Behind The Wand - Episode 24, Rob Bliss

This week on the podcast, I talk with Rob Bliss, a Concept Artist, on the films. He created characters like Kreacher and Dementors, Thestral and much more.

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hello, and welcome to my podcastBehind the Wand my name is Flick Miles
and I was Hermione's double in theHarry Potter films. If you haven't listened
to this podcast before, Basically Ispeak to other people who worked on the
films and they just tell me alittle bit about their roles in bringing the
story from the page, so fromthe book to the big screen. This

(00:30):
week, my guest is Rob Bliss. Rob is a concept artist and he
created some of the most iconic HarryPotter creatures, slash characters like Dobby,
death Eaters, Dementors, and Thestrals. So this is me talking to Rob
about bringing these characters that I justmentioned from page to picture. So you

(00:56):
started on Harry Potter one. Soat the very beginning of Harry Potter,
how did you come on board withthe project? Okay, so I was
a friend of mine, Chris.He said to me, there's a producer
that's looking for somebody to do creaturedesign on a new film coming out,
and it's called Harry Potter. No, of course, like probably a lot

(01:19):
of people that I was old enoughat the time to have never heard of
Harry Potter before. So when Ifirst heard about Harry Potter. I was
surprised to think there would be anythinginteresting in that because it sounded like a
Ken Loach film or something, youknow. Yeah, so also there weren't
many creature movies that the film industryin England or Britain wasn't what it is

(01:44):
now back then, and this isso this is nineteen ninety nine, two
thousand, something like that, andanyway, so it was one of those
right place, right time things withsomebody being asked a question by somebody who
was about to be in a verypowerful position. But it was early days.
They hadn't worked with concept artists before, so it was just the case

(02:06):
of my friend being asked by DavidHaymond, you do you know anybody that
can do some you know, creaturesfor me for this project, and he
just passed it on to me,and so that I mean that that was
the initial, the beginning of it. And then from then I spoke to
Tiniest Scarchin and yeah, she wasmy first point of contact with with the

(02:29):
project and she was one of thefirst people to realize potential of Potter as
as a film project. And itwent from there. Really, did you
read the book or were you givena script or when did you first sort
of realize that there were potentially charactersin the story that you'd be able to

(02:50):
Yeah, and I read the bookand the book had little illustrations on it,
which which were I think that weended up actually referring to one of
those littlest rations when we were doingthe troll. So yeah, So I
started looking at the book and threeflipping through it quickly, I could see
that there was a few bits andpieces, isn't there? But yeah,
no, I mean I I readthe first few books, but obviously only

(03:14):
because I was working on the filmsthemselves, you know, so I'd reach
read each book as each film wasmade. Can you remember sort of any
character or like aspect of the storythat you sort of felt like, I'm
excited to potentially do that, orthat's something that I hope I get to
draw. What was in the firstone? It was it was goblins and

(03:37):
the troll? Were there anything?Was there anything else in the first one?
Three headed dog? Fluffy? Isit Fluffy? Oh? Yeah?
Yeah? Three headed dogs? Yeah? I mean it was all It was
all potentially quite exciting to do becausebecause don't forget that back then, from
what I can remember, the onlypeople doing these sort of fancy concept films
were people like Terry Gilliam and what'sits Tim Burton. They were they were

(04:03):
the only people that were going todo stuff that would potentially employ me.
And I was working with Dermot Poweron Hallmark films down at like what's it
called the Muppets, Hanson Hanson's Yeah, so yeah, Dan Henson, they
had Hallmark films going in there andthey were doing like Jason the Argonauts,

(04:26):
they were doing high end TV thingsand they were all and they were also
the type of films that had geniesand various different and a dragon that needed
designing. So that's so they werekind of pretty thin on the ground at
the time, these sort of films. So when Harry Potter came along,
it was, you know, itfelt like something I just landed on my

(04:46):
lap that was quite meaty and fullof things that I could actually get my
teeth stuck into, you know.Yeah, because there's like a lot of
characters that I guess had to well, yeah, that had to be sort
of designed almost from scratch, butI'm guessing using the text for reference as
they don't they don't exist in reallife. So how many do you think

(05:09):
you could put a number on howmany characters you had to had to draw
and design in total? Could youwork to all the films right from the
beginning. I didn't work on allof them. I didn't. I didn't.
I did a little bit on Gobletof Fire, not much, and
then I left before the final bookwas turned into two films. Because I've

(05:31):
been on it for so long,I had content, as it were,
in the last two films. Butright, let me think so, I
mean, look over the years,I actually managed to design quite a few
of the characters for it, andthe characters were all originated from the art
department, And this was when theart department was still doing character work.

(05:51):
The art department tends to not dothat anymore. In visual effects tends to
do a lot of the character work. Or now that's changing as well.
Yeah, So on the very firstfilm, I designed the troll, and
also I was working on the goblins. But the guy called Paul Catling ended

(06:13):
up sort of getting the final desire. If you can imagine that you're sitting
there with a couple of your verygood friends that do the same job as
you, but your competitors. Sothere's always say it's like you're in a
beauty pageant together and you've got smilingblack as your friend wins the beauty pageant,
and you know, and you winsome and you lose some. So

(06:34):
on that particular one, put Paulsort of and it was Chris Columbus coming
around and judging everything as it were, and yeah, he would just take
to one person's take on some goblins, and he would take to another person's
take on the troll or whatever,and so on that particular film, I
got the troll. But do youI mean, do you want me to?

(06:58):
I feel that we're talking about thefirst film, whereas I could broaden
it out to the other films ingeneral, if you if you want to,
Yeah, yeah, definitely talk abouttalk about all the all the films
you worked on, for sure,and all the characters you worked on.
Yeah, absolutely, Well, yeah, so we've you've you've got every single
film. Would come in and you'dget the script and they'd be like,

(07:18):
okay, we need to have athestral design for this this particular one,
and you're like, okay, what'sthe thestral And they'd say, well,
it's it's kind of like a zombiehorse or something like that, you know.
And then as time went on,it was like as concept artists we
had sort of battled with each othertoo, because if you if you didn't

(07:41):
get if you didn't get through thefirst few rounds of design work and win
one or two characters to do,then you were going to get pack your
gear up and go home and itwould be horrifically embarrassing, and you know,
at the very least, So Ithink we were all a bit tarnished

(08:03):
by the experience after a while.So I think as the as the films
went on, it started to getthat the character work tended to be a
bit more negotiated at the beginning,or somebody had done well on one particular
character, maybe Stuart Craig would bewould make them the persons. So on
Goblet of Fire, Paul Katalin becamethe dragon guy, for instance, he

(08:26):
was going to be dragons from fromthen on. And I sort of started
to get the sort of the darkercharacters, so the Thestrals came along,
etc. Or maybe the Dementors,it would be like, well that's pretty
dark, that's that's up. RobStreet and that's basically because I think my

(08:46):
style just tended to lend itself wellto gothy characters as it were. Yeah,
yeah, because I obviously have seena blitz on the Instagram and you
know, it's incredible and your signeddesign are amazing, But I do think
they Yeah, there is sort ofa darkness to your work that those characters.

(09:07):
I guess they play into. Iguess. I guess what I'm trying
to ask is did they play intoyour style or has your style grown from
creating those sorts of characters A chickenand the next sort of question. No,
I think my style just tended tolend itself to it. I mean,
I mean, I'm ambivalent about beingchosen as the guy that does the
dark stuff because I don't, youknow, I don't want to come across
as being, you know, likea va vampiric person or so when something

(09:33):
like this is weird give it toRob, I'm like, yes, okay,
I'm like happy, I'm happy,But at the same time, I'm
insulted and complimented. It's yeah,yeah, so it's so weird to make
pure emotions. Yeah yeah, yeah, so I so I tended to get
given the stuff as wet. Aswe went further on into the films,

(09:54):
I tended to get some of thedark stuff immediately handed over to me as
it were. So can I justlike pick out a few of those characters
and maybe just ask you a bitmore about your thought process. So some
of the stuff that I absolutely loveis and I think so beautiful are the
death Eater masks Okay, yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah, And I

(10:16):
love sort of the the uniformity ofthem. But actually when you look at
them, how unique they all are. I think that's really beautiful. And
you can see that when you lookat you know, your designs in more
detail. But so can you sortof talk through I guess where the jumping
off point is for that? Doyou sort of get the script and and

(10:37):
sort of read as much as youcan about death theaters and then put pen
to paper or you know? Howdoes how does that process work with something
like that? Yeah? I meanI have to I have to try and
remember what I do. I thinkquite often the processes you get given some
stuff you half read it because youjust want to get on with it.
Also, we yes, maybe yeah, maybe the arts part and coordinate would

(11:03):
have gone through the entire book andput markers in for where particular, you
know, I mean, I wouldprobably lazily try and find out from someone
else where this thing is in thebook. All the script said that I
did read the book. So withthe death Eaters, for instance, they
were the characters that had appeared inthe in the Goblet of Fire anyway,

(11:26):
weren't they. So I did aninitial bit of work on Death Eaters for
that film, and my take onit back then was a lot more flancy
big wigs, and I don't Imean, looking back on it, it
was completely wrong, but it was. It was very old and aristocratic,

