With the season finale of ‘Falling Skies’ on Sunday, we thought we’d bring you this set of videos courtesy of TNT.com so you can make your very own Skitter to keep you company until the series returns.
These 5 videos will show you the involved process of what it takes to make a Skitter from the very beginning where they make the mold of the alien to the end product of the actual Skitter that is seen on television. Narrated by Todd Masters (who designed and built the Skitters), the alien is actually a full scale animatronic puppet that takes 5 people to operate. There is one person inside the suit who controls the body, head movement and upper arms, two people with radio remote controls who operate the face and two others who work the legs using rods. The complexity of making just one Skitter and knowing it takes 5 people just to control one alien is astounding! Makes you really appreciate all that goes into a show behind the scenes.
As an added bonus, if you ever wondered how they make the Skitters move on walls and ceilings so quickly you can click on the link below to a video that shows you the process of how they achieved this. It takes you to the post production aspect of an episode and lets you in on how the live action that was filmed is combined with computer animation, 3D computer graphics and visual effects to give you the end result of what we see on TV. So now that you know what it takes to make a Skitter, they don’t seem so scary now…or do they??? Enjoy the season finale of ‘Falling Skies’ this Sunday at 9PM on TNT.
