Creature effects from Wing Commander 3

[Raven-VII]

Hi all,

Firstly it's great to see that there is a strong community out there who appreciates the amazing universe that is the Wing Commander series. I am 40 and grew up with my bother showing me Wing Commander 3 on his PC and I eventually bought myself a copy on PS1 many years later. I have only really played Wing Commander 3 and 4 (due to PC and console limitations). I loved the look and sound of the Kilrathi and have always loved them as a Villans. Recently I watched a documentary on YouTube about the making of Wing Commander 3 and discovered that John Rhys Davis was the voice of the Prince Kilrathi from the game. To say I was shocked and amazed was an understatement...however I cant find a listing or reference for what company actually made the creature effects besides "in house" in Hollywood. Does anyone out there know who actually made those amazing creature effects?
Thanks

Also did anyone notice Casper Van Dien as a background character in Wing Commander 4?

 

[AD]

Does anyone out there know who actually made those amazing creature effects?

The credits are listed in some of the manuals (and probably in the game itself as well).

https://download.wcnews.com/files/manuals/Wing%20Commander%20III%20PSX%20-%20Manual.pdf

The Kilrathi suits are credited to Precision Effects. There are several suit technicians and operators listed there as well

There's a bit of info in the WC3 guidebook as well about the Kilrathi designs in WC3

Wing Commander III Guide : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Wing Commander III Guide

archive.org

Designing the Kilrathi was a big problem. While Chris Douglas put together sketches of the Kilrathi, Adam Foshko was searching the West Coast for someone who had a good track record in animatronics. They found Precision Effects, who had previously done The Abyss, and had them build the Kilrathi.

Chris Douglas: For the Kilrathi clothes, I wanted to reflect a little bit of the way the ships looked— a Kilrathi feel. The original idea was that I wanted the Kilrathi aesthetics to be primitive. In my artificial history for the Kilrathi, they never had a renaissance period on Kilrah. Their entire history never had a era of peace where they developed art or aesthetics. They had been fighting and killing each other from the minute they developed intelligence, Kilrah was in constant war and tribal battles. They had been fighting, with war- lords building clans until about a century ago when one warlord finally consolidated his rule. Then they turned their interest outside because all they had ever done was fight and conquer. They didn’t do anything else. Peace wasn’t even something that would cross their minds. When they finished one war they would think "who do we con-quer now?’' They would never think oh good, we’re done with a war, now we can just sit and refax.y^Fhey’j^ ntfver honed rules of perspective and aesthetic composition. They're super-advanced technologically, but not aesthetically. The only cues they would have would be to make something look aggressive. They would have spikes, tooth necklaces, maybe one arm would have a personal computer and the other would have ears of vanquished foes. It would be a mix of Zulu warriors and super space-age tech. At some point in the arduous process of getting them built, that didn’t come through at all. We could have done done something a lot more striking with more time . and money.
We got to the point when there was a big rush to start building them. When we finally found the people who could do them, we had to make a bid and get them done now .


Q: Were they not what you had anticipated?


CD: Some of the colors that I’d originally intended were changed. They came out being bright colors, which in retrospect was probably good because it is easier for the computer to compress colors with more contrast. My original plan for Thrakhath was that he would be dark and moody. Dark red and gray would have been more menacing. However, the materials they could get readily— and they needed huge amounts of cloth — were in bright blues and bright reds. The materials were more complex than I had imagined. They wanted a specific kind of material that would drape across the bodies, without looking stiff, that would look good on camera and that wouldn't be too shiny for the greenscreen. My dark red and light gray weren't two of the colors available in those materials. It couldn't be helped.

The Kilrathi themselves were a completely different problem We had to design the creatures as well as the clothes they wore. The Kilrathi we got at the end resemble, but don’t match very closely, the original conceptual design. One of the biggest things was the prosthetics. There's a kind of skull that these guys make that has servos that move the eyes and the mouth and all that. It already has a set shape, and you can’t deviate from it. The Kilrathi I designed were more feline, they had a jutting jaw and a sloping skull. They had more of a snout. I tried to make them more alien looking, too. But the servos couldn’t make the jaw stick out. If I had known that from the beginning I would have done it a little dif- ferently. It was another one of those things where you have to design it first and then figure out how you can create it.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Firstly it's great to see that there is a strong community out there who appreciates the amazing universe that is the Wing Commander series. I am 40 and grew up with my bother showing me Wing Commander 3 on his PC and I eventually bought myself a copy on PS1 many years later. I have only really played Wing Commander 3 and 4 (due to PC and console limitations). I loved the look and sound of the Kilrathi and have always loved them as a Villans. Recently I watched a documentary on YouTube about the making of Wing Commander 3 and discovered that John Rhys Davis was the voice of the Prince Kilrathi from the game. To say I was shocked and amazed was an understatement...however I cant find a listing or reference for what company actually made the creature effects besides "in house" in Hollywood. Does anyone out there know who actually made those amazing creature effects?

Welcome! I'm always happy to meet another Wing Commander fan.

The Wing Commander III creature effects were provided by a Los Angeles-based company called Precision Effects based on concept art by Origin's Chris Douglas. Michael Hood, who ran the company, did the creative work (and also operated the suits!). Precision Effects was around for about ten years and you'll come across their credits occasionally in genre stuff... they did the diving suits on The Abyss and and 1930s-style serial Holodeck robot for Star Trek Voyager!