such concept. Unlike most movie Werewolves, the Underworld Lycans would not be heavily covered in fur. “I came to Patrick [and I said], ‘I really don’t want a lot of hair on these Wolves, because I actually want to see the structure,” Wiseman said. “I had seen a lot of stuff, faces of different creatures being built – and you look at the Werewolves, and you see the actual definition in the muscles. Then you put a bunch of hair all over and all that is lost, especially when you light it and it’s in the dark.” Patrick Tatopoulos was also inspired by the iconic special effects work provided by Rick Baker for John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. “I’ll tell you my inspiration,” the french Artist said to Latex Mask Central, “when I saw Rick Baker’s American Werewolf in London, I felt the best look to the Werewolf was during the transformation stage. Not the beginning or end, but the wolf somewhere in the middle. There was the wolf, somewhat scary and grotesque — and that’s what inspired me.” Tatopoulos would later pay homage to An American Werewolf in London with Lucian’s first onscreen transformation in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

The actual fur covering of the Lycans is minimal: a mane runs from the forehead down to the end of the back, and crests of fur were placed to highlight the jawline, arms and legs. It was also designed “to cover the rude bits.”

The Lycan maquette.

Once the Lycanthrope design reached its final appearence, construction of the suits began. Steve Wang sculpted the head and body of the creatures, aided by Norman Cabrera and Don Lanning. The skin of the Werewolves was made in foam latex. The hair of the Lycans is appropriately painted Yak hair; each individual hair had to be singlehandledly ‘punched’ into the foam skin and then sealed with sylicone. Steve Wang suggested to shave the body core down in order for the suits to fit more tightly on to the actor. “Gabe Bartalos was in charge of casting and molding the actors and creating the core for the suits,” said Tatopoulos. “We body casted one actor and we were able to extend that cast to fit the other actor, so we didn’t have to cast both actors for the chief wolf suits. Steve had a great idea that we shave down the body cast so that when we sculpt the suit on top of it, it will fit the actor very tight. Normally, you sculpt onto the lifecast and the suit fits loose, wrinkles and buckles in some places. Steve kept saying to sculpt smaller, sculpt smaller and as small as we did the suit, it still buckled around the waist, so Steve tailored the suit to fix these problems and I don’t know how he did it, but he did it very, very well.”

The main creature performers were Kurt Carley (who had precedently worked with Tatopoulos during the production of Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla) and Brian Steele; the actors had to put on a tight body core, on which an ‘animatronic vest’ , containing receptors and cables that controlled the head mechanisms, was placed. The actors would then be covered in surgical jelly in order to slide comfortably into the suits. The most difficult aspect was, however, the massive heat inside the costumes. “Although both Kurt and Brian are gymnasts,” said SFX supervisor Guy Himber to Fangoria, “it’s not about athleticism so much as tolerating the heat and discomfort for hours on end and being able to smile about it. It’s Sweat City in there!” Tatopoulos Studios had precedently used leg extensions for Godzilla — on both the adult and baby creature suits. The technology was refined for Underworld, and gave the actors the ability to perform more agile and stable movements.

Although it was Len Wiseman’s intention to use practical effects as much as possible, Underworld still needed its fair share of visual effects to achieve some of the planned sequences. The digital creatures were created by CFC (selected based on their work on the Dinotopia miniseries) and Framestore. Many shots of the film were planned as practical, but ultimately had to be aided by computer generated imagery. The most evident example of this is the ambush at the train station, when the Lycans attack to kill Amelia and the convoy. “There’s a shot where the Werewolves climb up to the top of the train, which we tried to do practically,” said James McQuaide, VFX supervisor of Underworld, “and soon, probably, the result of the practical attempt will be in the gag reel — because it looked absolutely horrendous. The creatures that flop up there looked very like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and just are comical. Len knew we could never use that — but it was a key shot to see these Werewolves on top of the train, so we went back to CFC in London and came up with the shot that is in the picture right now.” The shot was changed into the actual scene — the digital Lycans leaping up on the roof of the train.

The Werewolf ambush — before and after.

The Werewolf transformations were also achieved through computer generated imagery — and were a particularly complex process for the visual effects artists. The first step was to shoot both the actor and the suited Werewolf performer against a green screen plate, in separate shots. Framestore and CFC had at their disposition digital scans of Kevin Grevioux’s head and of the Werewolf heads — and from those they created a “morph that gave the sense, actually, of this Werewolf face growing out of the human face”. Although it was digital work, Len Wiseman gave directions to the visual effects artists, and told them to make their work as much like a practical effect as possible. “I wanted it to be shaky and look painful, I didn’t want it to be smooth,” the director said. “I actually told the [VFX] guys to try and make the transformation look as much like an animatronic effect as possible. it actually looked like there were guys in there with bladders and everything.”

The Lycanthropes of Underworld Evolution were, fundamentally, the creature suits built for the first film. They, however, displayed a considerable design innovation: the greatly increased quantity and volume of hair on their bodies. Such a change did not receive an explanation inside of the film universe, and finds its roots in actual production purposes. The filmmakers, fundamentally, chose practicality over aesthetics for the new Lycans. “The first batch of Werewolves we did for the first movie… the design, I think, Len was very pleased with,” Tatopoulos said, “but there were some issues. I tried to give them big necks — and then we realized those necks were very stiff. They did not allow the actor to move as well as he wanted to.” Len Wiseman later added: “I wanted much more mobility with them. I felt like I loved the design that we came up with, but at the end of the day there was a little bit of a… we had a big action figure that couldn’t move that much. And then so all of the joints and everything, we re-worked them to where they could move. Like when I’m casting the guy to play the monster himself – I like his movements, I don’t want to weigh him down and not allow his performance to come through.” The structure of the neck limited the movements of the performer inside the suit. Due to that reason, the neck of the Werewolves was redesigned to be slimmer, more comfortable and safe to move in. The fur covering on their bodies was consequently increased, in order to hide a gaping hole inside the neck. Previously, the performer was entirely covered in foam latex. Unadvertedly, perhaps, this change in the fur covering ignored, or contradicted the very intention behind the design of the first film. The material the necks were specifically made of was also changed: in place of foam latex, the special effects crew used spandex and sheet foam.

The leg extensions of the creature suits were also changed for practical purposes. Tatopoulos Studios refined the technology used for the first film, and enlarged the foot base to give the performers more stability, giving them the possibility to perform movements that were unable to be done with the former suits. An advanced and adjustable Y-shaped wirework on the back of the extensions enabled the legs to bend without particular effort. “A big issue we had from the first one was a really small footprint that we designed,” said Himber. “It looked really neat, but it was a practical piece. It did not really give the guys a strong platform to walk on. So one of the things we explored on this one before we even built the suits, we did some wider footprints and changed a few bits in the leg extensions. Once we got the performers were really happy with, we based the sculpts on what worked with the footpieces — kind of a reversal of the first one.”

In the flashback sequence at the beginning of the film, first generation Lycans are shown onscreen for the first time. Due to the viral and unpredictable nature of the disease, they do not trasform following a precise template, but rather sprout their mutations in different styles. Mid-transformation make-ups were applied on actors to portray the very first stages of the monstrous transformation. David Beneke provided the Lycan prosthetic teeth.

“…William, bitten by wolf, became the first and most powerful Lycan.”

Underworld: Evolution marked the first — and so far, only — onscreen appearence of William Corvinus, the original Werewolf and ‘viral’ father of all Lycans. Having inherited the peculiar, modified pest virus of the Father, William was contaminated by the bite of a common Wolf — which unadvertedly combined with the polymorphous virus. The unspeakable event created a raging, bloodthirsty killing machine, forever unable to return to its human form, and with no control over its savagery. In the first drafts for Underworld: Evolution, the character of William was originally conceived as a considerably different monster: the idea was that of an enormous, 14′ tall creature, that moved on all four limbs and only occasionally used bipedal stance. The massive size of the Werewolf was to be achieved through forced camera perspective and greenscreen. As production progressed, however, the idea was abandoned in favor of the 8′ tall William seen in the final film.

The original William maquette, showing quadrupedal position.

If the Lycans are halfway through the Werewolf transformation, the appearence of William is what results from the completion of the monstrous process. The son of Corvinus is the genetic and viral Ancestor of all Werewolves — and as such he is more beastly and primordial than the Lycans. Two types of creatures were distinguished by the filmmakers: the first generation Lycans, infected by William directly or indirectly, display the wolf-like snout and are unable to revert their transformation; raging beasts with no control over their animalistic instincts. The second generation Lycans, infected by Lucian directly or indirectly, inherit his ability to change back to human state. With age, they are also able to transform into their Werewolf form at will.