(11:48):
but a little bit too over thetop. So I didn't do very much
work on Goblet of Fire, wentoff and worked on another film, and
then when I came back for thenext film, which was the thing,
okay, so that thea is appearagain, luckily for me, I think
they wanted to redesign them. Andas you'll notice, and a lot of

(12:09):
the pot of films the design actuallymaybe you don't, maybe you don't notice,
but the designs quite often all overthe place. Yeah, And it's
because when the first film was beingmade, they didn't know whether it was
going to work or not. Everythingwas designed with a lot of the people
having read the first book, andthen when the second book came out,

(12:30):
it was like, there's a treethat should be over here or over there
needs to be over there now,you know. So I don't know if
there were any potter Buffs that lookat the design as it evolved of Hogwarts
over time, but it was.But it did. Yeah, it did
evolved over time and it chopped andit changed. And so the Death Eaters,

(12:50):
I think it was a new Yeah, new director, maybe you wanted
to have a look at the designof them. Fortunately for me, now,
my design sensibility was always, Ithink to a large degree was back
keeping it simple. And I thinkthat and I think your description that the
Death eatis I'll take as a complimentbecause it was there is a uniformity to

(13:13):
them, but at the same timethey are clearly identifiable to people in the
know as it were. Yeah.So, I mean one of the things
that we tend to do as we'redesigning is we make up our own stuff
as we're going along. You know. We tend to imagine that the thing
we're working on and the film isgoing to be in the film way more

(13:35):
and way longer than it actually is, and we're I think we're very often
shocked that it's there for about asecond, and then part of you is
thinking, why on earth did Ibother putting all that effort in? But
then when you have somebody like youbeing perceptive about a bit of design or
enjoying something about a bit of design, then then you kind of think,

(13:56):
oh, well, maybe it wasit is worth putting that amount of effort
and amenation into it. But yeah, but they were it was about keeping
it simple. Here's the other thingas well. They allowed for us to
put a full face mask on.Now it's it's it's one of those things
that you often get in films wherethey're they end up making you design some

(14:16):
hideous fantom the opera type mask becausethey're like, well, you've got to
show the actor's face. Thankfully,they stuck with the good idea of the
full face mask because it is reallyspooky, you know, because it's kind
of looking at you and through you. So kept it simple, got them
to agree to the full face mask. But the compromise was that they would

(14:37):
magic away their masks, wouldn't theyWhen they want to be Yeah, they
just sort of disappear, which seemsto be a kind of a trope in
film so nowadays for just getting ridof Iron Man outfits and this, that
and the other anyway. But butyeah, so that that that that was
sort of the basis of the design. But also it was what was difficult

(14:58):
back then. But I think wewere able to do then, which was
continue the design process throughout the film. Because if you can imagine you've got
a conveyor belt and you've done adesign, there's a lot of other people
down the conveyor belt that could spoil, in your opinion, the design for
you. So back then they wereexperimenting with letting us concept artists oversee our

(15:22):
designs. Now, I think thatended after a while because it was just
too annoying for a lot of headsdepartment. But it did mean that things
like the Death Eaters managed to getonto screen looking how I thought they should
have looked, and that was veryimportant. Down to the cood for instance.
Now anyone would have maybe just puta hood over them. They not

(15:46):
ever spoken to me about it,but because we had influence back then on
the film, we were able topush to keep the you know, back
on the allowing the forehead to show, and we put like this little pin
on them in a little hole onthe hood and it just sits on that.
And it was little details like thatyou think aren't important, but they

(16:11):
are. Yeah. So that soit was two part well, I mean,
I don't know any part side ofthe process, but there was the
initial idea drawing, getting that approved, and then staying on the design as
it went through the verse departments,trying to make sure that the way you
wanted it to be was how itcontinued to be. And I think by
the end of that process I wouldannoyed several departments, and one department made

(16:37):
me a moon on a stick,which I didn't know. I didn't know
what that meant. But anyway,somewhere in my cupboard, I've got a
moon on a stick. Do youknow what that expression means? No,
Well google it, I gues Soit's everything that you could possibly want,
is what they is? That whatthey were saying to you, that you

(16:59):
just a moon on a stick.So when I googled, I think maybe
this is more of a saying inthe US, But like I said,
it essentially means that you want everything, even if it's very difficult or in
some cases impossible, but do youknow what, they look incredible, so
you know you've got to You've gotto do so yeah. I mean,

(17:22):
look, I must say that ofall the stuff on Harry Potter that I
designed, a lot of the practicalstuff was my favorite stuff because it just
it was their on camera and itjust worked very well. That was do
you remember the Jack in the box? Yes, with the bogger that turns

(17:44):
into the yeah yeah, yeah,yeah yeah. I did that as well,
and that was a big practical effectand that and that looked great on
screen as well. I was someof the practical stuff I was able to
be in control of for longer thanthe other stuff. And I'm glad.
I'm glad for it, you know, because I think it worked very well.

(18:06):
I thought it went from an initialdesign into what's the term, you
know, fruition and it held upbecause other stuff you can work on and
the end result is you're not sokeen on the end result because you've lost
all of it, you know,No, I get that. And another,
I mean, another character I haveto talk about is is Dobby,

(18:26):
who you know, is such aloved character. I think by audiences.
And do you know, was wasDobby a character that excited you when you
sort of had about him in thebooks? Or we've got a clear so
we've got to clear something up.There's As a as a man in my
thirties, I wasn't excited about anything, ye got it? And as an

(18:51):
artist, I don't think I've everbeen excited about anything either, because because
you immediately start to think about howyou're going to be able to do it
by Yeah, And the truth ofany job is you're like a dog with
a bone, you know, youkind of like where am I going to
bury this thing? So nobody elseeats it? You know, And it

(19:11):
all sounds very very cynical and notvery glitzy whatever, but but but yeah,
but that's that's the reality of it. So yes, I've never been
excited about having to to do anything, But was Dobby one that you sort
of felt like if I had todo something, Dobby might be one that
I would want to do. Also, things like this ever become like a

(19:33):
poisoned chalice. Like sometimes it's like, oh my god, I just don't
know. It's such like not bigcharacter for such a huge part that is
it like, oh, I justdon't know if I'll ever get it right
sort of thing, or do youdo you know what I'm trying to say,
I don't know you were making senseuntil you made me doubt that you
were making sense. Okay, maybeI'll try to try and try and rework

(19:56):
the question, so you would whatyou were making me think of was that,
look, Dobby is Dobby. Yeah, I recognize he's a very very
loved character. That there were somethings about the design that I had in
initially that I don't think made itthrough to the end, and I think
if they had, they would havemade him better. And like like,

(20:22):
what what do you what do youthink? Well, what were those things?
If you don't well he was hewas initially in the in the So
all right, i'll tell you.You must tell me if I get boring
or but actually no, you lookingbored is good enough. It's not worried
at all. And this is sointeresting. I love this sort of stuff,

(20:44):
so please right, So okay,so initially we had so we had
done Dobby's the second book, isn'tit? Yes? Okay, all right,
so we've established that the first filmhas been enough of the success that
we're all back in the arts partagain. So yes, and so I'm
sitting there with two of my otherfriends. We're in a room together,

(21:07):
and you know, the brief comesin for characters that are going to be
done, and one of them isfor this house self called Dobby. So
I think we will go away.We read the script, the book or
just a little bit to do withit, and then we just start doing
loads and loads of drawings and everyat the beginning of the film. As
a concept artist, you the directorwill come in quite a lot, because

(21:33):
he will. It's exciting at thatpoint where the act when the actors arrive,
they just want you to you know, don't even say a load to
them in the corridor or whatever.But initially you're an interesting person, and
so they're coming up for semi regularmeetings. But I think I think Chris
Columbus would Chris Columbus would probably comeround once every couple of weeks to see

(21:56):
the new round of Dobbies. SoMe, Dermott and Adam brock Bank were
sitting in a room together being youknow, good friends but also enemies on
the on the Dobby designed front,and I think we were designing other things
at the time as Will Forks andI can't remember other stuff. And each

(22:18):
round of Dobbies I was winning,as it were, and it was just
one of those things where I wasjust I was managing to pick the post
with the odd picture because Chris wouldcome around and he would, you know,
and I think there were plenty ofother designs that would probably better actually
that the Dermott or Adam were doing. But I recognized very early on that

(22:40):
Chris Columbus was going for his emotionalreaction to the pictures he was looking at.
It wasn't necessary about the design,it was about how he felt about
the picture. And I recognized thatby making the eyes very glistening, he
always seemed to go for the onethe most sort of dewey. Of course

(23:07):
I didn't. I didn't tell theother two that because they were missing that
trick. And after about two orthree months I think it was, he
eventually was. He broke it down. It's about three pictures that I had
done. It was like, Istill can quite decide, but these three
pictures it's there or whatever, Andso that was the design process. Was

(23:32):
this I think it was actually oneof those situations that the three of us
went through Dermott and Adam and myselfin the room together. That made us
sort of not want to go throughthat again anyway. So I won and
on that particular front, and lostplenty of other battles, And so Dobby
went off to reference, went offto Paul Katling. And Paul Katling,

