will,.. let me guess..
1st, i think, he used "shaveandhaircut" --plugin for maya or something similar..
anyways, the concept itself:
Simple model for a man and (motioncapture or a good-walkcycle) assigned to it.
After assigning the fur to that animated object, he took many snapshots for the needed look, after confirming the look itself; he saved the attrs as a presets in maya, then he set many keys for those attrs to achieve the “attrs-morphing” between those presets through the time.
Ez technique, but needs some timing-skills
For the shades and colors,
he rendered the key look, and then he used a compositing program to reach to the final look.
I may be wrong, but u may find something useful in this…
azab,

actually they are real creatures grown in test tubes:)