 The subspecies creatures, which were created from Radu's blood, originally began as local Romanian men in rubber suits. The men were filmed on over-scaled sets to simulate the miniature size of the creatures. The performances of the Romanian men, along with the design of the rubber suits, caused director Ted Nicolaou to rethink his approach. Nicolaou brought in animator David W. Allen to assist him in creating "more magical" looking subspecies creatures. Allen went through all of the film footage that contained the Romanian extras in their rubber suits with the film's editor in order to find usable footage before and after the men enter the scene. Allen would use the isolated footage to develop a new background for the animated creatures he would later create. Allen created two puppet types, displayed in front of a bluescreen: a stop motion puppet and a rod puppet. Each of the puppet types were composed of foam rubber, and held similar skeletal systems. Some differences between the two types include tension filled joints for the stop-motion puppet, while the rod puppet was looser. The flexibility of the rod-puppet allowed for faster movements, which were needed occasionally for real time filming.
