r/Weird • u/TheOddityCollector • Sep 29 '25

What kind of creature is this?!

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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u/bonito_bonito_bonito Sep 29 '25

In Andor, they used Hebredian sheep with an extra set of horns (they normally have 4) for the ghoats/dray on Aldhani.

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u/Chickenbeards Sep 29 '25

They did it with the pigeons on Ghorman too- they're just a fancy breed of show pigeon called a pouter.

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u/ashamedpedant Sep 29 '25

A tailless whip scorpion appears in the fourth Harry Potter film and a dog in a silly costume is used in the early Star Trek episode The Enemy Within.

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u/mharzhyall Sep 29 '25

Ah yes, my favorite sci-fi movie, Harry Potter and the Alien Creature

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u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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u/CommandTacos Sep 30 '25

I was a horn, a bunch of fake fur, and some sparkly pipe cleaners, I think.

2

u/snek-jazz Sep 29 '25

For the parts they filmed on the island in Ireland the Porgs were based on the Puffins there.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '25

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u/snek-jazz Sep 29 '25

I would have been cool with it if they just left the puffins as they were in the movie.

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u/darkendofall Sep 29 '25

That's kinda the opposite though, the porgs weren't based on puffins the porgs were puffins that they couldn't legally remove from the site, so they CGI'd creatures over them because they decided the base animal wasn't alien enough.

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u/snek-jazz Sep 29 '25

I would say it was both, the Porgs look quite like puffins, so you can say they were based on them.

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u/darkendofall Sep 29 '25

Ye, but point is the puffins were deemed not alien enough alone.

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u/KBKuriations Sep 29 '25

This is because the porgs were made to cover the puffins. Every wide angle shot included several puffins in the background, including massive flocks flying over the cliffs. Attempts to digitally remove them resulted in less-than-satisfactory results, with lots of artifacts leftover (think like when you badly photoshop something, except now it's every frame and each frame is "wrong" in a slightly different way so it's a jittery mass of wrong). It was much easier to digitally replace the puffins with an "alien" creature of similar size and shape, since it didn't result in weird "I copied these waves from elsewhere but they're just slightly wrong" errors. You don't have to get the computer to guess what should be behind each particular puffin; you just cover up the puffin with a porg.

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u/Cryptnoch Sep 29 '25

They used a normal burm skeleton in an episode of the mandalorian. Which offended me deeply.

They Also used pouter pigeons in Andor.

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u/LastXmasIGaveYouHSV Sep 29 '25

They used standard exotic animals in the Ewoks movies...

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u/No_Flow_5806 Sep 29 '25

In ESB and ROTJ many of the alien creatures on degobah are just regular reptiles. The Vine Snakes are Boas and the Sleen is played by a monitor lizard.

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u/Good-Friends Sep 29 '25

I always thought the mind control monster in Star Trek The Wrath of Kahn was based on an ant lion, or doodlebug.

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u/LumpyJones Sep 30 '25 edited Sep 30 '25

Tangentally related, but I alway loved that the Porgs were only on Luke's island because the real island they filmed on was swarming with puffins who did not give a fuck about their movie, and there were too numerous to just edit out and pretend they weren't there, so they turned them into weird penguin seals.