HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (2004)

This was some eleventh-hour concept art for a revised scene in the film featuring 'a monster in a box'. Previously unseen, the filmmakers now wanted an insert shot of the beast's eye peering out. My phone rings: "design monster eyes".

There were two things I had to remember: (i) production wanted to shoot the effect as an animatronic, instantly limiting the eyeball shape to a perfect sphere to accommodate movement and blinking; and (ii) the eye had to show recognisable human emotion (rage, tearfulness), meaning anything too way-out and alien wouldn't 'play'.

So if you're looking at the above and thinking they look a little unadventurous... well, yeah. But as those elderly German gentlemen always say in the dock, "I was only following orders"!

I submitted this image by e-mail on the eve of vanishing off to Prague to work on Running Scared, so I didn't see how the effect evolved until I watched the final film. Strangely enough, the designs above end up looking like an outpouring of glorious invention compared to what's in the movie - they just gave the creature a bloodshot human eye! But the whole sequence was chopped down to a single throwaway shot, so I understand why they went with something simple.

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