Chapter 16
Creepy Models

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Here’s a picture to haunt your dreams. The Bathilda life cast was used for when the snake comes out of her neck.

This is a petrified Mrs. Norris.

In case you couldn’t tell, we were in the creature shop, which included many of the prosthetics and models for various characters and beasts. The Nick below seems to be entirely (not nearly) headless.

Here are lots of prosthetics for goblins — and also a Hedwig on the floor.

More goblins. And a dead rooster.

I think these merpeople and grindylow models were only ever used for visualization purposes (the characters were done via CGI).

Fenrir Greyback had lots of creepy prosthetics.

Here’s another merperson, the Monster Book of Monsters, a Dobby model, and more.

Up above is the Hungarian Horntail, as well as Kreacher and floating Aunt Marge. In case you can’t tell from the pictures, this room was crazy packed with stuff and a little overwhelming!

More of the life casts were in display cases. Here’s dead Harry from the last movie.

Here’s dead Dumbledore from the sixth movie.

The one on the left is a slightly miniaturized Malfoy that Hagrid could carry to the castle after getting mauled by Buckbeak in the third film. He’s smaller than life so that Hagrid will appear larger than life. Then there’s petrified Hermione from the second movie.

One of the most closely-guarded secrets throughout the filming process was how exactly they made Hagrid look like a half-giant. Turns out that the most popular method in the earlier films was to actually use a body double (a large rugby player), who was wearing an animatronic Robbie Coltrane head.

Here’s a Hungarian Horntail head, next to a thestral.

Perhaps the second-creepiest model in the creature shop was the deformed Voldy-baby. Okay, he may have been the actual creepiest, but Bathilda is also right up there.

This Hedwig was an animatronic that could move its head.

And here you can see the machinery underneath the Hagrid mask. To me, this whole rig seems like it should have been more expensive than using CGI or forced-perspective — but what do I know?

Here’s a model of werewolf Lupin (again, a character that was only ever seen in computer-generated form).

This is Padfoot. I’m not really sure why they didn’t just use a real dog for him…

Baby Fawkes is chillin’ amongst some dismembered body parts.

Up on the wall were some creepy troll faces, a model of young Harry’s torso, and the Hog’s Head mascot.

One of the coolest creatures to see was an acromantula. I don’t think this is Aragog because he doesn’t have the milky eyes, but definitely one of his descendents.

Madame Maxime must have been done with similar enlargement techniques to Hagrid. There’s also some bits of Mad-Eye Moody, including his eye and prosthetic leg.

The basilisk seen on screen was actually mostly this animatronic. And then after the second movie, he was skinned and the same skeleton was used for the head/neck of the Hungarian Horntail.

Buckbeak is super pleasant. The character seen on screen was a combination between this physical model (whenever he was laying down) and a CGI version that could do all the moving and flying.

This Buckbeak very closely resembled the one on Universal’s Flight of the Hippogriff ride, and I bet they just made a duplicate of this guy for that purpose.