“In a sense, [William is] a more traditional Werewolf as you know them,” said Tatopoulos, “with a more wolf-like head.” Len Wiseman added: “Patrick and I actually went through a lot of designs, in drawing the jawline, and making it look very frightening and sort of bulky — it had to look mean, and not the pointy Wile E. Coyote look, which happens quite a bit.” The director further elaborated the concept in an interview: “we’ve got one [William] that’s much more in the traditional Werewolf vein. He’s a little bit more of a snout, just has more of a wolf presence than the other ones. I really wanted to make a point that in the first film I didn’t want them to have the long snouts. I really wanted them to have the different style because we hadn’t seen that before. I’d seen that look quite a bit. But then this character that’s in this film dates back further and so his evolution process — we wanted it to feel like it was a little bit closer to the wolf.”

William was created as a single hero suit, sculpted by Steve Wang in all of its components.  Brian Steele performed inside the suit for all the scenes involving the original Werewolf. Three puppeteers were needed to control the mechanisms of the creature’s head — which again featured moving ears, opening and closing mouth, snarling lips and snout, and moving eyelids.

In opening sequence, where the capture of William is shown at the hand of several vampires (displaying the strength of such a beast), the hero suit for the character was not completely finished for shooting yet — as its hair was not yet properly treated. Due to that reason, it was filmed with quick cuts to hide its imperfections — something eased by the background covered in snow. In the final film, it is practically impossible to notice the differences. For William’s death, Tatopoulos Studios created a practical extension of the suit, which was to be ripped apart for William’s gruesome demise at the hands of Michael Corvin.

Both William and the other Lycans of Underworld: Evolution were occasionally brought to the screen with their digital model counterparts, created by Luma Pictures (which provided the digital backgrounds for the first film). One specific shot of William’s jump combined the computer generated model and the suit itself — seamlessly going from the former to the latter as the creature lands.

7 ‘first generation’ Werewolf suits and only one hero animatronic head were built for the third chapter of the Underworld series, Rise of the Lycans. They were based on the moulds used for the creation of the William suit for the second film. William’s white fur was a peculiarity of the character — he was the White Wolf of the pack. Guy Himber also referred to him as an Albino. The Werewolves of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans went back to color schemes tending to black and brown tones. The single hero head was actually the William suit’s head used in the precedent film, appropriately repainted with the new Werewolf color scheme.

As precedently mentioned, it was actually estabilished in the third film that all the first generation Werewolves all presented a similar appearence to William; in the second film, they were portrayed with the ‘standard’ second generation Lycan suits. The Werewolves seen in the flashback in Underworld: Evolution did not fully trasform yet.

Three Lycan suits were used — and were, again, retreated models from the previous film, with further addition of fur covering. Brian Steele and Kurt Carley returned as the main creature performers.

Much like in its predecessors’ case, many shots in the film were planned as practical but later changed to computer generated imagery. As an example, the Werewolf killed with a crossbow hit “looked like dragging a muppet”. The filmmakers were unsatisfied with the result and changed the shot of the monster falling forward into a digital sequence — cutting to the creature suit lying on the ground. Similarly, the meeting of Lucian and Werewolves was heavily modified with the addition of computer generated shots, as opposed to the wholly practical original sequence. The french CGI company Duboi joined Luma to create the numerous digital Werewolves for the film. Both companies animated the Werewolves differently: where Duboi infused more elegant movements into the creatures, Luma made them more brutal. Eventually, the filmmakers decided that the movement choreography should be something in-between those two styles. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is so far the film of the series with the most digital Werewolves in a single sequence: the climax featured over 500 computer generated creatures, running towards the fortress of the Vampires.

Patrick Tatopoulos and his special effects Studios did not return to provide effects for the fourth chapter of the series, Underworld: Awakening. Although the french Artist was attached to the production of the 2012 Total Recall film, he managed to create designs for two of the new Lycan ‘types’ introduced in the film — the ‘Tunnel’ Lycan and the ‘Uber’ Lycan. MastersFX replaced Tatopoulos Studios in creating the new practical effects for the film; Todd Masters, the founder of the company, had precedent experiences with Werewolves in the production of Howling VI: The Freaks. Underworld: Awakening is, so far, the most visual effects heavy film of the series: most of the creature sequences were completely computer generated. Luma Pictures brought the digitally generated Werewolves to the screen, remaining as the only CGI company with all four Underworld films on its track record. Given the predominance of visual effects, the practical work was relatively limited compared to the preceding films.

For the first time since Underworld, new sculpts for the Lycans were created — based on production photographs of maquettes and suits from the first film. The design, again, underwent some cosmetic changes: different angles and details in the facial structures were added, the ribcage and pectoral muscles were made more pronounced, and the fur on the neck was decreased in mass and length. Certain changes were also applied to the overall color scheme of the creatures, which now featured a darker nose area and different patterns. MastersFX built three Lycan suits, two of which were provided with mechanized hero heads.

Richard Cetrone and Dan Payne were the main creature performers. Due to advancements in technology, where the previous films needed three to four puppeteers to control the movements of a single Lycan head, only one was needed for each creature in Underworld: Awakening. It was also the first film for which no leg extensions were used: to increase the height of the Lycans for certain shots, MastersFX used rough stilts. Appearences of the full practical Lycans featured dead creatures, portrayed by stunt models.

A lot of the difficulty in creating the new Lycans came from the fact Underworld: Awakening was the first film of the series to be shot using 3D filming technology: “Since this was our first major 3D project,” Masters said, “we had to discipline ourselves into a quick learning curve, while we figured out just exactly how our practical FX work was going to appear on-screen. This process involves such an amazing level of data, every detail of our work was going to be suspect—it was like looking at our work under a magnifying glass. Every detail was heightened, and we even had to modify the coloring and design of some of our creatures to satisfy the discerning eyeball of the 3D camera.”

The painted Tunnel Lycan maquette.

Underworld: Awakening adds new subtypes of Lycanthropes to the series’ mythos. The first introduced in the film are the so-called ‘Tunnel’ Lycans. “Albino and emaciated, these creatures live in the subway tunnels and are sick with disease,” said Steve Wang of the new Werewolves. Underworld: Awakening‘s storyline is set 15 years after humans discovered the existence of both Lycans and Vampires. The formers were pushed to the verge of extinction, and certain groups of them tried to hide in the most obscure places. The Tunnel Lycans are found in sewers. They are albino, and due to an unknown disease, their bodies are plagued with bladders. Steve Wang sculpted the maquette of the Tunnel Lycan — based on a Tatopoulos design — which was then digitally scanned to create the computer generated creature. Although the monsters were brought to the screen with digital models for the most part, MastersFX built a specific practical model for the scene where Eve rips a Lycan’s head apart.

The Uber Lycan maquette.

The giant ‘prototype’ Werewolf, Quint, was created with genetic engineering by Antigen as an attempt to give the species a renewed glory. Nicknamed the ‘Über’ Lycan by the filmmakers, the Monster stands 12′ tall; it heals without the need to consume more blood first, and is able to control its transformation — changing only certain parts of his body, like a hand, at will. The maquette of the Werewolf was again sculpted by Steve Wang and based on a Tatopoulos design. The computer generated model, however, applied some modifications to the design, including different lines and angles and a more prominent fur covering.

Stephen Rea in the Lycan make-up.

Doctor Jacob Lane tried to genetically alter himself like he previously did with his son, and although he also could heal similarly, at the same time he achieved different results. The ‘Scientist’ Lycan (no official nickname was given to this new design) is a more humanoid Werewolf, and probably a homage to the early Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman films. It was created by MastersFX as full make-up on Stephen Rea, with digital enhancements — mainly for the wounds.

For more images of the Werewolves, visit the film-specific Monster Galleries:

• Underworld
• Underworld: Evolution
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
• Underworld: Awakening

Pictures of the Michael hybrid will be uploaded once an article covers the subject.

Pictures of Markus and the Michael hybrid will be added once an article covers those subjects.

Peter Benchley’s Creature is a miniseries based on Peter Benchley’s White Shark — published in 1994. The novel was subsequently re-released with the same title as a tie-in with the film. The producer of the film, Richard Lewis, was adamant about the title change. He explained to Fangoria: “I hated the title White Shark. I just felt it was misleading — it isn’t a shark, it’s an amphibious creature. So I respectfully disagreed with Peter’s publisher when I optioned the material and they wanted to sell it as White Shark. I think Peter Benchley’s Creature is a more accurate description of what it is.”

