Artist Neville Page talks to sci-fi blog io9.com about his design for the monster "Clover" (as he calls it) from
Cloverfield.
Here's an excerpt:
How many iterations did the monster go through? Were there different versions with it walking upright, etc? Were you told specifically to avoid any Godzilla-esque designs?If an iteration was a sketch, then maybe 50 or so. I really did not have the time to invest in this as I had wanted to, because I was still wrapping up Avatar. So. weekends and evenings were all that was available. With that, I had to be very efficient with my time and the process of development I chose. There were many different versions that we explored as we were all looking for what it could be. There were tentacles, there were fewer limbs, more limbs, no limbs... big, broad strokes in search of Clover. I am not recalling being told to NOT do Godzilla like designs, it was more implicit. Since it was not a Godzilla movie, it would have been a huge mistake to do things like it. However, it still needed to be huge, have a head full of teeth, arms and legs, and, because of it coming out of the water, I felt it needed a tail to justify an aquatic potential origin or existence.
What inspired your design? What sources did you draw from?Well, once we had a direction the inspirations were definitely aquatic. Especially with the head. There is a very complex skeletal structure in there for eating, but you don't see it at all in the movie or toy. Clover also has a complex breathing system and more than one way to eat. But, again, it is hardly obvious in the film nor toy. Honestly, the biggest inspiration is less about one or two other animals, but rather inspired by biological plausibility in general (ignoring the fact that something that big could never live on land). Sometime the cart has to lead the horse and you make it cool first then justify it later, but I always try to give the creatures I design a "good reason" to be. As for the parasite, I knew that I wanted something thin and vertical and light. Kinda like a flea.
Read the full interview here:
io9 Talks To Cloverfield Monster Designer Neville Page![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
