Go behind-the-scenes of Stranger Things and see how they turned a Dungeons and Dragons character into a terrifying creature from the Upside Down.
Stranger Things, one of the greatest things to come out of 2016, found a way to terrify us all by creating the Demogorgon. For the first few episodes, the Demogorgon remained out of sight — it hid behind walls and stalked through the woods. When we finally saw it emerge from the Upside Down, it was like a humanoid version of Petey Piranha. And it was ugly.
To bring the monster to life, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer consulted with concept artist Aaron Sims. Then, they turned to Spectral Motion. With a combination of animatronic and digital techniques, the studio created the Demogorgon.
Check out the first animatronic head test from the studio:
For the purpose of the behind-the-scenes video, the head is well lit. But imagine coming across this thing in the dark. Between the hundreds of teeth and the vivid red color found on the inside, the head is downright terrifying. Plus, it’s not making any noise. If it were shrieking at you, “oh, that’s cool” isn’t probably going to be the first thing you’d say.
The studio also posted several other shots that give us just an idea of what it takes to make the Demogorgon a reality. In both television and film, practical effects always tend to be more believable than CGI or digital effects. Just look at Star Wars. Despite all the CGI advancements we’ve made since Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens still opted to make Simon Pegg wear the Unkar Platt suit instead of digitally rendering the character.
In addition to wearing a foam suit, the man is also operating the long arms freely and walking on some sort of platform / stilts. And he has to wear the mask!
All the details put into creating the monster add to its memorability and lingering nightmarish qualities. As we saw in the final episode of Season 1, the thessalhydra will likely be the next monster we see in Stranger Things. Since that monster has several heads, it’ll probably be an interesting challenge for the Stranger Things crew.
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Stranger Things returns Summer 2017.