The immediately precedent adaptation of a Benchley novel — The Beast, always made for the television market — was critically panned, but the producer felt that in this case there was more potential for a good film. He was also intrigued by the idea of a hybrid monster that would not be dangerous just in water — but could continue stalking its victims on land. Lewis explained: “my wife grew up in Australia, and she said that the first time she heard a shark horn on the beach, she grabbed her bag and ran up the beach and across the parking lot, until she realized, ‘wait a minute, this thing can’t come out of the water!’ That stuck in my head. And Peter Benchley came up with a tag line for this, having done Jaws. You know, with Jaws 2 it was ‘just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…’. This is ‘now… you’re not safe anywhere.’ The concept of an amphibious creature that comes out of the water onto land and is capable of being bipedal is pretty scary.”

In the novel, the humanoid Shark monster, which also included Dolphin DNA in it, was brought to life by an insane nazist scientist. This and some other aspects of the creature’s origin and story were modified. Lewis commented on the changes and ideas of the film: “the core story’s the same, but what I really tried to thread through it was a more credible underpinning to science. I was a biology major at Berkeley, so — a little knowledge is a dangerous thing — but I certainly called people that I knew in various departments there to talk about how early genetic engineering would work. Could you take varied species and cross-fertilize them, so to speak? And actually more interesting was an expression that was pounded into me in my biology classes, which is ‘Ontogony recapitulates biologony’. A lot of big words, but what it means simply is that during the embryonic growth in mammals, the organism goes through every stage of evolution of that organism in the nine-month birthing process. So what I was positing is, what if you actually took a human and stopped the process at a certain point? If, at the development of three months in the embryo, you burned out some genetic material so the brain wouldn’t progress the same [way], but the organism is allowed to continue growing to term?”

Lewis refers to an actual biological hypothesis, labeled as the Recapitulation theory. Following this line of thought, in the development process from embryo to fully formed individual, an animal would go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of its more or less remote ancestors. As of today, the recapitulation theory is not anymore considered potentially correct — although there effectively is a period in the development process of an embryo where it its morphology is influenced by its phylogenetic position. Lewis continues: “That is something that wasn’t in Peter’s book, but I thought it was a fascinating concept. It’s a fun area to play with: do we really have gills? Do we really have a tail? Do we really have fins? It’s a half-step fantasy, but it’s really not more of a half-step than Jurassic Park. So that was the science I wanted to imbue into the story that I don’t think Peter had the opportunity to develop. I discussed it with him before we went forward, and he said, ‘wow, that’s a lot better than what I have!’ He’s a fairly self-effacing guy.”

Veteran Monster Makers Stan Winston Studios was hired to bring the Shark-oid creature to life. Winston had precedently collaborated with the producers with the production of A Gnome named Gnorm — which he directed. He was also an enthusiast of Peter Benchley’s work; he himself even considered directing at one point, according to Lewis: “he was circling around directing this at one point,” he said, “and then he was a little bit intimidated: it’s a fairly big undertaking, and he’s got his deal at DreamWorks. But he said, ‘Richard, if you’re gonna do an amphibious movie, I have to do it.’ And I said, ‘oh, I can’t afford you; I can’t afford the scope of a T.Rex.’ And he said, ‘well, we’ll work it out.’ And he was true to his word, because his team loves to do this, they didn’t want someone to come and do a really shitty job of it.” Lewis also felt for the special effects team, due to the budget and time restraints they were going to challenge: “I think this was hard for him and his guys,” he continued, “because we do movies — certainly the big-scope movies — in around 100 days, and this was a 50-day schedule, so everybody had to tighten up a little bit.”

Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery designed the Creature, with total freedom over its actual appearence — obviously under input from the director Stuart Gillard and producer Richard Lewis. The final design displays quite humanoid traits, such as the shoulders. Winston Studios did not want to bring to the screen a simple design. The special effects artist said: “what you don’t want to end up with is a ‘guppy man,’ — you don’t want it to be a fish with legs. So to come up with a design that balances out and looks right — that obviously has elements of shark and elements of humanity in it — is a difficult concept to attack. But we did so with fervor, and Crash did a beautiful job of conceptualizing the character.”

Lewis also commented on the design: “it’s not a shark that’s walking on land. it really has very little to do with a shark. We wanted to try to fool the audience into thinking it could be in the beginning, but then it becomes quite clear that it isn’t. it’s bipedal, but it’s primordial, and Stan doesn’t pull any punches.” Gillard added: “You know, when you hear the premise about a shark that walks on land, you go, ‘whoa, man, what’s this gonna look like?’ And that’s why I didn’t come aboard until I knew Stan Winston was involved. Given the history I have with the production company, I knew we’d have quality going in, but with the creature being the star, I really wanted to make sure that it was scary and not laughable, and I knew that with Stan we’d have something good.”

Once the final design was actually selected, the full-size sculpture of the Creature was undertaken by Nick Marra and William Basso. The hands were sculpted by Rob Ramsdell, who was also responsible for the final paint scheme of the Monster’s skin. The Creature was then fabricated by a crew headed by Beth Hathaway. Richard Landon and Jon Dawe, among others, were instead in charge for the mechanical features of the animatronic head. Brian Steele performed inside the Monster suit, in what was one of his first roles as a suit performer (the first being The Relic a year before).

On set, Crash McCreery aids Brian Steele as the Monster.

The head of the Creature was puppeteered both via radio-control servomechanisms and the performer’s actual head. Quite obviously, the mechanisms had to be waterproof — for filming sequences where the Monster would rise from the waters of the ocean. Its dorsal fin was cable-operated and actually ‘collapsible’, meaning it could go into ‘idle’ position when not in use — much like a frill. Rough leg extensions were used for the few shots where the Creature is seen fully.

The swimming stage of the Creature, still devoid of arms and legs, was obtained from the mould of the land Creature sculpture — which was appropriately reassembled. On the side of the ‘underwater’ Creature, growing arms on the underside are already visible, as well as bulges on the side suggesting legs. The arms would in fact grow in the area under the pectoral fins, which are still visible in the land stage of the Monster. The animatronic featured rough mechanisms for the scenes featuring this underwater stage.

The ‘underwater’ creature. Notice the growing arms resting on the underside of the Monster, and bulges from which the legs will sprout out.

For the Creature’s gruesome demise, a combination of computer generated imagery applied on the suit and practical guts and fluids were used.

For more images of Peter Benchley’s Creature, visit the Monster Gallery.

“As the flashlight beam hits it, MBWUN roars and looks up. Now we see it clearly for the first time. The monster is MASSIVE, putrid, rank. Slit reptilian green eyes are rimmed in red. A ridge of stiff black hair rises on the creature’s buffalo-like humped back. The withers are muscled and covered with plates. A forked TONGUE licks out as purple lips draw back exposing razor sharp teeth. The claws raise up to fend off the light.” This is how the reveal of the Kothoga plays out in Amy Holden Jones’ The Relic script draft, written in 1995. Since the beginning, the description of the Mbwun for the film adaptation of The Relic was vague — and did not follow closely the design described in the novel. The creature originally retained its original name, which means ‘He who walks on all fours’. It was later renamed to ‘Kothoga’ (for reasons currently unknown), which in the novel is the name of the tribe that worships Mbwun. The original Monster, as conceived by the authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, could be described shortly as a chimaera: a hybrid of a primate and a reptile, with “extreme posterior-anterior dimorphism”, and its skin covered in pelt and fur, as well as scales and ostheoderms. Its key characteristics were the three fingered hands with “tripiramidal claws”, and its glowing red eyes that pierced the darkness of the Museum alleys — encased in a ‘flattened’, somehow primate-esque head. The creature, due to its nocturnal nature, had poor eyesight and relied on its advanced sense of smell to hunt; it was also described as having a heavy breathing sound, which was compared to a ‘horse with cold’. This aspect was one of the few to be maintained in the film adaptation.

“Pendergast hesitated a moment before answering. ‘I’ve got a better view of it this time. It’s big, it’s massive. Wait, it’s turning this way… Good Lord it’s a horrible sight, its flattened face, small red eyes, thin fur on the upper body. Just like the figurine.’”
-Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, The Relic

Stan Winston Studios brought the hypothalamus-consuming beast of the film adaptation of The Relic to life. The special effects house was hired even before director Peter Hyams was attached to the project; due to that reason, the design process began simply from taking the basic concept from the novel of an amalgam of different animal species, without specifically adhering to the original description. The design evolved on its own with considerable artistic freedom, save for its size. Stan Winston told Cinefex: “we knew that the creature would be a genetic mixup – part human, part mammal, part reptile. So there was a certain design freedom there. But there was no freedom in regards to the character’s size. It was important storywise that he be enormous – at least seven feet tall, with an equally large body mass. He had to be that big in order to rip people’s heads off and eat their brains – which I thought was a wonderful character element. A character that ripped heads off and ate brains was definitely something I want to be a part of developing.”

