Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545821
It's also got one of those gecko-style third eyelids that closes be- cause the eyes are so massive. These are the details that go into the asset so that it can do anything in the scenes, and so that even if it's a really minor detail in the shot, it will feel more real to the humans watching. It definitely came across as very eerie. That first reveal is so unsettling! Tara DeMarco: The ceiling? We did a lot of visual effects concept work with a concept artist called Jamie O'Hara. He helped Ben Tay- lor, our Episode 1 director, work out: Should the hands be in focus? Should the eyes be in focus? How dark should it be? Are the eyes glowing gold? How far should it be? It was one of the things that we played with for a while to figure out the right creep factor for show versus reveal. How many people were on your team, and how many vendors or partners did you work with? Tara DeMarco: We had six major vendors on the show. Our little in- house team was small. I think there were 12 of us. It is a "smedium" show, so we didn't have a whole army, but we had a really, really tal- ented group. We had some in-house artists. We had amazing pro- ducers, PMs [production managers], coords [coordinators]. Then I had an additional visual effects supervisor who started when the shoot started, helping prep post-vis so that we could see what we would be seeing in the town and in the views. She would also do animation tests. She did work on a lot of our prosthetics that needed love. They needed to be made to look wet and enhanced slightly. That was Roxy Zuckerman. She crushed it. How did you collaborate with the practical effects team? Tara DeMarco: We always knew we would need lighting reference props. We were given this creature design, which we then passed along to the team at Onyx Forge. They made us hands that could be puppeteered or placed for reference. So we definitely placed a tiny hand over Grace's mouth [the previous occupant of Sam's home, played by Dee Wallace]. We would bring a tiny hand into the scene anytime we knew we needed a creature hand. We had a little three- form proboscis for lighting reference for the scenes where we need to show it. We had a bust created for a lighting reference that we used in the first few episodes, and then we actually made a full-sized creature so that we could have full-sized lighting reference and possibly even puppeteer it if needed. That was used in later episodes. It's massive. It takes many people to carry it. It is heavy. It is enormous. Another facet of the creature is that it has to move with enough of a strange gate that our frail little seniors can run away. The creatures are designed to come out through the ovens. The ovens are specif- ically large so that they fit. Then they are designed to go up to the ceiling, across the ceiling, and drop down. So, there is architectural design that supports that path. We called the animation style "geriatric parkour." We looked at Alex Honnold and Free Solo and rock climbing pressure holds. We 20 cgw a p r i l • m ay • j u n e 2 0 2 6