I tend to reserve “catchin’ up on my sites” for the end of the day, but any time I spot a new Monster Legacy post – even when it’s not about werewolf creature effects – it immediately gets my full attention. This one is about a werewolf, though: Hogwarts professor and Harry Potter fan favourite Remus Lupin.
Lupin’s werewolf form in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was controversial. Scrawny, sparsely-furred and almost rat-like, his transformed state in the film was neither what author J.K. Rowling described in the book (essentially a big wolf with some human traits) nor what most werewolf fans wanted to see (a shaggy, well-built human-wolf hybrid). This was a deliberate decision on the part of creature designer Wayne Barlowe, who channelled Rowling’s concept of “lycanthropy as sickness” into
a gangly, emaciated creature with distorted proportions… a hunched back, long and thin limbs, and a sickly, almost skeletal head.
The filmmakers were so committed to the concept that they built werewolf suits with stilts and limb extensions to use on set – practical effects that turned out to be anything but. Almost all of the clumsy suit shots were later replaced with CG effects that, while easier to work with, pushed the already-unconventional werewolf Lupin right down into the uncanny valley. A shame – I personally like the look of the practical suits, which seem to have more werewolf and less Gollum in the design.
Take a look at the full post on Monster Legacy for concept images, set photos, conceptual and practical details (including the reason why CG werewolf Lupin was put through an exercise regimen), and a reminder that Rowling wrote perhaps the most uninspiring depiction of a werewolf transformation ever.