Early Kothoga concept art by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery.

The Kothoga was designed by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery.  In its initial incarnations, the artist wanted to infuse the creature with both feline and human aspects. He commented: “we knew Kothoga should be fierce and ruthless, but also a very intelligent creature. I used a lion as the foundation of Kothoga’s design because I believe lions to be more than just voracious eating machines. A lion is a bright, cunning animal, as opposed to, say, a great white shark.” Other details were taken from reference images of horses and alligators. The feline outline was kept for the final design, but many other aspects were progressively discarded once Hyams was attached to the project. By the time he arrived, several different conceptual ideas were ready on paper. The initial designs were striving for a more elegant outline, but Hyams wanted another kind of appearence for the character; ultimately, he decided that the Kothoga should be a creature of absolutely horrific and unpleasant appearence. He said: “Every choice they presented was terrific and seductive – but some of them were almost too beautiful. If you’re stuck in a room with a tiger, you’re going to be scared because chances are you’re going to die; but you won’t be able to help but notice that the tiger is beautiful. He may be lethal, but he’s also gorgeous. I told Stan and Crash that Kothoga couldn’t be like that. I thought Kothoga should be so horrible to look at that if you were stuck in a room with him, at some point you would think, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, just kill me and get it over with.”

Applying this fundamental concept, McCreery designed the Kothoga’s head after what he personally found among the most frightening and horrifying animals — spiders. He told Cinefex: “to me, spiders are the most repulsive creatures in the world. So I took the basic shape of a spider and used that for the outline of Kothoga’s head. The big spider abdomen is the upper half of his head; the spider legs are the mandibles that come out of his jaws; and, like a spider, Kothoga’s eyes have no pupils. The spider shape of the head is subliminal — but when an image reminds you of something that really repels you, you can’t help but be affected by that image in some way, regardless of whether you’re aware of it or not.”

Kothoga head concept by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery. The final design added a more prominent mane on the dorsal side of the neck. Notice the subtle Spider silhouette ‘encased’ in the head.

The final Kothoga design was over 15 feet long, for 6 feet of height. Its mouth was fitted with 40 teeth of varying sizes, from the smallest ones to the skull-piercing fangs, and a long, forked tongue. A mane ran down the creature’s dorsal region of the torso and lumbar section — the only remaining part of the more prominent fur covering of the original Mbwun. Its scales and ostheoderms, as well as its overall bodily color scheme, were based on alligators and crocodiles — whereas the head presented warmer mammalian tones. In the midst of production, the eyes were also given pupils. “I remember the director, Peter Hyams, was discussing the look of the eyes,” said Jason Barnett, part of the crew. “I cringed when he grabbed a Sharpie marker and began drawing pupils onto the animatronic head. Stan just rolled with it.” The sharpie marks were later removed by the crewmembers, and the eyes were appropriately repainted.

To justify the creature’s ability to climb on walls, the Kothoga was also gifted with enormous claws; McCreery said: “the story demanded that Kothoga climb a wall in the museum. At first, everyone was thinking suction cups on the feet, but I didn’t think that would look very cool.” McCreery and effects supervisor Christopher Swift gave the creature what they labeled as ‘inverted Raptor toes’, sickle-shaped claws on the external toes of the feet. Ironically enough, in the final film the Kothoga would climb the wall by simply pressing its feet on it — suggesting gecko-like footpads. In the film — following the novel — Hemidactylus turcicus (the mediterranean House Gecko) is found among the DNA sources of the plant virus. In addition to that, however, animals such as a Tiger and a Stag Beetle are also shown. As usual for Winston Studios, the most important aspect of bringing the creature to the screen was to make it a believable and realistic creature. Winston said: “it was part of our job to take all of these obscure elements and put them together so that they made sense. We had to take all the diverse details of hair, skin, claws and mandibles — details that each had a life and character of its own — and bring them together so that it all looked natural. A creature should always look as if the Man Upstairs had something to do with it, and Kothoga has that quality. He doesn’t look like a mutation.”

Concept art of the final creature in sideview, by Crash McCreery.

A relatively restricted pre-production and production time prevented Winston Studios from building a fully mechanized animatronic or puppet rig. Ultimately, the special effects artists chose to bring the Kothoga to the screen as a performer inside a suit. Winston said: “not only did Kothoga have to make a lot of extreme moves – he also had to act. Because of that and our rather short preproduction schedule — under five months, which is not much for a creature like this — we decided to go with a man-in-a-suit design. That way, the movement of the creature could be motivated by an actor, while only the articulation of the head and face would have to be created through robotics.”

A fundamental issue that became apparent, almost immediately, when the crew started engineering the structure of the suit, was that the Kothoga was not designed to accomodate a suit performer inside of it — both for its proportions and its sheer size. In fact, Peter Hyams found it imperative to have an “advanced” design that would not even resemble a man in a suit. A body cast of performer Vincent Hammond was used as the base for the full-scale sculpture. A particularly complex cast, as it had to be done whilst Hammond was fitted with the leg and arm extensions; his head was cast separately. The fiberglass cast was then sectioned and used as the under structure of the sculptures of the Kothoga’s various body parts, which were re-assembled and given final details. Time costraints forced the sculptors to use water-based clay, as opposed to oil-based clay; this proved to be an issue, because the water-based clay “always has to be covered and kept wet,” Swift said. “Otherwise it dries, cracks and, unlike oil-based clays, shrinks.” Wire was applied to the fiberglass molds in order for the clay to adhere more consistently. The Kothoga, in all of its body parts, was sculpted by Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery, Christopher Swift, Jackie Gonzales and David Monzingo.

The Kothoga in early stages of sculpting.

Once the sculpture was finished, it was de-assembled again and moulded in foam latex, to create the Monster’s scaly hide. Yak hair was punched onto the back portion, as well as the head and mandible parts. Fangs and mandibles were casted separately in rigid foam, and then skinned in polyurethane resin. A total of 3 Kothoga suits — nicknamed ‘Bob’ on set — were built: 2 hero suits, as well as a stunt suit. The latter was used in certain shots of the underwater sequences and for when the Kothoga is set on fire in the climax of the film. Both arms and legs featured mechanical extensions, engineered by mechanical designer Kirk Skodis. The Kothoga’s massive head and neck, with full motion of all its components, included animatronic mechanisms devised by mechanical designers Rich Haugen and Al Sousa. The abdomen could inflate and deflate through a bladder system to simulate breathing. Haugen scanned McCreery’s final drawing of the creature into a CAD system, and reduced the scan to a simple outline; from there, three-quarters of an inch were calculated as the thickness of the suit skin, and the position of the actor’s head in relation to the creature’s body was estabilished — a foot below the Kothoga’s withers. This outline was used as the template for the mechanical understructure of the suit.

The Kothoga’s head — before the mandible teeth and mane are attached.

Particular focus was given to the motion of the head and neck of the Kothoga. Haugen commented on the process, saying that “Kothoga had a massive neck, like a buffalo — so I knew that he wouldn’t be whipping his head around with great speed. However, he did have to be able to look behind himself and to raise his head up to stare down at his victims, the way a bear does when it’s up on its hind legs.” Haugen designed the mechanical structure of this section of the creature, which featured servo-powered mechanisms that enabled a wide array of movements. Haugen continues: “the trickiest part of the mechanical design was getting the neck to move all the way up or all the way down without its mechanisms hitting the actor in the head.” In order to make the structure lighter for the performer to support, it was built in aluminium — restricting the weight to 45 pounds. Three puppeteers operated the head, and two maneuvered the tail, which was manually driven by wire pulls. The arm extensions were cable-driven; two puppeteers were needed to control the movement of the Kothoga’s fingers.