(23:55):
who's done a lot of concept workon this, it was also doing sculpting
in the early days, because hewas just absolutely amazing sculptor and when they
used to sculp stuff and then scanit, right, yeah, it's before
ze brush or whatever, before sculptingthe computer. Anyway, So Paul put
all the designs together and then thatwas made into this sort of original Dobby

(24:18):
Head. And one little interesting facton that is we were a little meeting,
a last little design thing. Wehad to Paul Catlyn Dobby Headed,
and Chris Columbus said, can wehave is there a chance his nose can
turn up a little bit? AndPaul just lent forward, just pinched nose
up and went EGO. So thelittle kink on the end of his nose

(24:41):
is came out of that little andso when I say to Celia, yeah,
do you know what I'm about tosay about her dog Max. Yeah,
he thinks that subliminally Max being inthe office might have led to inspiration.
And the Dobby's is well, yeah, I mean this is something that

(25:03):
that this is part of the legendof Dobby, is the legend of Max
and you know, and also thelegend of Putin as well. What do
you mean when Dobby came out,you might want to edit this out.
So it was in the press thatthe Russians were up in arms about the
fact that Dobby had been designed tolook deliberately like Poutin or something. Do

(25:27):
you not remember that? No?I don't. Yeah, yeah, I
have a look and see if youcan find anything on Google. But it's
so funny, I'm going to write. Okay, So literally the first thing
that comes up when you google Dobbylooks like is a story about Pootin.
And I found an article from twothousand and three that was in The Guardian

(25:48):
which said that Russian lawyers are planningon suing Warner brothers. Yeah, and
interestingly enough, there was a similarstory floating around the same time that George
Bush was unhappy at his resemblance toGollum in Lord of the Rings. The
two towers. So yeah, that'sreally quite wild. Of course that wasn't

(26:11):
the case, but these weird littlethings that attached themselves to designs are quite
impressive. Try and keep us asyou don't really want to say yes or
know about whether certain things were aspectsof designs or not. But yeah,
I meant Max was was the andI mean, I've got a couple of

(26:33):
dogs now, but back then Iwas a complete dog perth because I didn't
have a dog of my own,and it was right having the Celia's dogs
in the in the office, andof course Max being a dog, he
would he would have his face inyour bins looking for stuff all the time,
and we would of course feed himbiscuits, et cetera, before I
realized she shouldn't give chocolate to dogs. And yeah, I mean, I

(26:59):
mean, I mean I've sort oflook, let's just say that Max did
have a direct effect on Dobby's design, because I like the idea that up
in dog Heaven. Max can boast. Yeah, that's his claim to fame.
I mean, his claim to fameis probably just that he used to
be in the Harry Potter studios allthe time, but that is Yeah,
that is a good good But Iguess like maybe sometimes it's not intentional,

(27:23):
but that probably does happen when you'redrawing and designing, when you're around things
that you're picking up influences that potentiallyyou don't necessarily realize that you're just yeah,
probably, here's the thing I do. Part of the design process for
me is trying not to think aboutit too much because I've learned the hard
way that what ends up coming outisn't what you imagine for it to be.

(27:45):
So that leads to frustration if youif you and this is a bizarre
thing as well, you get sometimeswith design nowadays, is that you're having
to design something that you know isprobably off the back of a conversation somebody
else has had with somebody else.So not only are you yourself trying to
achieve what you imagined it to be, you're trying to achieve what somebody else

(28:06):
imagined it to be having a conversation. I just nowadays I try to just
start throwing stuff together and see whathappens, and deliberately keep imagine what it
should be at my mind. Soyeah, I mean that there's a lot
of it is subliminal. So whatcan you say what things you sort of

(28:27):
wanted to Well, you drew onDobby that potentially didn't well, that didn't
make it. I don't know whyI'm saying potentially you already said that that
didn't make it onto the design thatyou thought, oh, that could have
been really cute or nice, thoughtoh yeah, yeah yeah. So with
with with Dobby I'd given him.I don't know how you describe it.
There was a young girl on thecover of National Geographic that was very famous,

(28:51):
an Afghanistan girl that had these beautifulkind of green eyes, quite bright
green eyes that are quin quite darklyrimmed. From what I remember, I
remember her eyes because I think inthe book he was sort of described as
being ugly book que yeah, andvery very determined to the description in the
book was quite difficult to wrangle,but I was determined from the outset to

(29:17):
do what it describes from the book. He has a long nose, he
has big ears, and he hasthese tennis ball sized eyes, I think
from what I remember, I don'tthink it was golf ball sized eyes.
I think it was tennis ball sized. I think it's tennis ball So the
very first depiction of Dobby in thebook says the little creature on the bed

(29:40):
had large bat like ears and bulginggreen eyes the size of tennis balls.
He was obviously going to be quitewrinkly. I had this big, long
nose, big eyes, but let'smake the eyes themselves very very very pretty.

(30:02):
That I don't think made it throughinto the final design, but it
did. There were some very earlyadverts for that, I think, And
there's a couple of posters where you'llsee the Dobbies kind of a lot prettier
with his eyes, and I thinkthat was based on the thing that Nick
Dudman's people mocked up. Yeah,do you know what I'm looking at?

(30:22):
I've actually got in my dining roomthe Dobby poster. Can I turn around?
I don't know if you'll be ableto stay turn around? How do
I go? No, that's notit. Yeah, that's the one.
That's the one. I will puta picture of this poster on my Instagram
if you want to see what itlooks like, because I know how annoying
it is when you're listening to apodcast and people are talking about something you

(30:45):
can see and then you, asthe audience, can't see it. So
I will put that on my Instagram. I think that is the one,
and that was on the side ofa few buses and whatnot, and give
you look at it and it mightbe completely wrong, but that my mem
If you look at it, it'sjust a prettier dobby than the dobby that

(31:07):
that that that made it to thefilm in the end, and that was
the intention for him. But thatso that was an example to me about
if you're if you're cut out ofthe process at some point, it's to
the detriment of the design. Ata certain point it goes on to another
department and you stick in your nosein is very very annoying to them because

(31:30):
it messes with time for them andthey're trying to stick to budget and what's
the term. I'm looking for atime scale? Yea deadline deadline, that's
the thing. But the thing isyou've been working on something for six to
eight months and you've become an experton it, but at that point you'll
then cut out of the process becauseyou're just an annoyance for the next people

(31:52):
that have to wrangle with this thing. So that's why I was saying some
of the practical staff is my faceon screen stuff that I did for Potter
because I was able to deliver it, I was able to stay with the
process for a lot longer than someof the other stuff that went to visual
effects. Yeah. So when you'resaying practical, do you mean sort of

(32:14):
so when they actually had like adobby there and actually had like a jack
in the box? There is thatwhat you mean by practice? Although those
are two separate things, because ofcourse there's no there's no dobby on screen
that wasn't visual effects. Yeah,whereas the jack in the box is completely

(32:34):
there. It's it's an actual thingthat's being filmed on the day, you
know. And I recognized the practicalstuff has limitations, but it just we
were able to keep control over thatstuff better than the stuff that went to
visual effects at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that you
designed that didn't sort of make iteither because maybe your design wasn't chosen exactly,

(32:59):
or you know, it just didn'tmake it into the film like you
designed to. You know, Ithink a lot of people I speak to
talk about, you know, setsand stuff that they did that just to
end up not making the film atall, or end up being two seconds
that you don't even really see it. Was there anything that you sort of
worked on that you think, God, I wish people got to see more
of that, or got to seeit at all. Of course, I

(33:21):
mean, of course you want peopleto see a lot more of whatever you've
you've worked on anyway, and it'salways shocking how quick things are to the
person who's worked on it for solong. But everything that I managed to
actually get, you know, theprocess I was describing to you of three

(33:43):
concept artists do battle for a character. Yeah, two of them lay dead
on the ground, and one's victoriousand he goes on. Any one of
those gladiatorial concert artists battles that Ihappen to come out on top of.
They made it to screen. Now, there's plenty of other characters like that,
where I was the person who waslaying there with his throat slip open

(34:07):
and his bowels spill and and beingvery disappointed that I didn't get to design
that particular thing. But yeah,everything that you were at the studio and
you became in control of designing madeit onto screen. It was always quicker
than I thought it was going tobe. And the only thing that comes

(34:29):
to mind straight away is something thatwas in the book. That I That's
the other thing is stuff gets cutout from the film that's in the book
and you're like, oh, that'sgood, that's good. Yeah, And
was Dobby's girlfriend. Dobby has aguy. I don't ever remember that we
should call girlfriend, all right,can you google's girl? I think she

(34:51):
was called Twinkie or something like that. Oh my gosh, this is actually
ringing about. Maybe her name istwirky. I don't think it was dwaggy,
w key, winky. That's it. Yes, I wish I wish
that that we had been able towork on that, because that looked like
a great character and I was surprisedthat it did. But you know,
I didn't fit in with the storyline, so didn't make it. That's so

(35:15):
you didn't even do one single designof her. She was just like,
never appeared. We all did apass on her. And I've got if
you look on my portfolio site,I think there's probably a winky one winky
there. She was fond of thebooze. I seem to remember. No
way, that is hilarious. I'mnot remembering any of this, but that's

(35:37):
so funny. Okay, I'm goingto look at Winky. Oh that's so
sweet. I really loved Tobby.It's that the saddest I mean, because
when you first designed him, youdidn't know that he has a sticky ending.
No, no, I didn't.But I'm not. I mean,
I'm not. People seem to befair very very emotionally attached to Dobby.

