Cleverman character design

"The design of the Bindawu (also known as the Hairy People) began with a conversation with series creator Ryan Griffen. He talked about what he wanted to create and began with the stories from a known place, some of his personal experiences of being on Country. From there we discussed, "how do we take these experiences and creatures from our culture and convey them in a genre-based TV show, that would be broadcast around the world"?

At this point we were joined by Weta Workshop and they became our key collaborators in designing the Bindawu. Richard Taylor’s designers at Weta began the process of visually describing what the Bindawu would look like, by creating hundreds of creature designs which they would send to both Ryan and I. This left us to look through all these renderings and let Weta know what was working with each and how to move forward in the design process. Once we had found a visual language and hero designs for our Bindawu, Kath Brown and her hair and makeup team were brought into the conversation. It was another step in the conversation towards what the Hairies would look like. Kath’s job was to take the designs that we had created and transform them into wearable costumes, which she did beautifully by hand, over many weeks, knotting individual strands of hair into costumes. At this point the actors were brought in for fittings, the designs were refined and shaped to the body and ready for the screen." – Jacob Nash