All three suits were wire-rigged in order to portray the feline leaps of the Kothoga. Due to the mostly quadrupedal position of the creature — and consequently, of the suit performer — a standard ‘flying’ harness could not be used. A solution was found, however, as explained by Swift: “ultimately, we came up with a system that was based on a flight jacket. It incorporated a customized set of pants that were connected to a harness with straps. A metal plate mounted to the back of the jacket held an interlocking bolt system for securing the actor to the suit.” The Kothoga was performed by Hammond and known creature actor Brian Steele, in what was his first performance as a creature actor. John Alexander, an animal behaviorist, was hired as a consultant for the Kothoga’s movements;  the actors spent a total of 3 months learning how to perform with the arm and leg extensions, as well as creating a beast-like vibe in their movements. The suit was extremely complex to wear and perform in. In order for the actor to fit inside, the suit was first hung in semi-horizontal position; the actor would have to climb inside, through the abdomen area, and get set into position. The suit would then be lowered on the actor’s back, until the plate on the jacket and the plate inside the suit were effectively aligned. A hatch in the back of the suit would then be opened, with crewmembers aiding the performer in sliding the suit bolt into the jacket lock. Arms and legs were finally attached to the structure. Due to the heavy shooting schedules, the actors were needed to stay inside the suits for many hours; fans were installed inside, and fresh air was constantly piped inside the structure via a third lung, “kind of like the setup of a diving suit,” Haugen said. Swift commented in The Winston Effect the sheer complexity of achieving the suit: “It was very difficult to make this wonderful design Crash had come up with work as a real character. It was very hard to configure a human being into a suit that in no way accomodated sticking a human being inside of it.”

The Kothoga’s hide in the process of painting.

Once on set, the Kothoga expectedly proved to be complex to shoot, and particularly difficult for the suit performers. Swift said in The Winston Effect: “it was really difficult for the performers. They were in a bad position, putting all their weight on arm extensions and leg extensions, which was very uncomfortable. To deal with it, Vincent would start reciting from The Prophet when he was in there — which sounded pretty funny coming from this horrible monster!”. The experience was rather difficult for the actors, due to the fact the Kothoga, as a design, was detached from a human shape, save for its vaguely humanoid shoulders — which in turn were far wider than any human’s. “I felt bad when the guys came back from the set talking about how miserable it was to work with this character,” McCreery admitted in The Winston Effect, “I had tried to give Peter Hyams something very different; but, ultimately, I designed something without considering the actor inside it. It was a real lesson in how careful I had to be when I was executing a design. If you’re telling people to follow a drawing, that drawing had better be right, and it had better work mechanically and practically. I learned a lot on The Relic — I just wish I’d learned it without people suffering!”

Certain scenes thought to be difficult were ultimately easier to shoot than those thought to be relatively simple. Winston explained to Cinefex: “things you think are going to be easy often end up being very difficult, and things you think are going to be impossible often turn out to be easy. In The Relic, there was a shot near the climax of the picture in which Kothoga has Penelope Ann Miller pinned up against a dumbwaiter — a fairly simple performance moment that only involved the head. But because of all the metal work around that part of the set, we had a horrible time with radio interference, and that created problems for the radio-control head. So this seemingly simple performance became difficult. On the other hand, shots I thought would be nearly impossible we got on the first take.” For certain scenes, components of the hero suits — such as the head, or the right arm — were used singlehandledly.

“There was a moment during shooting when Kothoga was supposed to walk past an enormous museum display with zebras and lions on it. The creature was just standing there by the diorama, waiting to perform; and, to me, he looked as if he belonged there as much as any other animal.”
-Stan Winston, Cinefex #69

Hyams generally preferred working with the practical Kothoga on set; he said: “from a directing point of view, it is always preferable to work live, with something right there on the set. In order to get to know Kothoga, I had to have him there on the set. I could physically walk around him, get right up next to him, stroke him, stare at him, change the light on him — the way I would with anything else I was shooting.” Despite this fact, Hyams knew from the very beginning that the Kothoga suit would be unable to perform certain agile movements from the script — including the already-mentioned sequence where the creature climbs a wall, and scenes where the Monster runs rampant. Due to that reason, VIFX from Los Angeles — a team of 40 artists headed by Greg McMurry — was hired to create the film’s 20 shots featuring a digital counterpart for the Kothoga. Digital effects supervisor John DesJardin started searching for a software system that would allow the team to appropriately render and animate the digital Kothoga. Ultimately, the team devised a pipeline system, that used different softwares for the various components of the digital shots. DesJardin said to Cinefex: “we would animate skeletons in Softimage, create skin deformation — such as the wiggle and jiggle of flesh and muscles — in Alias/Wavefront, and render in RenderMan, with Prisms doing the interface between all of the separate packages. It seemed nightmarish at first, but we were able to develop the glue to stick it all together, and we ended up with a very efficient production channel.” This system still required certain modifications, in order for the information to be successfully transferred from one program to the other. For example, a specific program was created to ‘translate’ the data created in Softimage for Alias. With this expedient, “if the bones of an arm were animated in Softimage, Alias would reinterpret how the bones moved — and then correctly interpret how the muscle movement of the arm should look. That was a satisfactory result, since at this point in the process it was only necessary to see the skin surface deforming.”

With the pipeline system finished, the visual effects team was ready to work on the model itself. Many of the early animation tests used a raw model the visual effects artists affectionately called ‘Kothoga Michelins’, due to their resemblance to the Michelin mascot. The final digital Kothoga was obtained by scanning a physical model, in turn based on mould portions of the practical sculpture — provided by Swift. The arrangement was initially confusing, as explained by VIFX model shop supervisor Scott Schneider: “we’d get something in for a few days, then have to send it back. I got all of Kothoga’s anatomy in bits and pieces — portions of legs, separate claws, fangs — so I spent a lot of time scratching my head, trying to figure out what was supposed to go with what.” The VIFX model was cast in self-skinning polyfoam, a ‘tougher’ material that eased the digitizing process. The scanned model proved to be too complex to load, and ultimately had to be “derezzed”, and as such lose a lot of its surface detail. Much like a practical skin, the seams between the digital model pieces had to be hidden. After that, deformation was applied to the model to recreate the bulging of the Kothoga’s muscular system. The skin detail was created in PowerAnimator using reference photographs of the practical suits, with the color scheme matched using 3D paint packages such as Amazon.

The creature was animated using the suit performance as its basic reference. VIFX was also influenced by footage of tigers and lions for the Kothoga’s agile and powerful movements. “I wanted Kothoga to move like a combination between a big cat, a lizard and a spider,” said modeler Eric Jennings, “I especially wanted him to have the crouching, prowling motion of a big cat. The problem became how to attach Kothoga’s tail to that sort of motion so it would look right. We just had to go with whatever seemed appropriate, shot to shot. As we experimented digitally, we found that if Kothoga moved too quickly, he tended to look small — it miniaturized him. So a lot of the digital movements were slow and calculating.”

The Kothoga’s powerful tail in action.

Certain scenes required only a digital extension — like the Kothoga’s forked tongue in the scene where it licks Margo. One of the most difficult scenes to animate was the one featuring the Kothoga when it chases a police officer, grabs him by the shoulders and violently rips his head off. This scene was animated by Bill Dietrich. The actor playing the officer was placed on a greenscreen, with the same sequence filmed on the set. A digital cop was ‘switched’ with the actor at the right moment, with a smooth transition, enabling the digital Kothoga to grab his head and brutally rip it off. In another, the Kothoga climbed up stairs, where “the camera shot the creature through the staircase from behind,” said compositing supervisor Cheryl Budgett. “When the animation was put in, it covered up the stairs. We had to work really carefully on those mattes to keep in details such as his claws hanging over the edge of the stairs. It was a very blurry scene, which made our job even harder.”

The most complex scene to animate, however, was the one that featured the Kothoga chasing Margo, effortlessly bursting through doors and walls in the process. A real motion-control cart — painted in orange to ease its replacement with the CGI creature — was used to burst through the walls. “We built an iron replica of the creature,” McMurry said, “and painted it day-glo orange. We positioned black lights around the set, and then pulled the heavy replica through the offices using a computer-controlled cable linked to the camera. In postproduction, we could then cut a hole wherever we saw orange and animate our computer-generated Kothoga in those areas.” Given the cart’s movement was controlled by the computer, the visual effects artists knew at what speed the creature had to move. The final shot also included more computer generated debris, such as scattered pieces of glass and wood.

The Kothoga, right before its fiery death (but seemingly not caring for its body going on fire).

As a last minute addition, Peter Hyams decided that the monster’s death should be more spectacular — and that the audience had to believe such a menacing creature like the Kothoga really died. In the novel, the Mbwun was killed with a bullet shot in the eye (the creature’s skull was too thick to damage); in the tradition of Jaws, the death was rescripted for the film, as being caused by an enormous explosion — which completely annihilates the Kothoga, blowing him apart. The specific explosion shot was obtained with a combination of practical and digital effects; an effort by Schneider and special effects supervisor Gary Elmendorf. A wax cast of the creature’s head and torso was made, and fitted with primacord. The practical explosion was filmed, and then digitally composited and enhanced with fire elements in post-production. The practical effects team quickly sculpted and moulded (in latex) the remains of the creature, which included a shredded ribcage, charred guts and a broken mandible.

