Spawning the Satan beast for End of Days at Stan Winston Studio

The Millennium Brings the Devil to Earth in Horror-Action Film End of Days (1999)

In addition to creating Lake Placid's giant crocodile, another 1999 release that would involve Stan Winston Studio was End of Days, Peter Hyams' film about an ex-cop, Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who faces off with Satan (played, in human form, by Gabriel Byrne) to prevent him from taking a bride and bringing about the prophecies in the Book of Revelation. Whereas David E. Kelley’s screenplay for Lake Placid was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, End of Days -- one of a slate of movies that exploited the paranoia surrounding the coming end of the millennium -- was much more somber in tone. Besides several different wound elements including prosthetic makeup pieces for various stages of Satan’s battle injuries, Stan Winston Studio designed and executed a full-size Satan beast as a suit and mechanical head. The suit would be filmed on set and eventually intercut with a computer-animated Satan beast created by Rhythm & Hues (R&H).¹

Jump To Section

• Taking End of Days’ Satan From Concept to Creation
• Creating the Satan Beast Suit
• Performing in the Satan Beast Suit
• Creating Additional Effects for Satan’s Battle Injuries in End of Days
• Scaling the Practical Satan Beast Suit with CG

Watch a Satan beast test at Stan Winston Studio

Additional computer graphics work was handled by Todd-AO/Hollywood Digital West and Centropolis Effects, and KNB EFX Group also provided a variety of makeup effects for the film. An assortment of on-set gags and blasts were engineered by special effects coordinators Thomas L. Fisher and Scott R. Fisher.²

 (Some early Satan beast concept art by Stan Winston Studio concept designer Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery.)

Taking End of Days’ Satan From Concept to Creation

Stan Winston Studio concept designer Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery designed the Satan beast. "Crash spent months designing the beast while in consultation with Peter Hyams," Stan Winston related. "Ultimately he was able to conceptualize The Devil in a way that was both cinematic and demonic. We didn’t want to play to some cliché image of Satan -- red skin and horns just wouldn’t have worked -- but the character did have to conform to some of the iconic mythology. Crash managed to touch on the key elements that identified the beast while bringing something fresh and new to it."²

 (Crash's final Satan beast design for End of Days.)

The approved design was passed to Stan Winston Studio key artist Joey Orosco who sculpted a highly-detailed maquette. After the sculpture was scanned by Cyber F/X, the data thus derived served as the basis for both Winston’s full-size creation and R&H’s digital devil. The final Satan beast measured seven feet tall and had a twelve-foot wingspan.²

  (Joey Orosco sculpts the Satan beast maquette based on Mark ‘Crash’ McCreery's approved design.)

 (Joey Orosco paints the Satan beast maquette as color reference for both the full-size practical suit and CGI model.)

Creating the Satan Beast Suit

Work on the full-scale suit began with the milling of a seven-foot-tall form in rigid polyurethane foam, scaled up directly from the approved maquette. After some additional hand-detailing, Stan Winston Studio technicians molded and cast the suit in foam latex while mechanics worked out how to make it move so the creature could be put through its paces within the real church setting used for the finale. “Our demon towered over Arnold,” recalled Stan Winston. “It was really quite astounding to see this imposing visual of an actual demon interacting with him. Six to nine puppeteers were outside the Satan beast to control various functions, with John Rosengrant inside [the suit] to provide focus and direction for the creature performance.”²

 (John Rosengrant adds sculptural detail to the computer-milled foam Satan beast form.)

 (Stan Winston Studio crew members [clockwise from top left] Rob Ramsdell, John Rosengrant, Jason Matthews and Trevor Hensley detail the computer-milled foam Satan beast body.)

 (Stan Winston Studio lab technicians [clockwise from top left] Eric Ostroff, Lou Diaz, Rob Phillips and Keith Marbory mold the Satan beast.)

Performing in the Satan beast suit

For several days of filming, at a Catholic church in downtown Los Angeles, John Rosengrant performed inside the suit, while up to nine puppeteers controlled head and wing functions.² “The Satan creature was probably the toughest suit I was ever in,” noted John Rosengrant, “mainly because of the position my body had to be in to make it work. My arms were outstretched, and my feet were locked together in ski boots, on a little base on a boom arm so that I could be raised and lowered. I looked as if I was being crucified. Then, I had to lean far forward, which put a lot of pressure on my back, because the suit and the head were very heavy. I had to train really long and hard to sustain that kind of pressure on my back."¹

 (John Rosengrant [inside suit] and external puppeteers, including mechanic Jeff Edwards, bring the unfinished Satan beast suit to life for Stan Winston.)

 (Key animatronic designer Alan Scott and fellow SWS mechanics operate a boom arm to give up and down movement to the Satan beast suit/puppet.)

"It was also very claustrophobic in this suit. Once it was sealed up, there was no way to breathe, so I had to be fed air from a tube," recalled Rosengrant. "It was dark in there, too, so I couldn’t see a thing until the monitor inside was turned on.” The monitor, which provided Rosengrant with the main camera’s point of view was, at that point, a fairly recent innovation. “It gave me a camera tap feed, which was critical for me to figure out if my framing was right in the shot. If you’re in a suit blind, and someone says, ‘A little more camera right,’ you don’t know where the camera is, so you don’t know how to adjust your position. By having that picture feed in there, I could see the whole setup. I could tell if I was blocking Arnold or if I wasn’t in the frame properly."¹

 (Joey Orosco paints the full-size Satan beast puppet head.)

