The Original Gremlin Sculpt by Tony McVey

one of the only remaining pulls from the original gremlin MOLD

Introduction

When Chris Walas took on the challenge of designing the creatures for Gremlins, he knew the success of the film hinged on creating monsters that were both terrifying and full of personality. To help bring these designs into the physical world, Walas enlisted accomplished sculptor Tony McVey, whose skill in creature modeling made him the perfect collaborator. Together, they set the foundation for what would become some of the most memorable creature designs in cinematic history.

In the early design stage, McVey sculpted the original Gremlin maquette (a scale model of the creature) based on the concepts developed by Walas’s team. McVey came with an impressive background in creature sculpting – he had previously honed his skills working on fantasy and sci-fi projects (even doing work for stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen’s films) – experience that made him a valuable asset in designing Gremlins’ unique look. His responsibility was to carve out the basic anatomy and features of the Gremlin in clay: the leering face, oversized ears, spindly limbs, and scaly skin texture all took shape under McVey’s hands. Tony McVey’s creative contribution was essentially giving Walas’s Gremlin concept its first real physical embodiment. “It was insanity from the word ‘go,’” Walas later said of the creature creation process, but credited artists like McVey as the “really good people that made the Gremlins come to life” – underscoring how pivotal McVey’s sculpt was to visualizing the creatures in early development.

Interview with Tony McVey

GM: At what point after Gremlins was green-lit were you brought onto the production? How long did you work on the film?

Tony McVey: "Well, if I’m remembering correctly it was pretty soon after the movie was green-lit. Chris made a little maquette of the character, cast in latex with a polyfoam filling, but there wasn't much surface detail on it so he said I should just make it look dramatic and include a variety of scale patterns."

"I was on the movie for about three months after which I moved on to various other projects. I didn't want to repeat the experience I had after doing a year on Dark Crystal followed by 11 months of 6 day weeks on Jedi, a combination that burned me out so much that I couldn't do anything even remotely creative for about 7 or 8 months. Gremlins was the project that lured me back into the business."

GM: Were you specifically hired to create the new larger Gremlin design based on Chris’ original smaller puppet?

Tony: "Chris knew that making all those puppets would be time consuming so he hired me to start the sculpture soon after the movie was confirmed. Chris was getting nervous with the time it was taking me to finish detailing the head and torso so both he and Randy Dutra added details to the legs while I was completing the torso. I think the master sculpture was about 20 inches high"

GM: Besides Chris’ original creation, did you have an inspiration behind the design?

Tony: "The look of the character was based on a little maquette that Chris had made. He left the skin details to me, although he definitely had input since it was his character. I thought of the gremlins as a kind of reptilian monkey with practically no patience and a short attention span, so that was my guide for its appearance"

GM: Did you design the paint pattern or was that done by someone else?

Tony: "I think Chris came up with the color scheme"

GM: Once the sculpt was completed and molded, did you have a part in turning it into a workable puppet?

Tony: "I mentioned to Chris that I was primarily interested in working on the gremlin sculpt and the various Mogwai facial expressions, so consequently my time on the project totaled around three months. I did not want to get involved in producing the numerous puppets since I’d done a ton of that during my time on Jedi and did not want to repeat that experience."

"If I remember correctly a silicone mold was made of the primary sculpture and I don't know exactly how many copies were made from it so that various people could get to work on the mechanisms that activated them."

GM: Do you look at the design now and are happy with it or do you see things you would do differently now?

Tony: "If I was tasked with re designing the gremlin now, I think I’d give it slightly longer and more robust legs, but aside from that I think it’s still a great design."

Special thanks for their assistance on this article to: Chris Walas with his documentary Gremlins: A Puppet Story, Aelia Petro with her book 30 Years of Gremlins and Tony McVey for his time and good memory.