LA Times countdown part 2: Inferi

In the second part of its Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince countdown, the Los Angeles Times has a new interview with Tim Alexander, the visual effects supervisor in charge of bringing the Inferi to life.

Tell me about how the Inferi look. How did the design come about?

The art department on the film gave us a lot of references, like Dante’s “Inferno,” where they have all those bodies. The Inferi themselves are very skinny and emaciated people. Very humanoid, but way skinnier than humans could be. Waterlogged and gray. We used the old lady that comes out of the tub in ‘The Shining’ as a reference. Most of the Inferi are adult, but we did also build two children, too.