(36:01):
I mean yeah, And me andDermott went to the Potter tour a couple
of times and spoke to people,just stood there with our computers and when
people came around the corner with badgerthem into looking at our work and stuff.
And I was always told how howmuch Dobby meant to people, et

(36:22):
cetera. But I have a peculiarrelationship with Dobby because my father would always
tell people that I designed Dobby andit was always like you shot up.
Well, it's embarrassing, isn't it. It's like that they did your Did

(36:44):
your mum ever introduce you to somebodyas hermionees double or something and you're like,
mom, do you know what she? No? But my friends do
it like, oh do you knowshe was in Harry Potter? And I'm
like, this person clearly doesn't care, Like it's just embarrassing. I don't
want. Yeah, so you endup with a person look at you like
as if you had asked your friendto introduce Yeah. So my dad always

(37:09):
used to do that and it usedto absolutely drive me nuts. But my
partner now does it. Yeah,have you heard of Dobby Doby? And
they're looking at me like that.I don't watch the Harry Potter films or
something, and I'm like, youknow, that's partly my relationship with Dobby
is. Yeah. Once the eyesto have been done like I meant for

(37:34):
them to be done, and thefact that people close to me keep on
introducing me to people person you didDobby. Yeah, I thought so was
as a as a grown man,it's difficult for me to get soppy about
Dobby. Yeah. Do you knowwhat I mean? I get something about
dogs, but not Dobby. Yeah. Yeah. So would you say you

(37:58):
have a favorite sort of character atyou that you created? I've got.
I've got different things that are myfavorite for different reasons. Okay, let
let's creature. I designed creature.Yeah. I deliberately held onto the costume
of creature because we designed a lovelybody for Dobby. There's a there's a

(38:22):
body underneath that that sack, andI wanted to that this time you got
to see his shoulders, etc.We did that in the art department,
just got some Muslim and actually becauseI worked I should explain to you what
I did with the dementis as well, but basically quite good at getting Muslim,
dyeing it and then breaking it down, etc. So we did that

(38:45):
in the art department with with creature. But in the final film, the
work they did on Creature I thoughtwas amazing that there was a shot of
him in was he Order of thePhoenix and the one after that or was
in just one of them? Anyway, whichever it was, I think it's
I think it was the also afterAll of the Phoenix half Blood Prints,

(39:08):
Okay, I think it was HalfBlood Princes. There's a shot of Creature
in there, which I just thoughtwas amazing and it was to me,
that's what it's all about, whenwhen you watch the final film and you're
like, I can't I can't criticizethat. That's that's brilliant. So that's
one of that's my favorite on screenbit of visual effects. I think.

(39:30):
Yeah, I'm quite fond of theThestrals, I think because they they because
it was just a good, simple, solid design that made its way through
the films. If we go througha list of things which I managed to
get onto screen. Yeah, andthis wouldn't happen now. Back then we
had it was a way smaller poolof people working on this stuff, and

(39:53):
you were able to hold onto itfor longer. Back then, Yeah,
you could be working, you couldbe the person in Chi the character for
eight months. That would happen.Nowadays, it just wouldn't happen a days.
So the Death Eaters I was Iwas quite pleased with because I thought
they just looked pretty spooky on screen, and they worked, and I managed

(40:15):
to have them look how I thoughtthey should have looked Dementors, which I
did for our Fondo. They theyjust worked very well with visual effects,
you know that the whole cloth simulation, etc. It just worked. And
yeah, I thought they worked prettywell as well. Although they change into

(40:37):
in design from one film to thenext. I don't know if you notice
that, but they did. Andwhat else did I work on Cornish Pixies
That was very very early on DobbyCreature. Oh yeah, the the thing

(40:58):
that the Jack in the Box Ithought worked very very well, I feel
like I'm boring myself at the momentwith this. What was the original what
was the original question? Which onesyou liked it? And I was going
to actually ask you which ones potentiallywhen you saw the fire, when you
saw it finally on screen, youwere like, you know, okay,
okay, yeah, so yeah,that was it. I like things for
different reasons. Some of them Iliked because on screen they were better than

(41:22):
I could have expected, you knowwhat I mean. Some of them I
liked because they've become something that's partof the folklore of Harry Potter, like,
for instance, Dobby. You know, some of them, I forget
that I've even some of them.I forget that I've done, you know.
Or I might I might like anoriginal design with something, but I

(41:44):
wasn't maybe so keen on how itended up in the film, you know.
Yeah, like the Cornish Pixies,I quite like the original design in
some ways, But in the film, I think it was just very early
days and all the scenes very quick, and an example work on for a
long long time and then it's ablink of mine that's gone. Yeah.
Do you know what's the scariest characterin Harry Potter and I actually think this

(42:07):
is you is Fenrial gray back?Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it
is terrifying. And the reason Ifind him actually think I was foil to
Nick Duman about this a little bit. The reason I find him so terrifying
is because he kind of looks likesomebody who would exist, but is an
absolutely terrifying person. And I mean, like, I know that he doesn't

(42:28):
exist in though isn't actually somebody,but there's a real realism in his sort
of like wolfishness that I find likereally really scary. Yeah, well that's
what we're here to do, yousee. Yeah, And that was the
whole thing with also working with StuartCraig. Of course he's very very keen
in world building and making it anenvironment that seems real and lived in.

(42:53):
Certain directors like Ridley Scott are veryvery good but making sure that produce auction
design allows you to experience being ina world for those two hours that you're
there, and it's very very importantthat things are broken down properly and finish
on things have done in a certainway so that you really really get absorbed

(43:16):
into that world. So that wasI think top of the list for any
of these things, wasn't at leastan attempt to make them look like they're
real and could have some kind ofbackstory to them, even though you can't
imagine what they are. And theway you describe the death eating mask means

(43:36):
that sometimes design has that an effect, at least on a subconscious level.
But something like Gray back, now, he was one of those kind of
characters in the book that was lookedlike he could be an interesting character because
he in the book, he's terrifying, isn't he? And I think in

(43:58):
the book he's got more of ahe's got more of a sort of part
in the story than maybe he doesin the final film. Yeah, he's
kind of his parts a little bitmore brief, I think than it is
in the Yeah. Yeah, butbut yes, I mean it was just
another one of the designs where Okay, it's really terrifying, man that I

(44:21):
think he had transformed into being awolf so many times that he's now stuck
between the two. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you can imagine that straightaway
the design is designing itself. Thatthat's something happens quite often as well as
these things design themselves. You know, you spend a long enough time on
them, they eventually just appear asthey should be. And with gray Back,

(44:45):
it was I mean, look,I mean it was going to be
a hairy bloke face, wasn't itwith fangs? I mean that That's really
what it comes down to. It. It's not going to be any more
than that. So the question ishow do you I think there was some
early pictures I did for gray Backwhere I very quickly realize that one has
to soften the hairline down, youknow what I mean, So the hair

(45:07):
just comes down onto the forehead andgoes up. Yeah. Hi. So
it's just it's just these little practicalthings that you find out about design actual
drawing them. So with gray Back, it was like, he's a bloke,
but he's also very very wolfy.And then you're drawing and then then
you're like, oh god, he'sgot a hairstyle. That's you know,
you can't have a hairstyle on someonelike this because it's too much of a

(45:30):
statement. So then you start puttinghair down, going down the forehead more
and that softens it down, andeventually it is what it is. And
some of the have you looked atthe original some of the original drawings I
did for it. Yeah, itreally is. Just it's a vicious looking
guy with fangs and more hair onhis face than most people would normally have.

(45:53):
Yeah, but it's a very verysimple design. I probably contact lenses
as well, maybe thrown in there. Yeah, and there you go.
Do you kind of wish that youcould have because Harry Potter? You know,
but it's actually I know people ofall ages watch and read the books

(46:14):
and appreciated them, but primarily itis a sort of child's story, a
children's story or you know, ayoung person's story. I don't know the
right word. I guess my teenagers. Do you ever wish that it didn't
have that sort of you had tokind of keep it PG and you could
have gone a lot darker with someof the characters, or gone a bit
more extreme with with with them.Was Did you ever feel sort of a

(46:36):
restriction because it was it did haveto pass a sort of peech? Yeah,
it's interesting you say that because Ithink David Hayman, etcetera. Were
pretty good actually with it all.I mean, do you think if those
films were made now they would beallowed to be dark? Or if it
wasn't actually they might be streaming theirdays and game and thrownes, etcetera.

