Creature suit

The suit, created by the film special-effects artist Don Post, was extremely hot when worn outside of the water, requiring actor Ben Chapman to be regularly hosed down, and difficult to see out of.

Creature suit technology advanced during the latter half of the 20th century to include modern materials and animatronics integrated into the costume itself, increasing their realism.

It is extremely difficult to mimic realistic lighting, leading to most CGI creatures and characters looking obviously fake when placed alongside real environments, especially if the film has a low budget and cannot afford sophisticated 3D modeling and rendering.

This has led to the continued use of creature suits in modern-day films and commercials to provide additional realism, such as Hellboy and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Different body shapes of suits are made using foam padding covered by painted liquid latex (to simulate bare skin) or fake fur.

More expensive suits have hairs hand-knitted into the foam to give a more realistic, movie-quality appearance, as well as animatronic machinery, usually as part of the mask.

[8] Misty Rosas, among other roles, portrayed Amy the gorilla in Congo, as well as the aliens Kuiil and Frog Lady in Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.

Many animals have been made into lifelike creature suits, including lions, tigers, rhinos and elephants, foxes, wolves, dolphins, kangaroos, penguins, common ostriches and walruses.

They are used in theme parks to entertain guests, as well as in educational performances to show people how living dinosaurs looked and behaved, something that is more difficult to depict with stationary displays.

Suitmation (スーツメーション, Sūtsumēshon, a portmanteau of "suit animation") is a filmmaking technique initially developed by Eiji Tsuburaya for use in Godzilla films and then used for his Ultra Series productions, a practice which survives to the present day.

The suit actor, often moving through scale model scenery to give the impression of size, is filmed at a higher framerate to make them appear slower.

In addition, the suit actor performs their movements slowly and deliberately to emulate a slow moving creature, and low camera angles are utilised to further provide a sense of scale.

[15] Other examples of robot creature suits include Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, worn by David Learner in the television series and Warwick Davis in the 2005 film; and Mother from I Am Mother, which was designed by Edon Guraziu, built by Weta Workshop, portrayed by Luke Hawker, and based on realistic robot designs to be "100% believable".