“Even with that, though, it was a very difficult setup," said Rosengrant. "Performing in that suit was really an endurance test, and I just had to gather up the strength to do what had to be done throughout the long shoot days. One of the things that drove me was that I was performing in front of Arnold [Schwarzenegger], the fitness champion of the world. There was no way I was going to let myself fail in being able to physically perform in that suit. I felt the pressure to do a really good job.”¹

 (Joey Orosco and Trevor Hensley airbrush the full-size Satan beast at Stan Winston Studio.)

Even for those crewmembers outside the suit, operating the radio-controlled facial articulation or the rod-puppeted wings, was a stressful experience. “We were all really concerned for John’s safety inside that suit,” said Rob Ramsdell, “because of the precarious position he was in. There was also something creepy about shooting this Satan scene in a real church.”¹

“We all felt kind of weird shooting in that church,” Trevor Hensley agreed. “We had to tone down the usual cussing that goes on. And we were puppeteering Satan in there, which was weird in itself. I remember somebody made a little nametag for John that said, ‘Hello, My name is Satan’.”¹

Creating Additional Effects for Satan’s Battle Injuries in End of Days

Stan Winston Studio created several prosthetic makeup pieces for various stages of Satan’s battle injuries. Some were applied to Gabriel Byrne on the set, while others were scanned and digitally composited onto the actor’s image. “Gabriel wore a piece of green screen material over his torso, beneath his coat, for the scenes following the lair battle,” noted R&H visual effects supervisor John DesJardin. “Stan Winston’s group had modeled a nicely-textured body piece with gooey-looking guts that revealed negative space and a measure of concavity that was not otherwise achievable with a live-action performer. After scanning and texturing the makeup piece, we 3D-tracked it to the greenscreen material.”²

 (The body piece that Stan Winston Studio created for Satan, for his wounded appearance as "The Man," played by Gabriel Byrne.) 

“The scene of Satan leaving [Gabriel Byrne’s] body was added late in post,” visual effects art director Ian Hunter from Hunter/Gratzner Industries commented, “so as to provide an explanation for his subsequent appearance in beast-form within the church. For wide shots in the subway leading up to that moment, Stan Winston’s people built a puppet with Gabriel Byrne’s likeness. It had radio-controlled eyes, plus articulations for both the jaw and head movement.” John Rosengrant contributed his arm as a double for Byrne’s in this shot, while facial closeups were captured at a later time when the actor was available. “They took the head off that same puppet suit, then fit Gabriel’s head up through the neck, with his body inside a hole in the floor of the insert stage. Even though that set only measured about thirty feet long, it closely duplicated the look of the San Pedro set.” Byrne’s progressively deteriorating makeup was applied on set by Winston team member Richie Alonzo and Louis Lazarra from the production makeup crew.²

Scaling the Practical Satan Beast Suit with CG

In the end, the hardships of shooting the Satan beast suit were mostly for naught, as after a very early test screening of the picture, Peter Hyams decided that the Satan beast needed to have an even greater stature, and turned to Rhythm & Hues to scale the creature up accordingly. “By going CG,” visual effects supervisor Eric Durst commented, “we could take it up to twenty feet or more in height – like a T-rex in relation to a man – and also utilize that nice big wingspan to work with the widescreen aspect ratio.”²

 (SWS mechanical designer Jeff Edwards with the completed Satan beast puppet at Stan Winston Studio.)

“We were disappointed to see how little of our work showed up in the final movie,” Trevor Hensley said. “We’d shot that thing for two very long days, and they ended up using only a couple of pieces of it. Those decisions are always disappointing. But we also realize that’s not our call. We’re hired to do what we do. We do the best we can. And then the filmmakers decide how they’re going to use it. It’s just part of the job.”¹

- Blog assembled by Adrienn Lingurár with selections from:

1. The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio by Jody Duncan 

2. CINEFEX #81: Days of Fire and Brimstone by Kevin H. Martin.

Do you want to try our school? Online Courses with Hollywood's Master FX Artists: FREE 7-Day Trial.

Courses with the Creators of End of Days

• Hybrid Characters: Blending Practical & Digital FX with John Rosengrant
• Metallic Painting Techniques - Robot Finishes with Rob Ramsdell
• Maquette Painting Techniques with Trevor L. Hensley

CHECK OUT THESE PATHWAYS TO HELP YOU MAKE YOUR OWN CHARACTER:

• RECOMMENDED FOR DESIGNERS: Design Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MONSTER MAKERS: Eye & Teeth Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR FABRICATORS: Fabrication Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR FILMMAKERS: Filmmaking
• RECOMMENDED FOR HAIR MAKERS:  Hair Work
• RECOMMENDED FOR MAKEUP ARTISTS: Makeup Effects Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR MECHANICS:  Mechanical & Animatronic FX Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR MODEL MAKERS: Model Making
• RECOMMENDED FOR MOLD MAKERS: Molding & Casting Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR PAINTERS: Painting Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR PUPPET MAKERS: Puppet Making Basics
• RECOMMENDED FOR SCULPTORS: Sculpture Basics