Rocky is not a CGI alien. About half of the shots featuring Rocky in Project Hail Mary were filmed with practical puppets, operated by a crew of six people who called themselves the Rocketeers. They wore black suits and performed in the frame of every Rocky scene. All six were removed in post.
Creature designer Neal Scanlan spent six weeks and went through more than 100 design iterations before finding Rocky's final form. The team's main design problem was pareidolia. They needed Rocky to never accidentally look like it had a human face, because human brains find faces in everything.
The film used no green screen at all. Every spacecraft set was a physical build at Shepperton Studios. NASA sent an actual astronaut to the set to brief Ryan Gosling on what spaceflight feels like.
People on Backlot are watching it this month. It more than holds up.
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