Crawley Creatures

First shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day 2002, the Hound of the Baskervilles was an adaption of the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes mystery.

Set partly in Victorian London but mostly on Dartmoor (though actually shot on the Isle of Man), the murder mystery is set around Christmas time. It tells the story of Sir Henry Baskerville, newly arrived in England to claim his inheritance - the sinister Baskerville Hall. Instead he finds himself at the centre of a web of unexplained death and murderous intrigue. Holmes and the redoubtable Watson are called for, and the game is afoot!

When we were approached by Tiger Aspect Productions to design the Hound of the Baskervilles there were only six weeks left in the schedule before shooting.

We produced over twenty designs for the hound, starting with the looks of a Bloodhound and a Great Dane. The design was developed through discussions with the Director into a more extreme beast with a seriously depraved look.

When the design had been accepted sculpting began. The Hound was sculpted by Colin Shulver who was head of Design and Sculpture on the project.

At two metres long and one and a half metres tall the beast started to take shape and was completed in eight days.

An animatronic close-up head was made with moving eyes, nose, ears and snarls by Carl Wilson. The head could be attached or detached from a weighted and jointed body.

The hair on the head and body was all inserted by hand by a team of up to four technicians headed by Jeni Walker.

A full sized hard copy of the Hound was also made and supplied to the Post Production company, Framestore to be digitally scanned and used to build their computer generated hound.