PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLIE SURBEY030How do you give a talking CGI animal a soul? That
was the big challenge facing the upcoming TV
serialisation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark MaterialsAnimating aninner animalSTARTIn Philip Pullman’s books,
every character has a
“daemon”, a sentient
creature who represents
their conscience. For
the 2007 adaptation The
Golden Compass, actors
had to pretend inanimate
objects were walking talking
co-stars. But the new
BBC-HBO production uses
elaborate puppetry to bring
the daemons to life. WIRED
talks to team members
about transporting fantasy
from page to screen.Talking and thinking
The team used facial rig
software to make sure the
daemons spoke convincingly- but the real test was
silence. “You should be able
to turn the sound off, and see
their thought processes,”
says Dodgson. Stephen Kelly
Daemon design
Both production designer
Joel Collins and visual effects
supervisor Russell Dodgson
had deep conversations on
the nature of the daemons:
“Do they eat? Do they sleep?”
says Dodgson. “Where do
they sit on the spectrum
between animal and human?”Puppet practicalities
For scenes where daemons
were held, they turned to
dynamic reference puppetry:
an upgrade on the tennis ball
on a stick usually used as
a CGI reference point. “We
needed to give our actors
something to converse and
emote with,” says Dodgson.Body bonds
Each daemon puppet was
designed with a simple and
elegant “slinky body”. The aim,
says puppetry artist Brian
Fisher (arms pictured above
right), was to give the actors
something to bond with,
and allow them to “bounce
ideas off the puppeteer.”Fur and feathers
After filming, Dodgson
began the time-consuming
post-vis process of grooming
digital fur and skin. Birds, he
explains, were the biggest
challenge. “They have this
incredible ability for two
layers of feathers to co-exist
almost in the same space. Try
and tell a computer that...”11-19-STDarkmaterials.indd 40 27/08/2019 14:31