For more images of the Kothoga, visit the Monster Gallery.

Special thanks to Emiliano Ranzani for providing the early Kothoga concept.

Main Article: Kothoga

During the Cold War, a thirteenth century abbey is found in the Carpathian mountains of Romania; what the finders do not know is that said abbey had been built over the entrance of an immeasurable underground cave complex. A seal over the entrance was supposed to keep the demons of the caverns underground, but when the researchers enter the abbey, it shatters after the research team tries to use explosives; a landslide seals them in the caves. Thirty years later, a research team re-discovers the buried ruins of the abbey, and with that, its monstrous secret. What is found in the cave system are creatures infected by a parasitic organism; once it enters its host’s bloodstream, it reproduces quickly — and injects a virus that stimulates radical anatomical changes in the host’s anatomy, progressively making it develop monstrous, semi-evolutionary adaptations to the environment the parasite itself originated from and evolved (“in total isolation”) in: the underground cave system.

The design of the Monsters was assigned to Patrick Tatopoulos and his special effects house. Wide creative freedom was given to the team. Guy Himber, shop supervisor, said in a featurette: “the script gave an idea of where it wants to go, but all of the creature development happens with us, because the guy who’s writing the script is only suggesting things. He might not have an idea of what the creature looks like; he just knows it’s a thing, it’s in a cave and flies, it has a bat quality to it, but that’s as far as he’s taken it.” With this basic outline, the main antagonists of the film — the mutated researchers — were conceived with a vaguely humanoid outline, underlining their origin. Tatopoulos himself tends to infuse his creature designs with humanoid traits. “the most scary creatures I’ve seen, ever, are creatures with… a bit of humanity to them,” he said in a featurette. “Look at Alien, look at Predator. Those are iconic creatures. There’s a bit of an anthropomorphic shape to them, they look ferally human. Those are the most fascinating creatures.” The Monsters, in fact, retain humanoid shoulders and arms, as well as vestigial molars in their internal jaws. Initially, director Bruce Hunt also wanted to include an exoskeleton in the design, but the idea was ultimately discarded.

Concept art by Patrick Tatopoulos.

When conceiving what exact adaptations the creatures would feature, Tatopoulos infused the mutants with traits that seemed to be actual products of evolution. “It’s actually a very interesting thing,” he said. “It’s almost like creating an evolution in some way, due to how the things change.” A generally pale color scheme was the first choice; a lot of effort was put into exactly what combination of pale colors would be most adapt to the film’s photography. The creatures also feature a unique echolocation system. “I thought of the way in which the body could adapt to this new environment,” he said, “which is composed of ​​tunnels, narrow and submerged caves, and total darkness. First off, I imagined a system of echolocation similar to that of bats. To move in the dark, these creatures should be able to see their environment. So I endowed them with a kind of crest, the purpose of which is to send and receive the frequencies of echolocation. This system is encased in the head, which has mutated to house it. The brain is exposed, and the eardrums have changed and developed into the creatures’ specialized sonar. The parietal and frontal skull bones, instead, have developed a hollow space; while still mantaining their function of protecting the brain, they now act also as a resonance box — enabling the propagation of the acoustic impulses emitted by the sonar organ. Each Creature also has a different cowl design, ranging from a smooth, hollow dome to a crest with three horns — with at least 3 different configurations in the final film. The horned design was conceived for the ‘leader’ creature. The cowls were also used by the Monsters to ram stalactites in order to shatter them and make them fall — with deadly results.

A key element of the design was the inclusion of wings, something Hunt was adamant about. “Wings are not an obvious choice,” Tatopoulos said, “when you live in a cave, in a small corner. I don’t see why you would have wings down there; if you need to escape you don’t need wings. But the fact that Bruce told me, ‘I want gigantic caves,’ then it started to make sense.” He also addressed the issue of having to move with wings in an environment like an underground tunnel. He told SFX magazine: “at the same time, I designed the wings so that they could fold entirely along the body to avoid hampering the upper limbs’ movement in narrow spaces.” The mutation privileged the arms, whereas the legs were reduced to simple supporting appendages, with the bulk of the movement done by the arms.

The Monsters display other peculiar features: they have both external and internal jaws, that are able to move independently from each other. In addition, the external jaws’ teeth are limitedly articulated, and can flare in and out in order to achieve a better grip on a prey; this last trait was given in order to give “more life” to the characters. Sensory whisks sprout from the Monsters’ back, aiding them in identifying their location. lead sculptor and painter, as well as art director Steve Wang also conceived and added to the design vestigial eyes, covered by a semi-transparent layer of skin membrane. Since they derived from humans, Hunt wanted to infuse the Monsters with character, and gave them a “taunting” behaviour and attitude, as well as a considerable level of intelligence.

One of the finished creature heads.

The Creatures of the Cave were brought to the screen with digital sequences, created by Luma Pictures, and practical suits, built by Tatopoulos Studios. They were sculpted by Steve Wang, Tully Summers and other sculptors. It was estabilished since the beginning to use performers in suits as the main technique of creature effects. This decision influenced the design of the Monsters themselves; “that was the only real bound that we gave ourselves,” Himber said, “was, you know, we have to work with this human form, we want to hide it in an effective way — and from that, the design was up for grabs.”A picture of performer Brian Steele, in a crouching position, was in fact used to draw a silhouette of the creature design over it, in order to estabilish actual proportions and length of the arm extensions. A total of 7 suits was built; interestingly enough, among them 5 were hero suits, and only 2 were stunt suits. All the suits featured a hole in the Monster’s abdomen, allowing the performer to safely enter inside the suits; the actual legs could be attached or detached, depending on the shot, and could be puppeteered with wires or rods. The heads were particularly heavy, but a peculiar system transferred their weight to the performer’s back. Tatopoulos explained to SFX magazine: “the head was mounted on a helmet which had been molded on the head of the actor. A network of elastic straps actually transferred all the weight of the head to a kind of backpack that the interpreter wore under the costume. The head itself was equipped with thirty different mechanisms. There was a jaw with triple action, that opened like a sea anemone and a transparent membrane that covered his eyes.” The skin of the suits was molded in foam latex, with the semi-transparent eye covers and jaw tendons molded in cleartex. The outer teeth were moulded in resin, whereas the inner ones were casted in solid resin. All the suits could also be fitted with two versions of the wings – an opened pair, and a closed pair. “You should know,” Tatopoulos said, “that a fluttering motion is a very complex movement to reproduce at a mechanical level. I have never seen in any film animatronic wings that were totally convincing.” A featureless dummy portraying a dead creature and a skeleton were also built.

The salamander, one of the minor creature characters from the film.

The mutated humans are not the only Monsters featured in the film; every example of fauna in the cave system has been infected by the parasite organism, and some mutated animals are shown in specific scenes. Digital scorpions were created by Luma Pictures. Tatopoulos Studios also brought to the screen a mutant mole, a mutant salamander and mutant eels, all sculpted by Dan Platt. The mole was a simple dummy with rough mechanisms animating the head. The salamander was a flexible rod puppet. Two rods were attached to it, and moved alternately — creating an organic crawling and swimming motion. The eels were created as a rod puppet with mouth-opening mechanisms, and wire-controlled puppets able to ‘swim’ in water.

For more images of the Creatures of the Cave, visit the Monster Gallery.

Main Article: Creatures of the Cave

Over 18 years after Predator 2, after the two crossover films, a new Predator film was made — produced by Robert Rodriguez and directed by Nimrod Antal; the project saw the light after a long pre-production hell, which had lasted since the completion of the first script draft in 1994. As it was once passed to them, Amalgamated Dynamics passed the creature effects torch to Gregory Nicotero’s KNB Efx. Unclear in its position in the series, Predators introduces a whole new kind of Predators, labeled at one point during production as ‘Black Super Predators’. In the film, the difference between the new kind and the ‘Winston’ Predators is compared to that “between wolves and dogs.”

