"One of the most inspiring things in out journey into Narnia was to work alongside such a remarkable artist, storyteller and visual persona as Andrew Adamson. The opportunity to raise our craft over and above what we did on ‘Lord Of The Rings,’ to bring it to bear on such a diversity of design and culture, has been a dream come true."

Richard Taylor, WETA Workshop

Who do you go to create an entire world populated by wildly imaginary creatures? One place has become legendary for their nearly magical skills in this department: Richard Taylor's WETA Workshop, the collective group of artists based in Wellington, New Zealand, who designed and created the visual and makeup effects for all three chapters of Peter Jackson's landmark "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Adamson knew he needed WETA on his side in helping Narnia’s creatures and all their battle accoutrements – weapons, armor, etc – become reality.

Taylor, a four-time Academy Award® winner, was thrilled to enter another beloved fantasy universe, one that held out its own entirely unique challenges. "C.S. Lewis conceived of Narnia as a world of a child's dreams, where all mythologies come together. This gave us wonderful opportunities to design harpies, minotaurs, centaurs, and goblins, all interacting in the same fantastical world," he says. “We also created dozens of species never before seen on the screen."

While WETA conceived some ten species of creatures for Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, for THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE they bring to life a remarkable 60 different species of creatures, of which nearly half do not normally occur in nature. The WETA artists quickly became aware that while Tolkien and Lewis are often compared, the imaginary worlds they created were entirely different in style and texture. Due to Lewis’ less detailed description, for Narnia, they had far freer reign.

“In the case of Narnia, you're entering through the back of the wardrobe, into a kind of dream universe, into this much more fancy, enriched world,” elaborates Taylor. “Therefore, there wasn't the same strict brief for us to hang our design on. We realized, thankfully, that we were able to bridge out at a much greater extent into fantasy, drawing on the rich mythology that C.S. Lewis' writings took on. It gave us a broader and richer palette of design than we had on ‘Lord of the Rings.’ The many visual techniques we used combine to create a fully-realized fantasy world the likes of which has never been seen on film. The craftspeople and technicians have pushed a new extreme of artistry in their pursuit to bring Narnia to the screen, which we hope will inspire a whole generation, young and old, to dream for themselves."

One of WETA’s most complicated creations for the film were the centaurs, the half-man, half-horse species – borne out of Greek mythology -- which required human actors to wear animatronic horse bodies co-designed by Taylor's artisans and K.N.B'.s Howard Berger. "The centaurs were one of our more complicated characters," Berger comments. "Richard Taylor and myself had previously done centaurs for 'Hercules' and 'Xena,’ but we wanted to make these far better."

Another challenge for WETA was the film’s climactic battle, for which WETA Workshop complemented costumer Isis Mussenden's battle gear wardrobe with a spectacular array of more than 1300 weapons, including swords, maces, shields etc. and armor (150 metal and leather chest plates, patented, handmade chain mail). The magic was in the details. "It's the final touches that will make it feel like these were all made by craftsmen of Narnia," Taylor notes. "We all hope that we played a small part in creating a world that feels cohesive and real and alive for audiences to enjoy."

Working closely with both WETA and Adamson throughout was Howard Berger and his K.N.B. team who make magic out of prosthetics, masks and bodysuits. Berger, who approached the filmmakers early on fired up to work on the project, was completely in tune with Andrew Adamson’s quest for realism in creating this fantasy world. "I approached it from the start as if these we were creating living creatures, bringing them to life with the help of the actor. Ultimately, I think we were responsible for twenty-three individual species. We created a hundred and seventy individual characters for the film, and shot 150 days with them in New Zealand and Prague,” sums up Berger.

During his six-month prep on the film back in Los Angeles, Berger employed over 100 makeup artists, technicians, fabricators, mold-makers, painters and mechanics. "We recruited the best we have in the makeup business," he says. " I asked everybody to read the books so that they understood that this was not just a movie. I wanted them to understand the essence of why this film was so important to me. When I talked about Mr. Tumnus, or Ginarrbrik, or the White Witch, everybody knew what I was talking about and what they should be like so we were all on the same page. We all felt like this was a journey unlike any other movie we had done before.”

Among Berger’s favorite creations is the minotaur Otmin, which he calls “the coolest monster K.N.B. has ever made.” Using a radio-controlled animatronic head and requiring multiple puppeteers to operate, Otmin has a personality all his own. “As far as bad guys go, he's a combination of some of my favorite creatures, a mix of a ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ creature with a primate. He’s very real."

Otmin also required one of the most detailed body suits ever made. “It's a fabricated muscle suit, so it has muscles, fat and even veins, clear plastic tubing that's been stitched in a pattern,” Berger explains. “The fat is basically water-filled bladders so that his chest and arms jiggle. His biceps also contract. And, once that structure was built, the fabrication department put a spandex skin that's sewn onto the muscle suit. It was then painted, and all the hair was hand-tied individually. Otmin’s remote-controlled head has lips and jaws that move to mimic dialogue, eyes that blink, moving ears, all the bells and whistles. Coupled with the muscle body suit, it added sixty pounds to the actor’s frame. And it took about 45 minutes just to put the suit on."

Says Shane Rangi, the actor who plays Otmin and wore the carefully engineered suit: "The suit was dark and extremely hot and I was 100% blind. There were 27 servos in there going off, so it was also fairly noisy. I couldn't really hear a lot. The trick then to working? Not to be claustrophobic! "

Rangi, along with James McAvoy and some 200 extras doubling for fauns, centaurs and the like also had to wear spandex pants dyed in a green screen hue. This would allow for the next key step in the process of brining their characters to life: allowing VFX supervisor Wright and his artists to superimpose the legs of a goat, ram, bull or horse to the humans playing these mythological creatures who populate Narnia.