(46:59):
But but it was I think David, and this might be bollocks, but
David Hayman had made a promise toJK. Rolling that he would keep it
very English, it would stay truebooks. Yeah, so you had somebody
at the helm that that knew thatit was part of his brief. I

(47:20):
guess, to be true to thebooks. And the books are dark,
so quite often so so quite oftenwith a lot of design work, there
was no there was no shying awayfrom it. I mean, I know
there was no blood gore in anyof it, but that wasn't really necessary.
But the actual design work itself wasallowed to be as as dark as

(47:42):
it needed to be. And Ithink that's to the credit of all the
people, like the producers and theproduction designers, etc. Do you think,
because obviously you saw several different directorsthrough your time working, and I
mean I speak about this all thetime, but there is a definite shift
in the tone of the films.I think from the second to the third.

(48:04):
I'd say the first and second arequite glossy and bright, and then
Alfonso comes in. I think hedefinitely bought a lot of a grittier and
potentially for a slightly older audience vibeto it, which sort of continues through
and actually by the end of thefilm say are quite quite dark. There's
quite dark parts to it. Partsto it. You know. Did your

(48:28):
brief ever ever change in terms ofwhat the directors wanted from you? Or
was it just like the story naturallygets darker as the characters are darker,
and that would be where your workwould head anyway, Yeah, the brief
would change. I mean, ChrisColumbus was the nicest guy you could work
for, but design wise would wantteeth straightened up. I think he had

(48:51):
quite an American idea of how teethshould be, so I remember doing Dobby's
teeth as being quite wonky, andof course over here with proud of our
wonky teeth, but in America wehave vile teeth. And I heard the
term English breath once in something whichis quite disparaging. Actually makes me feel

(49:13):
not good. I know why aBritish British even like known for like having
bad teeth, aren't they now I'mreally self conscious of my tooth. It's
just part of the culture that wedon't I don't think we care so much
about that stuff, and I thinkwe It's part of somebody's personality, isn't
it. As well they might havea slightly crooked teeth, like David Bowie,

(49:35):
for instance, used to have acrooked teeth. Yeah, but okay,
So for instance, with Dobby,you do the main designs and then
eventually one day they'd be like,okay, can you can you do trust
what Dobby's teeth are going to belike? And so over the design process
they basically just ended up being straightand bright white, etc. But be

(49:57):
drawn English and crooked. And andthen when Alfonso came along, I think
he probably would have been saying,give me, give me some gammy teeth
for Dobby, because that they wouldhave fitted more with the just straightforward this.
It would have just fitted with thestory more. I think of who

(50:21):
Dobby was. Yeah, you obviouslyhadn't been to a dentist ever, but
yeah. And also I think Alfonsosort of he made the kids grow their
hair longer. I think everything wasmade to be more scruffy, yeah,
whereas I think with things would madeto be quite tidy. So that's just
like an example of a few differentdirectors might have you know in the third.

(50:45):
So when the costume in the firstand the second films obviously and it
changes to the third, but withthe ties in the first and second film,
the ties had to be done properlyand like just a long leg down
to your way. I keep forgettingyou. Actually, whilst I was doing
all this, you were a teenagerdown on certainly You're like, what is

(51:07):
she talking about? And then inthe third film they and obviously Alfonso ca
One, he was like, Iwant you to do your tie? Is
how you think your character would doyour tie? Like would you have your
top button done up? You knowHermione obviously worked and would have a long
time. But you know, Iremember, I think it's like Shamus Spinnagan
had like top like top button undoneand a really short tie, and I

(51:29):
feel like, yeah, there waslike a lot of like a like a
scruffiness to it. But I thinkthat actually it was brilliant, And you
know, I think the third storyis sort of darker and potentially scruffier,
and I'm glad they sort of wentdown that line and didn't try and keep
it too. I'm glad they didn'ttry and keep Harry Potter too glossy,

(51:50):
because I feel like the first oneis and that's great, but I like
that gave it a little bit morefreedom. Yeah, I mean that stuff
like that was quite exciting just becauseit was different and it gave you opportunities
to redesign stuff or do things ina different way. But I think David
Jakes had them had their haircut again. I think I think that was I

(52:13):
think he reigned in the hippy.Yeah, what else, Like they were
little designed changes, like with theDementor for our Fondo the work rather for
David Jakes when he came in,he wanted the shape of the head to

(52:35):
be more apparent. So if youwatch the Dementor as it arrives at the
beginning of Order of the Phoenix inthe Underpath, it's the idea that I
had for it was to sort ofmake it as if it was but the
whole thing is like some kind ofdeath veil anyway. Yeah, So having
this ropeer and the next sort ofwas able to fit in with that whole

(53:00):
thing. As if you could imaginea dead body that's been covered in Muslim
and tied up as well, orit might look like a what's left of
a hangman's noose when it's somebody's beencut down from a tree. So that
was a little sort of you noticea little design change there going on from
one to the other. Yeah,can we talk about Kate Hillthestrals? Okay,

(53:22):
no, Yeah, Kate Hill.I'm mentioning Kate because she's sort of
an unsung hero of creatures. Andback in the early days, we would
all be drawing stuff. This wasbefore zed brush or whatnot, and so
a lot of stuff was being sculpted, and very often it took a maquette

(53:45):
for the producers to decide on adesign. It was that they were always
led in a certain direction by drawings, but it seemed to be a final
marquette that they could look around wasthe thing that made them decide on a
design, Like, yeah, thisis what's a mckette and mccatte is a
small version of the final statue.If you were going to do a statue

(54:08):
of making mccatte first, and itwould be a small version of it.
Yeah, you have a model ofa I think the arthestral was probably about
this big, like a modern modelor Paul Katling sculpted and macatte of the
troll at the beginning, which Ithink they ended up scanning. So Kate

(54:29):
Hill was kind of like the secretweapon for getting a design a proof because
she had a really really lovely sensibilitywith her sculpting. So we would all
be not only fighting over a designat the beginning, we would also be
fighting for Kate's time. And shewas one of Nick Dudman's sculptors, but

(54:52):
there was but we would the artdepartment would get started before Nick Dudman's department,
so we would kind of pinch her. She would be brought on with
us early on, and as thedesign started happening, she would start doing
these maquettes, these small statues ofthese various different designs, and then when
the design was approved, she wouldsculpt like she sculptured with assistance I guess,

(55:20):
a full size thestral to be scannedby visual effects. I mean,
it's crazy to think that they wouldgo to those lengths back then because now
it would all be done on thecomputer. So she was a crucial part
of our design work was her sculptingsensibilities. I mean, Paul Catling was
someone you could give a drawing toand he would make it better as a

(55:44):
sculpture. He was less inclined tocontinue being a sculptor on the pots of
films and was doing more concept artinstead. But yeah, but Kate was.
Kate and Paul both had these sensibilitieswhich were which were wonderful. I
mean there were other people as wellwho had lovely styles in sculpt sculpting as

(56:05):
well, but Kate was, asit turned out, somebody who was we
used a lot, and I thinkshould be if we're talking about creatures,
she should be mentioned. Do youthink that sort of like the advancement in
the digital world has sort of affectedbeing a concept artist? That is it?

(56:25):
You know? Do you think it'sI don't know if the word's better.
I don't know what word. I'mtrying to look for the fact that
you would have the market and thenthat would be a full sculpture that would
then be you know, do youfind that that allowed you to I don't
know. I guess I have morecontrol and to actually what you've drawn come
to life rather than this digital digitalizationnow that you said, you know,

(56:47):
it goes to visual effects and itchanges more. Is that a good thing
or is that sometimes a negative thing? It's it's good and bad from for
me. I mean, it's it'stechnology has changed so many things over the
last twenty years. So if wego back to the Potter year two thousands

(57:07):
when we started working on it,so we've got a good round number,
it's twenty two years ago. Therehas been so much that has changed technology
wise in that time. The nextchallenge to my job, of course,
is AI. I mean, itmight be that within a couple of years
it's drastically reduced the amount of workfor concept artists, what they can achieve
with AI. I mean, there'splenty of stuff on Instagram that looks amazing

(57:30):
done with AI. We'll just haveto see out how it plays out.
Streaming is something that I think savedthe industry technology that I mean, can
you imagine if cinema cinemas always seemsto do well during difficult times for people
because because it's a relatively cheap wayI guess of forgetting their woes. But

(57:52):
if the cinemas were closed as theywere during COVID, maybe that would have
been caatist profit for the industry.But as it was, we happened to
have had the rise of streaming,Netflix, etc. And also we're in
a period where they're all doing battlewith each other, so they're spending are
incredible amount of money for content whichmight not be there infused time when Disney

(58:16):
are the only people left. Idon't know, so yes, it's a
visual effects were tagged on post productionback on the early Potter days, and
you know, quite rightly they foughttheir corner and became part of preproduction,
which is meant to less control forsome an individual like myself and the art

(58:37):
to traditional art department in the filmnow has tended to hand over doing any
of these extras like creatures two visualeffects, which is a shame for me
in that respect. But you know, but then I pick up some work
through visual effects now. Also there'sbeen a rise in prosthetics. You know
that Gray Back character was Nick Dudmurnt, etcetera. That whole part of the

(59:00):
industry has not died off. It'sthrough people like Barry Gaer. It's proved
itself to be an incredible asset onthings like Game of Thrones. I think,
I think quite often when things techniquesshow themselves to be cost effective and
able to stand alongside visual effects,they become heavily used by by by other

(59:24):
people making films. So I thinkyou initially, you get, you get
there have been so many changes,and some of them impact you negatively and
some impact you positively. But younever You're never going to find out exactly
when that's going to happen. Somethingquite completely buggy at one point might be

(59:46):
a lifesaver in two years time afterthat. You know. Yeah, there's
that answer, now, I completelyget. Yeah. I mean the other
thing, of course, is theabsurd thing was we used to get stuff
sculptured and then scanned and then puton the screen. Now everything could be
sculptured in ZBrush, and I thinkthat leads to some amazing visual effects.