The implication is that the new Predators are more feral, imposing and most of all stronger than the others. “Robert Rodriguez, when we first started the project, used a really great analogy”, explained Nicotero,  “He said the classic Predator is a cassette tape, and the new Predators are the iPod version; so, that kind of triggered a lot of visual things in my head, in terms of making them taller, making them sleek and keeping the armor really close to the body. So that they are not bulky — because we wanted to get the idea that they are fast — and that they are elegant, and that they are efficient. Even in terms of stuff like the dreadlocks and the classic Predator come out and give them that kind of Rasta look, but we swept all the dreadlocks back. We made the face a lot longer. We just wanted everything about him to look more elegant, like a black widow. We wanted it to just be really deadly looking.” At one point in production, it was suggested to show female Predators in the film; various concept art pieces by Michael Broom testify this. The idea was ultimately discarded.

‘Falconer’.

The new species, or subspecies, of Predators — whose final designs were conceived by John Wheaton — retains the basic design outline, but otherwise applies some significant changes. There is a new, seemingly less complex and more adherent armor style; metallic, 3-toed boots are attached to their legs. All the Predators have a single, extendable scimitar-like blade on their right forearm gauntlet — similar to that of the Chopper Predator from Alien Vs. Predator, but attached differently. Interestingly enough, none of the new creatures wear the netting typical of the other designs. The Predators also display new textures and color schemes, inspired by various reptiles. Similarly to Alien Vs. Predator, three of these creatures appear in the film as antagonists — each with their own, distinct visual characteristics that aid in differentiating them as characters.

From left to right: ‘Berserker’, ‘Falconer’, and ‘Tracker’.

• ‘Berserker’ (also labeled as ‘Mr. Black’) is the head of the trio. His mask, dark copper-toned, is adorned by the jawbone of a prey. His shoulder cannon also splits apart and rotates when activated. His skin, unlike the other two, displays a color scheme based on grey and black, rather than yellow, with several red highlights in the body and dreadlocks.
• ‘Falconer’ (also labeled as ‘Baltimore,’ for currently unknown reasons) was conceived as a strategist, and his predatory bird-inspired mask was conceived to reflect that aspect. Unique to this Predator is a flying, tracking machine in the shape of a Falcon, with two wings, a heat thruster and an extendable blade on its left side. Interestingly enough, the ‘falcon machine’ was originally conceived as an actual alien creature.
• ‘Tracker’ (also labeled as ‘Flusher’) wears a mask with two tusks attached to it. Peculiar to it is a more protective armor, conceived to aid it in handling the thorn and horn-covered hounds. Interesting to note is a collar with Predator mandible bones hanging from it.

Of the three Predators, only ‘Berserker’ unveals its face, to roar in victory in front of the defeated enemy. It is here that the differences between the two Predator kinds becomes most evident. The ‘Berserker”s head is generally more elongated, with the dreadlocks moved further back, and devoid of the ‘thorned crown’ that adorned the edges of the forehead in the ‘Winston’ designs. Interesting to note is the ‘bas-relief’-esque quality of the skin, with what seem to be multiple, overlapping layers. Yet again, the Predator is not shown with the proper mandible closure. The animatronic head was enhanced with digital imagery in post-production.

‘Tracker’.

In early script drafts, the new Predators’ blood was black, as opposed to the original glowing green. This was due to the intention to show that they genetically experimented on themselves to ‘evolve’ into better Hunters. Both ideas would ultimately be discarded in the final film: the blood was a slightly different shade of green, and the ‘evolutions’ were limited to the Hunters’ weaponry and armor — as exposed through dialogue in the film.

The ‘Berserker’ and ‘Baltimore’ Predators were played by 6’8″ tall veteran creature performer Brian Steele, whereas the ‘Tracker’ Predator was played by 6′ 7″ tall Carey Jones. When two or more Predators were to appear together in the film, stunt performers were used and made as tall as Steele — again — via camera tricks.

Among the numerous homages to the original film, Predators also features a design recreation of the original Hunter. KNB Efx was aided in the objective by Stan Winston Studios member Shannon John Shea. Labeled by the crew as the ‘Classic’ predator, it is undoubtely a very faithful attempt at reproducing the first ‘Winston’ Predator; it is not, however, an exact copy of that design: among other cosmetic differences, the skin displays lighter color schemes; yet again, it is unable to close the mandibles as the original creature (and seems to be unable to close its own mouth).

Interestingly enough, his –damaged — mask features a more angular outline. Performer Derek Mears, who plays the ‘Classic’ Predator (and the ‘Tracker’, as a stuntman in certain scenes) and whose body the mould was based, is 6’3″ tall — but, in contrast with the work done for the mentioned character, was not filmed with camera tricks making it appear taller. This omission resulted in the ‘Classic’ Predator appearing just slightly taller than 6′ tall Adrien Brody — far shorter than the towering 7’2,50″ original performer Kevin Peter Hall.

For more images of the Predators, visit the Monster Gallery.

For more information on the Predators’ hounds, read the article [COMING SOON].

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Main Articles:

• Predator Metamorphosis – Part V: Predators
• Predator Hounds [COMING SOON]
• The River Ghost
  

Main Articles:

• Abraham Sapien
• Mister Wink [COMING SOON]
• Creatures of the Hellboy mythos [COMING SOON]

The success of Underworld quickly led to the production of a sequel. Len Wiseman returned as the director of the new film, and with him Tatopoulos Studios to bring the Lycans to the screen again. The same basic design for the creatures was used, and most of the moulds were actually reused. An innovation in the design was represented by the greater quantity of hair on the bodies of the Werewolves. This aesthetic modification was implemented to portray the first generation Lycans of the prologue scene, as well as the climax of the film. “We changed up the Werewolves a little bit, made minor alterations to them,” Wiseman said, “because a lot of the Werewolves in this one were in some flashbacks that show the past, and we wanted them to look a little less evolved.” For issues of time and budget, the same suits were used to portray both the newly mutated first generation Lycans as well as the second generation Lycans.

The new designs were also devised to include structural innovations for the suits that would allow the creature performers a wider range of movement. “The first batch of Werewolves we did for the first movie… the design, I think, Len was very pleased with,” Tatopoulos said, “but there were some issues. I tried to give them big necks — and then we realized those necks were very stiff. They did not allow the actor to move as well as he wanted to.” Len Wiseman added: “I wanted much more mobility with them. I felt like I loved the design that we came up with, but at the end of the day [we] had a big action figure that couldn’t move that much. And then so all of the joints and everything, we reworked them to where they could move. [When] I’m casting the guy to play the monster himself – I like his movements, I don’t want to weigh him down and not allow his performance to come through.” Both Brian Steele and Kurt Carley returned as the main Lycan performers. Joining them was Richard Cetrone.

Since the structure of the first film’s Lycans’ neck limited the movements of the performer, it was redesigned to be slimmer, and more comfortable and safe to move in. The fur covering on their bodies was consequently increased, in order to hide a gaping hole inside the neck. This expedient allowed the suits to be mounted onto the actors in less time than before — for the previous production, the actors had to be entirely covered in foam latex, a condition that was also uncomfortable for them. The material the necks were specifically made of was also changed: in place of foam latex, the special effects crew used spandex and sheet foam.

The Lycan guard.

The leg extensions of the creature suits were also changed for practical purposes. Tatopoulos Studios refined the technology used for the first film, and enlarged the foot base to give the performers more stability, giving them the possibility to perform movements that they were unable to achieve with the previous suits. An advanced and adjustable Y-shaped wirework on the back of the extensions enabled the legs to bend without particular effort. “A big issue we had from the first one was a really small footprint that we designed,” Himber said. “It looked really neat, but it was a practical piece. It did not really give the guys a strong platform to walk on. So one of the things we explored on this one before we even built the suits, we did some wider footprints and changed a few bits in the leg extensions. Once we got the performers were really happy with, we based the sculpts on what worked with the foot pieces — kind of a reversal of the first one. The guys do great with them — they can stand on one foot and do all sorts of crazy things with them, which they couldn’t on the first one.”

In the flashback sequence at the beginning of the film, as well as in the climax, the mutation of first generation Lycans is shown. Due to the viral and unpredictable nature of the disease, they do not transform following a precise template, but rather mutate in a seemingly random pattern, depending on the individual. Mid-transformation make-ups were applied on actors to portray the very first stages of the transformation. David Beneke provided the Lycan prosthetic teeth.

The Lycans of Underworld: Evolution were also brought to the screen with their digital model counterparts, created by Luma Pictures, a visual effects company that had already devised some visual effects sequences for the first film. “Every time you see a wolf close-up,” Tatopoulos said, “even full size, it is pretty much a practical beast. In a town where everyone uses CG, it is very refreshing to be able to see real things like this. That doesn’t mean there is no CG in the movie, however — whenever the motion becomes too crazy and the wolf leaps from one side of the castle to the other, we use CG. Sometimes we combine both together.” Luma first showed Wiseman their new achievements with The Cave — which the director was impressed with. The company was thus assigned most of the intensive visual effects of the film — including all the digital creature effects sequences, which surpassed the 100 shots.

