Blueback
ARENA MEDIA

Feature Films
Creature Technology Co. brought to life the giant blue groper, title character of Arena Media's adaptation of the beloved Tim Winton novella of the same name.

Our team of creature makers created a puppet that could interact with the film's actors entirely underwater. This meant creating a creature completely free of any electrical componentry, using old-school film puppetry techniques that controlled features like fins and gills via bicycle cables that ran from a mechanism inside the creature to levers controlled by puppeteers above the surface.

The final results are outstanding - Blueback's performance was so lifelike that the actors felt like they were interacting with a real fish!

Behind the Scenes at Creature Technology Co.

Paul Smits sculpting

Creating Blueback

Creating Blueback

You can't make a puppet swim in real water! Well, it turns out you can, and beautifully. The puppet, let me say, is a triumph!

Tim Winton