(01:00:09):
I think the whole scanning a sculpture, et cetera, it's just a process.
You're going to lose something every singletime, you know, Yeah,
and you and you might end upscanning a sculpture that's that's small through naivety
in the early days, and that'snever going to give you what you need.
I don't I don't think now thatyou do it, or do it
through ze brush, it leads tosome incredible visual effects work, you know,

(01:00:31):
because of the detail that you canput into it. Well, I
guess it just slots itself into thewhole process much better they can test it
out. I don't know, it'sdifficult to describe something when it's just so
stupid looking back on it. Imean, how would it ever work that
you that you sculpt something in place, scan it and expect it to just

(01:00:53):
work first time for you know,it's just not part of the pipeline.
Yeah, it doesn't work in thepipeline in a practical manner. Yeah.
Do you have sort of an overallhighlight of your time working on Harry Potter
playing football? Apart from there wasa match where we got beaten either twelve

(01:01:17):
nail or thirteen one by the Bondfootball team. That was help. That
was actually I actually had a depressionof that the weekend we used to so
you of course, as you know, we used to have a lot more
green around Leaveston. Do you rememberthe football pitch? Yeah, I cut,
I mean I remember all of thegreen because like because my mum used

(01:01:42):
to force me to go on likea lunchtime walk every lunchtime, which throughout
round all the field. So it'sa shame that it's not like I know
you said you went to the studiotour and I love it, but I
always say a lot part of meit makes me a little bit sad because
it's not the leavestone that we loved, and it had all that green outside
and it was all a bit overgrownand we just like a night bus on

(01:02:04):
the runway and some old chest piecessomewhere and all that. But yes,
we're sall car park now, isn'tit where the car park is now?
If there was a load of greenthere, and you probably would have noticed
or didn't a couple of goals therethat they were there. I mean,
it wasn't full sized football pitch,but it was a sizeable football pitch for

(01:02:25):
a good about at lunch break.So we yeah, we all used to
try and muster as many people outthere as we could every lunch time to
have a kick about. He usedto absolutely love that, apart from when
you'd be on the losing side andyou'd be really annoyed for the afternoon.
If you think it was a fairloss, perhaps I can't believe you lost

(01:02:47):
to the Bond team where it wasthe team like? Was your team good?
Like did you normally win or wouldyou I think any other department on
Potter would say that we were abunch of pansies, but I'll tell you
what we we we and especially anybodywho played that game against us, I

(01:03:07):
mean they must have. It waslike if you could imagine that we were
playing or this is me making excuseswe were making, we were playing our
games on this little pitch. Andwe even ended up with a kit.
We got the people who did thesupply the art department with stationary, they
got us a little kit and wewere we were challenged by It was a

(01:03:30):
it was a mixture of people fromtomb Raider and the Bond films. I
think it was called the Bond Raidersomething. Anyway, we met up on
a Saturday morning or something and itwas a full size pitch and it had
been raining, and I honestly didnot realize that when you play on a
full side pitch how different it wasgoing to be. It was like from

(01:03:51):
going five aside to professional Premier whenPolice Stadium, we got absolutely slaughtered.
It was and after the after thegame, it was like, you know,
so we were I was knackered,plastered, mud We've lost really really
badly. I think our goal wentin. It kind of trickled over there,
oh, non leg and the balltripled passed him. It was so

(01:04:16):
humiliating, and straight after the game, I was like, that's all right,
all right, And then the followingMonday I was actually probably probably depressed.
God. I absolutely loved going outplaying football most lunch times, which
I don't think you get the opportunityto do when you're at work normally.

(01:04:36):
But I was. I mean,I mean we're also healthy from it anyway.
So going back to we did actuallyplay a lot of other departments,
the Riggers and etc. Over time, and they probably remember it different,
but we definitely held our own againstthem. Did you have a team name?
Probably a disparaging one to other people, but oh, I don't think

(01:05:00):
you do. I think, like, I know you're saying about football,
but actually when I ask people likesort of the best thing about working on
Harry Potter or highlights for them,and everyone always says, oh, I
know, it's really cringe, butit is the other people that they worked
with is normally say, and sortof the atmosphere there. So I'm guessing

(01:05:20):
in a roundabout way that's sort ofyou know, playing getting to you know,
play football with your colleagues was partof the joy of work. It
was. I mean when you sayto me about like when you get given
a creature to do or something,wasn't that. I can't remember what your
terminology was. It was something youknow, can be appointment. No,

(01:05:45):
No, you were talking about havingsome kind of visceral reaction to being told
you were going to do a household. Yeah, which is not which is
not an emotion I recognize. Butwhen it comes to going out there and
playing football on a really sunny dayand it's and you were running around and
it's a lot fun and it's agreat game, that is something that I

(01:06:10):
would have a visceral reaction to,you know. So that's so when anybody
asked, But it might sound likea strange answer, but in terms of
just pure joy, although sometimes ofcourse it was absolute raging annoyance, but
in terms of pure joy going outand playing sports at lunchtime, which was

(01:06:31):
something we were able to do onPotter that you wouldn't be able to do
now. That was one of thethings around the studio that was a really
really awesome part of one's day,you know. And I remember that we
were so desperate to get people outthere playing I remember that the worst of
it was me and Ashley Lamont playingfootball in the snow by ourselves. It

(01:06:55):
was like the ball. The ballwas collecting snow as it went along,
creating a path, and we werejust kicking it around by ourselves in the
snow. Just this desperation to getout there and just enjoy its other aspects
of stuff which will maybe unlinked frompure joy, and just take it into
the realms of just considering it ina different way. The aspects of the

(01:07:21):
job that were really really special,of course, would be working with Stuart
Craig, which whenever I talk aboutthis sort of stuff I always repeat myself
about it. But he was incrediblyamazing boss to have. He was very
generous with his time and his attention, and I think he genuinely enjoyed the

(01:07:44):
process. Other people don't enjoy youwrappting on about an aspect of design that
you want to talk through. Theyjust find it annoying that you're you've stopped
them in the corridor to talk aboutsomething or other, whereas Stuart would stand
there and you would have a properconversation about whatever it was designing, you
know, like you know house Elveseyebrows or yeah, so he was.

(01:08:10):
You felt great freedom with him becausehe was so generous, you know,
I think, and to work withhim for so many years as well.
Did you ever meet Stuart Did youever? You must have seen him around,
yeah, but I never had likea conversation of any Okay. He
was like having a David Attenborough.He was like Attenburgh as a boss.
And also that David Hayman was waswas really really you know, a good

(01:08:31):
guy to work for. Gave youa lot of freedom, gave you a
lot of support, and as well. You know that Chris Columbus was I
think I was. I listened toyour interview with Nick Pellham, yes,
and I think that he I thinkhe referred to the fact that there was
a very good working culture that hadbeen set up by some of the personalities

(01:08:54):
that were in charge, and Ithink that was the case. I think
you've got some productions become toxic fromthe top down, and anybody who works
on nose which productions they would be. But the Potters were not like that.
They had decent people at the topand they created a culture which was

(01:09:15):
pretty healthy for everybody working on thefilms, you know, So that was
another asset. That's another aspect ofthe Pots films that lead me to have
good memories of it. Well,I think that's sort of everything that I
was hoping to ask. I alwaysasked this, which is basically me just
being really lazy. But is thereanything you think was a big part of

(01:09:38):
your role that I haven't asked youabout? Well, I'll remember it as
soon as I get off. Yeah, like this before, I always think
that there should be a part two, and then if there was a part
two, I would then forget everythingthat I think should have been on the
Okay, look, stuff that wehaven't spoken about that I've been involved with

(01:10:00):
the infery what's that? The inferyworthy water zombies that were in the cave
at the end. Remember there's alittle island they have to fight these things
that come out of the way withDumbledore. Yes, it looks like columns
coming out of the water. Um. What's the other thing here? The

(01:10:24):
an amusing little reason that baby thestralsmade it into the film. Yeah,
I've told that before. I'm justthere was a baby dragon that came out
of the dragon's et. Did thatactually appear in the foot I can't remember
that. Yeah, I think itwasn't nor but that was a Yeah,
there's a there's a Norber picture onmy original side. Um, the process

(01:10:50):
for doing the Dementors, we've notreally spoke about that. Yeah, do
you mind talking to us through theprotects? I think Dementors are another sort
of I mean, all the charactersare iconic, but some are more I
think, yeah, yeah, okay, we'll talk about that in one second.
I think that more or less coversbecause I did stuff a beasts as

