Creature of habits
Trevor Hogg has to come to terms with his outer daemon while exploring the alternative reality of His Dark Materials…
The team behind the VFX of His Dark Materials discuss creating the series’ daemons
Asignature element of His Dark Materials (authored by Philip Pullman) are daemons, which are animals that physically embody the soul of their human counterpart. Fans of the coming-ofage fantasy trilogy will not be disappointed when watching the adaption by Bad Wolf, New Line Cinema, BBC One and HBO, as season one based on The Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in North America) consists of eight episodes that encompass 2,000 visual effects shots featuring 1,000 of daemons and 385 of digital bears.
Complex creature work
“His Dark Materials is a gigantic creature show with complicated nuanced animation and proper character building, including making CG characters that have to play alongside lead actors,” observes series VFX supervisor Russell Dodgson (Mars) who distributed the workload among Framestore London and Montreal, with the facility in Pune, India doing some paint, roto and compositing. “Not sure when I last saw this many creatures on a TV show and it didn’t involve singing,” laughs Framestore VFX supervisor Robert Harrington. “We were lucky to have been deep in the show from before the cameras first rolled, so we could shape the filming procedures. We made sure there was always a pass where the actors performed with the puppeteers, followed by the same again but without puppets. After that it was all in the edit, so sometimes we had the actors-only version and sometimes it was the puppet version.”
Framestore also worked on the feature adaptation which won an Oscar and BAFTA Award for Best Visual Effects.
“The Golden Compass [2007] was never an active reference, although it was interesting to watch again and look at the daemon transformations,” states Harrington.
“A bunch of the crew from the movie have also been working on the TV series.” The technology has greatly evolved since the failed attempt to launch a movie franchise. “It’s like a city that has been built on a city that is built on a city,” notes VFX executive producer James Whitlam (Christopher Robin). “Every now and then you might uncover a cobblestone.” For Dodgson, there is a more important aspect than having more powerful computers and the development of new software. “Fundamentally, visual effects is clever people doing complex things in a computer, often fighting what the computer wants to do.”
Experiences from working on other big creature projects helped to streamline the visual effects process. “We took some of the wins that we had on certain shows and pulled them together,” remarks Whitlam. “There was a redevelopment of the rigging pipeline going into this show that put it on a good footing.” Extensive time was spent on the look development of assets. “The production art department will start off with a concept and we’ll do a paint-over on top of that based on what they’ve told us is and isn’t working,” explains Framestore VFX supervisor Shawn Hillier. “Our visual development department artists can
“HIS DARK MATERIALS IS A GIGANTIC CREATURE SHOW WITH COMPLICATED NUANCED ANIMATION” Russell Dodgson, series VFX supervisor