In keeping with its vexing nature, the daunting task of bringing a sentient pile of space goo to life frequently eluded the filmmakers. "Part of the problem was that the Blob hadn't been properly locked down from the beginning," confesses VFX supervisor Hoyt Yeatman in American Cinematographer Vol. 69. Effects were handled by different groups, which in some instances backfired and resulted in "very little usable Blob footage during production." As straightforward as a blob might sound on paper, "it proved very difficult to get a performance from it," explains Yeatman. Eventually, the filmmakers settled on a guiding concept. As relayed in a two-part profile by Fangoria's Bill Warren: the Blob was "a giant, inside-out vampire stomach." The idea was that the Blob was highly acidic. So instead of just absorbing whatever it touched, the Blob's victims would dissolve at different speeds depending on the creature's strength. Before leaving the production (in frustration, supposedly), Conway resolved one of the Blob's big "performance problems." In shots where its movement was limited, the Blob was sculpted full-size and cast in stiff rubber. When a lot of movement was required, Conway's team developed a puppeteering device called the "Blob quilt": layered silk with "ravioli-sized pockets" injected with methylcellulose, a food additive derived from wood pulp. The methylcellulose would secrete through the silk, obscuring the base structure and allowing the puppeteers to manipulate the apparently fluid mass. One of the ways they would puppeteer the quilt was with "mitten-like Blob chunks," that hid the hand-shapes of the operators. In addition to keeping its shape, the design of the quilts produced small surface movements as the sacks jiggled of their own accord. There were, however, some drawbacks: a veiny quilt of ooze took hours of prep, the puppeteering was doable but basic, and water-retention made the quilts very heavy. "Those quilts were two-hundred pounds of slime," according to puppeteer and mechanic Peter Abrahamson. As creature effects crewmember Jeff Farley puts it: "There was not a day when the puppeteering crew would not go home covered in slime. We would wear plastic garbage bags to try to cover ourselves, but it never worked." The Blob quilts were draped over everything from fiberglass forms to mechanical armatures, to air bladders, and even over the puppeteers themselves. Additional Blob material included -- but is probably not limited to vinyl, urethane and foam latex, lycra, nylon, rubber, and gallons of commercial "Slime." Miniature sets and actor stand-ins were used and composited together in post-production. They even built an entire mini version of the town of Abbeville in a 1:8 scale. While the Blob's movement was primarily hand, wire, and rod puppetry, some stop motion was used. You can glimpse a brief stop motion sequence in the theatre scene. The sequence is noticeable thanks to a strobe light effect and because of the contrast with the high-speed live-action miniature work.

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