(01:11:12):
well, but I think that mighthave covered. Have you looked at Mike,
You've looked at my Instagram obviously,if you looked at my crop site,
if you type in crop dot comforward slash robbed Bliss, Yeah,
I'm here, Okay, so thatthat is you probably you get a better
view of Ye, there's a Idon't know if you'd find it. It's

(01:11:36):
quite far down. There's a littleblack and white Thestral picture with a baby
Thestral. So is that so?Is it just because you because you drew
a baby Thestral in your concept heartthat they were like, oh let's include
a little baby Festra. No,No, the reason the baby Thestral made

(01:11:56):
it into the into the script orthe film whatever is because David Yates thought
the Thestral and the distance on mypicture was a baby Thestral, but I
obviously made it clear enough, sohe was like, last, nice baby
Thestral. And I don't know ifI admitted that it wasn't a baby thestral
at the time, but I thenmade its feet sit on the ground in
front of the mother, so insteadof his father tedway, instead of it

(01:12:19):
becoming a distant Thestral, it becamea baby Thestral in the foreground. So
that was, I mean a niceexample how of just a little mistake.
Yeah, and a discussion can leadto something actually making it into the film.
I mean I could, yeah,now you've said, I could see
what you mean about it. Theone I'm looking at about it being in

(01:12:43):
the behind the thestral so those ofthem be the same size. But instead
he thought it was in front ofthe thestral and the baby. I've tagged
Rob in my social posts so throughthat you can get onto his instagram,
and I have to say it isjust an absolute must. You should definitely
go and check out all his work. It's incredible and you could just spend

(01:13:05):
hours scrolling through and looking at allhis artwork. It's really really amazing.
So you should definitely all go anddo that right now. No, listen
to the end of the episode andthen do it. I think there's about
twenty minutes left. There's also,if you go up not very far from
that black and white thestral picture,what looks like a female houself in the

(01:13:29):
middle with a bottle and her head. Oh there's winky and she is twerky
ty how to if she was calledtirkey, she definitely would have made it.
I'm really sad she didn't make itinto the films. That makes me
sad. Hey, look, they'rebound to do a reboot at some point,
aren't they. So that is truemaybe if if it's a TV series

(01:13:53):
of it. There's actually next tothat. Yeah, so there's the centaurs,
Yes, centaurs, although that werePaul Katling got that and Adam Brockbank
got that design in the David Yatesfilms. The thing I mean, in
some ways it would have been quiteinteresting to have gone over individual pictures and

(01:14:14):
had discussion around those pictures because there'sa little story probably around each. Yeah.
Yeah, I think there are acouple of gray back potentials there as
well. There's like a where youcould probably guess them because they look like
scary wolf people. Yeah. Yeah, see, but you're but there's a
picture You've got a Dobby, whichthis is going to be really hard now

(01:14:35):
because I'm gonna have to try andit's quite a few down from the festal
one sort of eleven pictures down onthe right hand side, who looks a
lot more evil and scary. Andoh, you're probably looking at creature then,
oh is that creature? Probably?Yeah, I mean I haven't found

(01:14:57):
the exact one you're looking at,but yeah, there would be if it's
an evil Dobby. It's going tobe a design for creature, i'd imagine,
because great Creatures is a sort ofdifferent to Dobby's, aren't they that's
slightly more um yeah, I thinkI think the thinking with creature was,
Okay, let's just do the thingsthat let's just change the attributes of Dobby

(01:15:19):
so he will have a downturned noseand his ears will be a bit more
down turned as well. I mean, it was just a simple way of,
okay, how can we make himnot look like Dobby from the outstart?
Yeah, so yeah, those wereYou're right, but the actual reasoning

(01:15:40):
for that isn't any more interesting thanjust doing the opposite of Dobby on some
level. So, like Dobby,everything went up from creature about the nose
and then creature. Yeah, yeah, I mean he obviously was designed,
you know, a lot quite sometime after Dobby. Yeah, you know,
he's older, and yeah, itjust seemed to fit with his the

(01:16:01):
way he looked to make his noseturned down, et cetera, seemed to
fit with it. But it's oneof those things worse. Yeah, as
since this is finished, I'm goingto be like, wouldn't I think of
that one thing? But we didn'ttalk about the design process for the Dementors.
Yes, yeah, do you mindtalking? Sorry, do you have

(01:16:23):
time? I realized I've kept youway longer than I said I The Dementors
were interesting. I'm not quite surewhether I had to fight for it or
or I was given it. MaybeI was given it because it was dark,
and you know, let's give thatto Rob had come on for the
film, and I wouldn't have gotaway with any of this nowadays. I
just would have been off the Dementa'svery very quickly. Basically there was I

(01:16:48):
think there was a film called TheFrightenness was it that that had come out
a little while. But I wasvery interested in any bit of cg in
a film. I would I wouldsort of lap up and have opinions about
it. And with the Dementis,it was one of those funny creatures where

(01:17:09):
they're kind of you've got to showsomething that's hidden. You know there's a
hidden element to this character. Butyou've got when you're designed something, you
can't make something hidden. You've gotto show the thing that's hidden. So
I was very, very aware ofthe fact that this big cloaked character,

(01:17:29):
if you didn't have something underneath it, a real character, real creature underneath
it, it would end up lookinga bit too cartoony as it flew around
and like there was you needed somethingfor the cloth to blow upper gates?
Yeah, so what? And Ididn't know how to draw any of this.
So I've got some plaster scene claystuff together, and I think I've

(01:17:57):
done a bunch of drawings which youcan find it on my site. Early
ones Alfonso an early note from himwas we want them floating. So very
very early Dementus were drawn walking,but these had to be floating around,
you know. And so what Idid was design the creature or the monster
or the character underneath the cloth,and then we got Kate Hill to sculpt

(01:18:21):
a half size maquette so it washalf the size of the eventual dementor,
and based on this little even smallermarquette that I'd had a go at and
we got that made in fast cast. And then I think this whole process

(01:18:42):
was taking a little while to doit, and I remember Alfonso was getting
a little bit so where's my dementor? Then, you know, it was
it was getting a little bit likeI'm going to be in trouble if i
don't well, I'll probably already introuble, but I'm going to get shouted
with that if I don't make himhappy with the design in the next couple
of weeks or something like that.Anyway, I remember so going back to

(01:19:02):
that whole thing of going out andbecoming quite adapt at buying muslin from the
right place down in London and buyingthe dye for it and putting it in
a bucket and then sitting on apavement at Leaveston and hitting it with some
rocks and stamping on it, etc. We've got all this, so we

(01:19:24):
broke down all this cloth and thenwe put it over this maquette that Kate
had made. And the point atwhich I sold the whole thing to Alfonso
was and this again is an example, I wouldn't get away with this in
a million years. Now. Weone morning it was very very low light,

(01:19:44):
very sort of cold, but sunny, wintry morning, is my memory
of it. I got Alfonso tocome down to the car park outside Nick
Dudman's and I had a nice bucketof hot water way there and had the
cloth waiting over the top of it, and then I poured the bucket of
water over the marquette with the clothon it, and it just stood there,

(01:20:08):
steaming, with this cloth clinging toall the ribs and the arms and
everything, and with the sun comingthrough it, you could see that you
could see a glimpse at the formunderneath. And he was like, all
right, there we are. You'reoff the hook, and he went off
happy. Now that's my I've forgottenabout that, but that's Dermot's memory.

(01:20:32):
That's my memory of Dermot's memory.But that's that there was a certain point
with the dementia where I just couldn'tdo anything in drawings with it. So
I just had to go through thislong process of getting permission to get Kate's
sculp this thing based on the otherthing, and then to get cloth and
to literally make the thing, likemake a small version of this thing,

(01:20:55):
and then after that we had tosend it off to visual effects. And
of course we couldn't keep the thingwet long enough, so Nick Dudman came
up with the idea of clear fastcast. Is that was quickly a fast
card, and that's what we dippedthe cloth in and that was put over
the dementor and then we and itwas made to look this is what a

(01:21:18):
dementa would look like if wind wasblowing up against it. So we had
bits of string that we're holding bitsof cloth in place long enough for them
to become stiff so that when youturned it up the right way again.
And I think that thing might bein the exhibition. Yeah, but that
was but nobody told us it wasincredibly toxic fast cast incredibly toxics. I

(01:21:41):
had a lovely rash going down myface after I'd work, Yeah, and
that went off in a box tothem. I think in America or something
crazy that go to that amount ofeffort. But that was an interesting,
old fashioned way in which something couldbeen designed in the past. But you
would literally be shot at dawn ifyou ever tried to pull something like that

(01:22:04):
off nowadays. Yeah, but Imean it sounds amazing, and it sounds
like a lot of fun actually beingable to sort of have that freedom to
do that sort of stuff to getthe design. How you're sort of imagining
it, I guess. Yeah,but you're you're saying fun because you're you're
forgetting the fact that I was ina mad panic. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:22:25):
it's fun in the same way asif you managed to get Starlin to agree
with one of your policies, youmight breathe a sigh of relief for a
while. But yeah, the otherside of that is, yeah, doomed.
Have you ever seen anyone going aroundthe studio of skipping for joy?
No? Only only me. Imean I loved being there as kids obviously.

