How Did Aardman Get Through Making This!!?

When they were making the Were-Rabbit the armature was so complicated and they had to make it as light as possible for it to be able to move how it did, obviously Aardman did a fantastic job on this model and it was the biggest model on that set. But how did they make it so good! heres the were rabbits Armature, this is a picture I took when I went to the exibition.

Then they put something over the Armature (please can you tell me what It is!) and that was for more of the shape but they had to make it still light.

Finally they put the fur on which was suppost to be made from rabbit fur stuck on elastic material for the stretchy effect for animating, this must of took a long time to make but does anyone know around how much it would cost to make one from scratch. (without Armature Cost)

Hey Harry, I'm sure they padded the armature with foam and then stretched the skin over, leaving holes in the skin so they could tighten the armature joints with hex-keys.

If you have the dvd of were rabbit 2 disc edition then you go to making of the were rabbit it tells you and then yeah as nofby says foam then skin stretched over then a four way fur the added that pretty complex but they did a fantastic job