Compared to the transformations in the first film, the new Lycan transformations were far more detailed.  “The creatures’ skeletal systems needed to change, stretching the muscles and tissue with it,” explained Luma digital effects supervisor Vince Cirelli. “Skin needed to roll over bone mass, veins pop and blood spurt. One of the transitions happens so close to camera that you can see its pores.” The Lycan digital models and the transforming models were devised by a team of modelers led by Miguel Ortega — using Maya and zBrush.  “The transformations had to look painful and sporadic,” Cirelli continues. “For this we devised underlying influence objects that pushed and pulled the skin. That was sequenced with a shader that output passes for compositors to make capillaries burst and skin bruise. We also employed stress maps to raise the creatures to photo-real level. Even with all this technology, the creatures would not look like they do without the incredible work of the modelers and texture artists here at Luma.”

The process of creating the models started in Maya. “We use Maya for animation and creation of our base cages [low resolution models],” Cirelli said. “But our modeling pipeline is more and more heavily relying on ZBrush for etching out the definition of the models, including the creatures and the CG environments. As a matter of fact, for this movie, we had characters that needed to be able to transform into multiple different characters. So our base character mesh was shared across many of them. Then, all of the detail that was painted into the creature with ZBrush was applied as displacement at render time.”

“At the beginning of production,” he continues, “we experimented with different techniques that would allow us to push the characters range of motion and skin deformation beyond most CG creatures, Cirelli says. Using ZBrush, we painted displacements to simulate muscle flexing, tendon bulging and skin wrinkling for each muscle group. These maps were separated into color and displacement. Once this was done, we needed a way to trigger and blend between specific displacements and surface textures based on how the creature was animated. For this, we developed a system of animating and blending localized displacement maps using a custom shader. The shader evaluates where and what has translated or rotated on the rig. It then sends this information to the blender which determines how much of each displacement to use and where to use it. So when the werewolf rolls his shoulders, muscles flex, tendons bulge and veins become visible on the surface of the skin.” Certain creature shots seamlessly blended the digital versions into the practical suits filmed beforehand.

“…William, bitten by wolf, became the first and most powerful Lycan.”

Underworld: Evolution introduced a new kind of Werewolf — represented by William Corvinus, the original Werewolf and ‘viral’ father of all Lycans. “A totally different take [on a Werewolf],” Tatopoulos said. The bloodthirsty killing machine, forever unable to return to its human form, has no control over its savagery. In the first drafts for Underworld: Evolution, the character of William was conceived differently: the original idea depicted the Monster as an enormous, 14′ tall creature — that moved on all four limbs, and only occasionally used bipedal stance. The massive size of the Werewolf was to be achieved through forced camera perspective and greenscreen techniques. As production progressed, however, the idea was abandoned in favor of another direction — the eight-feet tall William seen in the film.

The original William maquette with quadrupedal configuration.

If the Lycans are halfway through the Werewolf transformation, the appearance of William is what results from the completion of the metamorphosis process. The son of Corvinus is the genetic and viral Ancestor of all Werewolves — and as such he is more beastly and primordial than the Lycans. Two types of creatures were thus distinguished by the filmmakers: the first generation Lycans, infected by William — directly or indirectly — display the wolf-like snout and are unable to revert their transformation; they are raging beasts with no control over their animalistic instincts. The second generation Lycans, infected by Lucian, directly or indirectly, inherit his ability to change back to human state. With age, they are also able to transform into their Werewolf form at will.

Concept art of William by Patrick Tatopoulos.

“In a sense, [William is] a more traditional Werewolf as you know them,” said Tatopoulos, “with a more wolf-like head.” Len Wiseman added: “Patrick and I actually went through a lot of designs, in drawing the jawline, and making it look very frightening and sort of bulky — it had to look mean, and not the pointy Wile E. Coyote look, which happens quite a bit. So we actually have a fairly heavy, pronounced jaw on William.” The director further elaborated the concept in an interview: “We’ve got one of the old ones that’s much more in the traditional Werewolf vein. He has a little bit more of a snout, more of a wolf presence than the other ones. I really wanted to make a point that in the first film I didn’t want them to have the long snout, because I wanted them to have a different style that we hadn’t seen before – I’d seen that look, quite a bit. But this character in this film dates back quite a bit further, so it’s like an evolution process; we wanted it to feel like it was a little bit closer to the wolf.”

William was created as a single hero creature suit. The body of the creature was based on the moults for the other Lycans, with cosmetic modifications. Steve Wang sculpted William’s head. Brian Steele performed inside the suit for all the scenes involving the original Werewolf. Like the other Werewolf suits, a gaping hole in the neck was concealed by the fur covering of the creature, and allowed the actor more comfort and freedom in the performance. The suit featured a fully animatronic, radio-controlled head — featuring moving ears, eyes, lips, and mouth — which required up to three puppeteers to animate on set.

The William suit, filming the flashback sequence. In this photo you can see how the hair covering on the Monster has minor differences compared to its appearance in the climax of the film.

In opening sequence, where the capture of William is shown at the hand of several vampires (displaying the strength of the beast), the hero suit for the character was not completely finished for shooting yet — as its hair was not yet properly treated. Due to that reason, it was filmed with quick cuts to hide its imperfections — something eased by the background covered in snow.

As with the other Lycans, William was also portrayed by a digital version devised by Luma Pictures. To portray the character’s gruesome demise at the hands of Michael Corvin, Tatopoulos Studios devised an insert dummy ‘gore’ head with a pre-scored wound and stump. When Speedman ripped the creature’s upper jaw and cranium, blood pumps provided the spilling blood. “We feel bad when we have to cover them in blood,” Himber said, “and chop them and stuff, because they’re really beautiful. But those things happen!”

For more images of the Lycans and William, visit the Monster Gallery.

Previous: Underworld
Next: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Tatopoulos Studios and Luma Pictures once again returned to bring to life the Lycans for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Set in ancient times, the film also portrays the first generation of Lycans — the original, feral strain of Werewolves. Seven ‘first generation’ Werewolf suits and only one hero animatronic head were used for the film. They were based on the moulds used for the creation of the William suit, with the single hero head actually being the William suit’s head used in the precedent film — appropriately repainted with the new Werewolf colour scheme.

The original Werewolf’s white fur was a peculiarity of the character — recalling the folkloristic concept of the White Wolf of the pack. Guy Himber also retroactively referred to the character as an Albino. The Werewolves of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans were repainted using colour schemes tending to black and brown tones, more akin to the other Lycans seen in the precedent chapters.

Three ‘second generation’ Lycan suits were devised for the film, recycling those that had been built for Underworld: Evolution. The suits were restored, and repainted with subtle changes in the colour scheme — which now presented greyer tones. Brian Steele and Kurt Carley returned as the main creature performers for both versions of the Werewolves; Steele was also featured in the film playing a character among the Lycans. “I said, ‘Brian, you’re not a Werewolf now. You’re a guy now,'” said Tatopoulos, “and he did a great job.”

Much like in its predecessors’ case, many shots in the film were planned as practical, but later changed to computer generated imagery. As an example, the Werewolf killed with a crossbow projectile was first filmed as a practical puppet, which ultimately “looked like dragging a muppet.” The filmmakers were unsatisfied with the result, and changed the shot of the monster falling forward into a digital sequence — cutting to the creature suit lying on the ground. Similarly, the meeting of Lucian and Werewolves was heavily modified with the addition of computer generated shots, as opposed to the wholly practical original sequence.

The french CGI company Duboi joined Luma to create the numerous digital Werewolves for the film. The two companies, however, had contrasting manners of animating the Werewolves.  “When the french [company] did the first Werewolves,” Tatopoulos said, “they had a way of making those guys quite elegant and ‘sexy’ but they were lacking a bit of weight. The opposite came from Luma, who were giving them a lot of weight, but they were a little bit too brutal. We showed [both companies] each other’s work and, you know, by the end, they all got better.” Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is so far the film of the series with the most digital Werewolves in a single sequence: the climax features over 500 computer generated-creatures, running towards the fortress of the Vampires.

“I have a little bit of a special tenderness towards these creatures,” said Tatopoulos, concluding his experience, “having created them for the first film, and the second one, they’re just such cool beasts. It was fun for that, too.”

For more images of the Lycans, visit the Monster Gallery.

Previous: Underworld: Evolution
Next: Underworld: Awakening