(01:22:53):
Well, I guess you guys gotto sit around a heater or all
day, didn't you, drinking cupsof tea? Yeah, I mean when
I wasn't at school. Yeah,there was a lot of just being in
our dressing rooms playing games, orwe were down on set. So how
did that affects the talking to meand of viewing you is why more interesting
than you? It's really not whatwas How did that affect? Because I

(01:23:19):
really didn't like school and I couldn'twait to get out. I loved kissing
about the school, but I didn'tlike doing homework and actually learning anything.
Working on Potter effect, I mean, it must have made going doing normal
school even more difficult than doing normalschool is anyway, or maybe you were

(01:23:41):
a good student anyway, would preferto have been at school? No,
I mean I'd to be fair,I have always liked school, and that
when I went back to school,I only think of school with like fond
memories. But I mean, Iguess what was hard for me is that
I so I when I first startedas in primary school, and then I
went to when I went back toschool, I was in the secondary school,

(01:24:04):
and I think that was quite hardbecause I'd changed schools, but I'd
never really been there. I thinkI'd been like three days or something.
So then just suddenly like appearing halfwaythrough secondary school and also having like the
reason you're not there is because you'refilming Harry Potter. It's kind of like
a little bit weird. Yeah,people are a bit like that. I

(01:24:25):
would say, is that only downside? But in terms of like learning,
I mean I had basically a privatetutor for several years. There's only ever
like three or four of us ina lesson with that private tutor. And
having to learn as opposed to playingtag with your mates around the fields at
Leaston? Was that was it difficultto knuckle down when you were in such
a i'd say fun environment. Whowould be for a kid? I mean

(01:24:48):
yeah, especially because your days canbe really disruptive. You you know,
you're in and out of school thewhole time, being like someone will can't
be like you have to go downto set for an hour, you come
back four to five minutes for school, then you might need to go back
down or you know. They werevery strict with our breaks and our lunch
times because they didn't want us tobe having our lunch when so when the
crew brokers, when we had tobreak, you know, so there was

(01:25:09):
that sort of thing that it's quitea disrupted day. But I mean we
were so well looked after, likeWarner Brothers, really were like, these
kids need to be like having.I think that was Chris Columbus had a
heavy influence on making sure that kidsso like we really never wanted for anything.
The tutors were always in touch withmy school, making sure I was

(01:25:30):
doing the same work that my lastnights were doing. You know, they
were really good, like I really, you know, they really made sure
we really had my mum obviously,because I was under sixteen, like my
mum, and my grandma took itin turns to come with me and be
like my chaperone, and you know, they were really great to them.
And you know, my grandma actuallyloved it because I my grandfather had died

(01:25:54):
sort of a couple months before Igot the part in Harry Potter. And
then when my mom was working,she would come with me. So my
grandma would come Monday, Tuesday,and my mum would come Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday. And my grandma always sayslike it came along at such a
perfect time for her where she wasobviously just lost her husband, and they

(01:26:14):
because my grandma was like all theother Chap friends were sort of like young,
so my grandma was obviously at grandmaage and she was like a bit
of a like Queen Bee amongst thechaperones, and they all treat her probably
my age. I actually don't knowhow old or she's no, because she's
ninety something now, so she waslike seventy something. Okay, Yeah,

(01:26:35):
so she she was like queen QueenBee and they treated her. I loved
it. So they were going tolike the whole family, and whenever we
were on location, they would bringmy whole family up every weekend so they
would could stay like my whole familythat my brothers, my sister, my
mum and dad. Sorry, Ifeel like I'm going off on a real
tangent now about You didn't even askme, but I find it interesting and

(01:27:00):
the funny thing, and you've sortof reminded me, of course of another
great aspect of those films is thesecurity was treated in a much more It
was a lot more lax back then. But not to deferment of anything.
Nothing ever got out of the pressearlier or anything like that. That they
were so kind about allowing people's familiesto come around. And before I left

(01:27:25):
working on the films, I madesure that I got as many family members
to come and look, that's aspossible. And that was another aspect of
the film that was on reflection,really really nice was that when you went
down to Settle wherever, you wouldcasually walk through the Great Hall, or
you would casually walk down some oldcorridors that were part of Hogwarts, or

(01:27:48):
you would walk down the full scaleversion of the Minister of Magic, the
Big Green. We were out round, so you know that there were these
things that you have, these memoriesof being able to walk in these environments,
which I mean you were very casual. One was very casual about having

(01:28:08):
those experiences back then. But ofcourse they're all gone now, but which
makes those memories quite precious, Ithink, you know. But but yeah,
it was great being able to walkaround Leavestone and just being in Hogwarts
at times, weren't you when youwere just Yeah, And the finish on
everything and that the stuff the artDepartment's made was so amazing to go.
And the other thing was private drive, private drive just near the canteen.

(01:28:32):
Yeah, And I could never workout whether the budget on it was real
fake like that's either or just anamazing thing that a plaster did with a
flip of his wrist. Yeah,I don't know that I would be interesting
to find out. But yeah,no, it was good. I mean
both my brother and my sister wereboth extras as well them to come and

(01:28:57):
you know, they were really andeven once I finished filming, I would
just come back. You know.I was an extra in the fourth one
just because they were like, oh, do you want to just come and
be an extra? Yeah, becauseI still knew sort of everyone working on
it. I'm like, yeah,of course. And then even the fifth
film are just coming because I livednear the studios anyway. So it was
probably a certain point though that theywere like who are you. Yeah,

(01:29:18):
they were like, get over it. You're not in it anymore. Yeah,
yeah, you don't have the securityclearance. I'm afraid that's what they
would be saying to me. Now, I guess if you tried to do
the same thing. Yeah right,Okay, Well I feel like, have
you got enough rambling? I absolutelyloved speaking to you. That's I love

(01:29:39):
this sort of you know, thesesort of interviews when you just find out
so many like get like origins tothings. I think that's because you know,
they're really iconic characters that twenty youknow, twenty years on, are
still you know, loved and adored, and I'm sure you see like figurines
of them everywhere and in that sortof stuff. It's and I am very
lucky because I got to design somemajor characters and a major franchise, and

(01:30:08):
I can I can be proud myselfto that, and what a battle it
was as well to to to holdonto those things. And I also know
that it's I wouldn't get that chancenowadays, you know. So any chance
to give myself credit for those things, I take that nowadays because I think
it's important. Yeah, yeah,it's just an important from a because if

(01:30:32):
you if you don't take credit foryourself, somebody else will take the credit
all themselves, you know. Andyou know, the Potter verse is vast
and people love it, and yourealize after you know, twenty years on,
that you were part of something thatwas way more important than you realized

(01:30:53):
at the time. But I feelvery very lucky that I was at the
right place at the right time andthey able to get a chance to design
some characters which otherwise nowadays probably wouldn'tbe able to get the chance to design
so many characters franchise like that.But do you know that I designed Dobby,

(01:31:14):
the Dementors, the Thestrals, thedeath Eaters are big characters, and
I think that you obviously did afantastic job because people really, you know,
people wouldn't have cared about Dobby dyingif they didn't love him. One
thing I was thinking about when speakingto Rob, or what Rob made me

(01:31:35):
really appreciate, is how attention todetail really is what makes Harry Potter so
magical. So, you know,like the care and the time and the
effort that Rob and you know,all the art department and lots of people
from lots of different departments put intothe characters and the Harry Potter universe is
just incredible because all those tiny detailsthat you see without realizing you're seeing is

(01:32:00):
what really makes it come to life. And I really think robertpitomizes that with
his care and his skill and whathe put into making sure, you know,
the characters that we love in thebook were depicted on screen to the
best of his ability so that fansweren't left disappointed. So I kind of
hope you got that too from mychat with Rob. You know, there
was no cutting corners, and Ithink it really was a labor of love

(01:32:21):
for so many people when creating theHarry Potter World. So I just think
we owe people like Rob a bigthank you for doing that, because you
know, that's why we love it. Anyway, a bit of sad news.
We have a couple of weeks offnow where there will be no new
episodes. But some good news isthat we will be back with a Christmas

(01:32:42):
episode which will be out on thetwentieth of December. And I guess,
kind of embarrassingly, the guest forthat episode is me yet so Lucy,
who produces this podcast, has interviewedme, and at first I was thinking,
I don't know what on earth Ican say that I haven't already said
sort of in interviews or you know, even sort of my Instagram that stuff

(01:33:05):
that I post about. But yeah, I thought let's go for it,
and yeah, there was actually loads. So we ended up having a real
deep dive into sort of a dayin the life of and what I did
every day, and just you know, as soon as you start talking about
things, memories come flooding back.So that will be an episode out yep

(01:33:28):
in a couple of weeks twentieth ofDecember, a sort of like a Christmas
episode. Yeah, so I hopethat's not a disappointment, and I hope
you still decide to tune in.We shall see, But thanks for listening
this week, and I hope tosee you all in a couple of weeks,
and I'm sending you all lots oflove. Thanks for listening to Behind

(01:33:53):
the wand Stories from the Harry PotterFilms. Produced by Lucy Damouth, edited
by Patrick Muslic, and created byme Flick Mars, and brought to you
by mugelnet dot com. Bye fornow.