Designer reveals how the terrifying monster from ‘Stranger Things’ was made

The fourth season of “Stranger Things” revealed a new threat to the residents of Hawkings in the first few episodes: Vecna, a humanoid beast from the Upside Down inspired by creatures from 1980s horror movies. simple, as he was there “in flesh and blood”, as revealed by the prosthetic designer Barrie Gowerto The Verve website.

Unlike the Demogorgon or the Mind Flayer, Vecna ​​was developed largely from practical effects, that is, tricks performed manually, without the techniques of computer graphics. “It wasn’t a guy in a motion capture or chroma key suit. The monster was there in the flesh.” Gower.

The designer also explained that it took about 6 to 7 hours of work to make the character as real as possible, since the different parts of the costume were glued directly to the actor’s skin, so that the movements became less plastered.

In addition, to give the monster a shiny, slimy appearance, the team used several different materials such as a special gel and lubricant:

In day [da filmagem] it has to be super viscous, so we use products like KY lubricant. We also use a product called UltraWet, a transparent gel, which we apply all over his body,” he explained. Gower. “It’s the kind of thing that, on set, if you put your hand on his shoulder, you’d regret it because it got all gooey.”

Still, some effects were not possible to achieve only with makeup, prosthetics or different perspectives, so special effects were used for the tentacles of Vecna’s back to move, and also in the digital removal of the actor’s nose.

I’ve worked on projects where we create characters and, watching the show, you’re like, ‘Where’s the character we made? It’s been completely edited!’ That was not the case. It was a great collaboration with the digital effects team.” Gower.

“Stranger Things” was created by the brothers duffer in 2016 and currently with the distribution of the episodes of the fourth season of the series. The chapters will be divided into two waves, the first already released on May 27 and the second that will arrive in the Netflix catalog on July 1. Check out the final trailer!