Grindelwald’s Brand New Bestiary

Framestore’s Nathan McConnel discusses the challenges and rewards of delivering new creatures for the Fantastic Beasts sequel.

Those who crave more wizardry from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling can turn their attention once again to the adventures of magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and his suitcase filled with mythical, magical creatures. In the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, filmmaker David Yates reunites with visual effects supervisors Tim Burke and Christian Manz, and vfx house Framestore, which was tasked with delivering 15 different creatures for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Familiar and fantastical elements needed to be properly balanced to achieve a sense of believability for the creatures. “The remit of this film was, ‘How can we make it better from the first?’” notes Framestore Animation Supervisor Nathan McConnel. “‘How fantastical can we go?’

You’re always trying to find an anchor point so someone will believe that this thing is real.”

To assist with the creature development, the Framestore team began its work early on.

“They had five or six concepts for this Chinese dragon character known as the Zouwu,” recalls McConnel. “They asked us, ‘Which one do you think we should go with?’ What drives the stuff that we can provide is a functional de- sign. You can have a concept that looks good as a static image but then maybe it doesn’t have the same intention of design once you start rigging and animating.”

Motion capture was not an option for the Zouwu, which originates from Chinese folklore. “We looked at Chinese dragon festival dances and decided to have that kind of quality going on in the head of our Zouwu while the tail is ribbon-like in its movement,” explains McConnel.“She’s a four-legged creature

that moves like a lizard. You’re not going to get many people who can do that!”

A Dragon in Close-Up

In the early stages, the team had to flesh out the idea rather than produce a highly de- tailed and polished creature.“As we hone in on the performance, then we can start thinking about the muscles and dynamics of the fur,” says McConnel. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, and were critical in selling the believability of the Zouwu in close-up shots. In the beginning we played them like bug eyes but they didn’t feel grounded enough. The big eyes needed to be supported by muscle, structure and cheekbones.”

The Zouwu needed to feel like a cohesive creature. “You have this lizard-like quality, a mane and a ribbon-like tail, so what actually is it?” notes McConnel. “Rather than changing everything and redesigning the proportions, we found that texturing the Zuowu like a cat helped to blend all of those different design

‘The remit of this film was,‘How can we make it better from the first?’‘How fantastical can we go?’ You’re always trying to find an anchor point so someone will believe that this thing is real.’ Framestore vfx supervisor Nathan McConnel —