In late 2012, I was thrilled to be hired by director Wes Ball to design the mechanical creatures called Grievers for The Maze Runner.
In addition to the Grievers, I had the privilege of contributing to the design for the Maze, Beetle Blades and Cranks. Later, Method Studios joined the project and employed my designs for the visual effects.
First Test Design (All Painted)
Initially, it was planned to portrait the Grievers as large, robotic machines in the film. However, prior to being hired for the job, I had already developed a test design that incorporated the hybrid creature concept from the novel.
I presented this design to director Wes Ball, who was immediately drawn to it. Together, we made several adjustments to make them more intimidating, such as adding a scorpion-like tail.
Slugs and coconut crabs were big influences for me in finding the overall body shape. The head is a mixture of caterpillars, bulldogs and piranhas.
Griever Torso
The novel describes the Grievers as large, bulbous slugs, so the challenge was to transform this simple creature into a fearsome beast. Additionally I tried to come up with an interesting anatomy.
Some pencil sketches of the Griever head with sensors.
Pose Sketches
I did plenty of these different pose sketches, which illustrated how the creature could move.
Mechanical Spine and Light Dots
Since we see the Grievers mostly in the dark, Wes wanted to find a way to illuminate them with some kind of 'light dots' and sensors. This is one of a few options that I sent to him. One idea was to put these lights underneath the slightly translucent skin which would constantly move in one direction.
Mechanical Tail
Wes already had many dynamic action scenes in his mind and asked me to incorporate a mechanical scorpion tail into the design.
This required me to modify the body structure. I lowered the body closer to the ground and made adjustments to the small arms.
Lurking Griever
After the design was nearly completed, Wes requested an illustration featuring a Griever inside the maze. I generated several different ideas for this, marking my initial attempt at creating a maze concept. For inspiration, I referred to Wes's own 3D concepts.
Climbing Up
This keyframe shows Thomas trying to escape a Griever by climbing up a wall.
Griever Chase
Director Wes Ball used this painting to pitch the Griever design to the Studio.
Griever Anatomy
3D Concept.
Griever Key
The kids find this 'Black Box' device in the squashed Griever body.
Maze
Various designs for the maze.
Pencil Sketch of the 'Griever Hole'.
Cranks
This was originally my take on the 'Changing', based on the book descriptions. The design got used for the Cranks later on.
Beetle Blades
The Beetle Blades didn't end up in the film, but I had a blast working on them. There were a few fun scenes in the script. Wes described them as the 'observation cameras' from the maze, therefore I attempted to make the design very functional.
At the very beginning we thought about making them bio-mechanical, similar to the Grievers. Wes wanted something like a mutated and scary looking sowbug.
Although we later decided to make them robotic, I tried to give them a scary organic look. I gave them a translucent shell to show the mechanics inside its body.
Final design of the Beetle Blades. (All painted in Photoshop.)
Thanks
I want to thank Wes Ball, James Dashner, T.S. Nowlin, Joe Hartwick Jr. and 20th Century Studios. Also a shoutout to Sue Rowe and the skilled artists and animators at Method Studios who brought my designs to life.
