Tom Spina Designs builds “An American Werewolf Puppy in London” [updated]

Tom Spina and his colleagues at Tom Spina Designs have been working on this cuddly killing machine since December. It’s a custom request from a client: a werewolf “puppy” inspired by Rick Baker’s work in An American Werewolf in London.

The work has been documented their work with a ton of photos. I’ll share a few of my favourites here, and there are over 20 more scattered across the TSD Facebook and Instagram accounts.

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This li’l feller is obviously a real threat to folks from the knees down, but he’s undeniably cute, too. Great sculpting work by Tom and Steven Richter is complimented a “monster manicure” by Melissa Dooley, and hand-punched hair work by Michelle Nyree of Quantum Creation FX. The movie theatre seat stand is a nice touch, although I think this puppy is too young to attend any of the “films” screened at the theatre from AWIL.

Update 2015-03-02: Tom was kind enough to email me some close-up photos of the completed puppy, and a more comprehensive breakdown of who worked on what. Seeing the different components and steps broken down really underscores the amount of work that goes into creating something like this!

Design: obviously the original is all Rick Baker! The puppy’s look is Tom Spina.
Head sculpt: Steve Richter, Tom Spina
Foot and jaw sculpts: Steve Richter
Molds: Patrick Louie, Steve Richter
Body fabrication: Steve Richter
Paint: Tom Spina (head), Steve Richter (feet)
Eye sculpt and paint: Tom Spina

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As usual, excellent work by the TSD team! Check out more of their original creations and restorations on their site, and have a look at some of their other werewolf projects here, including the original werewolf from AWIL (this puppy’s “daddy”?), two different Underworld lycan suits, and a full-body display of Rick Baker and Dave Elsey’s 2010 Wolf Man work.