How "His Dark Materials" Used Puppets And CGI To Create Realistic Animals | Movies Insider
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- čas přidán 22. 01. 2020
- Award-winning VFX company Framestore produced a number of daemons and polar bears for the HBO/BBC series "His Dark Materials." The project was overseen by senior effects designer Russell Dodgson.
The team worked alongside studio Painting Practice to cast many of the creatures in the series, which were then brought to life by Puppetry legend William Todd-Jones.
For close-ups, some of the puppets like Lyra's daemon Pan, were sculpted heads. Other slinky-body styles of puppet were used for quadrupedal or bipedal animals. Some "flappy" puppets were used for daemons that were in flight or had to land on actors' arms.
When actors needed to demonstrate the weight of daemons, the team made gray furry cushions called bucks. These had weight and shape to make it look like actors were holding daemons or pressing their face to them.
For the polar bears, a series of large rigs were made. There was the "basher bear" to ram into stunt people and push actors to the ground, a riding rig for Dafne Keen (Lyra) to sit on, a backpack rig for her to get on top of someone's shoulders, and a four-legged fiberglass standing puppet to show a polar bear's height. The team also used a "couch bear," which was a gray buck to lean against.
Even though the animals look incredibly real, the only "animal actor" on set belonged to Ariyon Bakare's Lord Boreal and is played by an actual snake.
We caught up with Russell at Framestore in London to explain the process.
For more, visit:
/ framestore
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How "His Dark Materials" Used Puppets And CGI To Create Realistic Animals | Movies Insider - Zábava
VFX artists wrestle to decide who has to do rotoscoping
Lmao
This is an under appreciated comment 😂
Omg i was thinking about that xd
Lmao
The loser has to retopologize the sculpts
Painting out the puppets can be rather difficult. Especially if there's a lot of lighting and layers to the scene.
But puppets do have one amazing advantage other than actors having something to play off. LIGHTING.
They give a physical object for light to interact with which then gives CGI artists a reference to how to add that light back in after removing the puppet.
It's amazing to see that puppetry is still very much alive as an art form. And seeing more of it come back in films like star wars and TV shows like this and Dark Crystal makes me incredibly happy.
Ohhh, I never would have guessed that as one of the things that makes CGI look out of place in the 3D environment, really great point
To be fair isn't that what the multiple passes would be for? to my knowledge its easier to edit stuff out if you essentially just have to cut and paste footage over the top instead of literally recreating the environment on top of the existing footage to remove the puppeteer and puppet
Cool for actors and framing. Literally the worst nightmare of the VFX Team. That door scene omg i almost cried for them
The visual effects in this show are some of the best in any production in history. So incredibly impressive.
I'm going to say this because nobody else will...
I feel bad for the golden monkey.
I hate it when he frownd.
Bro that monkey is a little evil sh*t, he likes to hurt others
The golden Tamarin is Mrs. Coulter's soul. She hates herself.
Me too
@M E That's not how it's written in the series, regardless of its appearance. "The Golden snub nosed monkey" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
@@Lakeside80 But yeah, that's pretty much supposed to be it.
With this and The Dark Crystal on Netflix, puppetry really isn't dead !
Soufian 27 don’t forget baby yoda
Baby Yoda also used a puppeteer
They are like 5+ years apart
Jim Henson's Creature Shop inspired many artists and and puppeteers who made their own puppet studios or ended up working for the studio itself.
Many movies and shows actually used them just not often talk about.
Just finished watching the show. The CG was indeed insane.
This explain why the acting of the human actors is so good!!! They are always looking at the right spot and interaccting to a real daemon. Usuallly there is this uncaney valley where the actor is clearly looking at nothing and you can´t unsee it
4:00 "As the VFX team could then easily edit out the puppet" Yeah, right... "We'll fix it in post " is where nightmares usually start for vfx artists.
Jurassic Park truly has changed Cinema
Just A Dio Who's A Hero For Fun so did avatar and the Ten Commandments
they really did an amazing job
This was pretty cool to watch. It is a shame that Golden Compass flopped as a movie.
Artificial Soul it was such a good book! It’s so sad 😭
Thanks to crazy religious people
I don't remember the movie well, but how was it a flop?
this is about the new show, not the old movie!
@@HybridChickun It didn't reward them any meaningful profit either (and afaik that budget number doesn't include additional costs), so it's still a flop.
Unsung Heros. Thanks to their enormous effort we get to watch the masterpiece.
This is so incredibly impressive. These are real artists.
Oh damn, I thought it was entirely CG! This makes me respect this series so much more.
Even more awesome when you realize that they used a real snake for Lord Boreal's daemon.
02:50 just look at Dafne, with the puppet, she slitly tilted her body on the side to leave room for Pan. With no puppet, the actor would have been fully in front of the Window with no space for the deamon
Watching 'His Dark Materials' makes me really sad about how bad and unemotional the live action of 'The Lion King' was.
WTH? Do u even realize how much work goes into CGI?! If YOU made the lion king I bet you'd be pretty proud of it! And the goal of that movie was to make the animals REALISTIC but with some CHARACTER! You can't be making realistic animals and put on every feature of a human! Just keep the negative on this movie to yourself because it takes a lot of time to make those movies and Disney makes them for US!
Same. This show has a lot of personality in its animals. John Favreau really didn’t know what he was doing with that remake at all since The Lion King wasn’t supposed to be a realistic story in the first place lol.
@@rachel_kim384 They’re not obligated to keep it to themselves because a stranger like you on the internet said so lmao. Also effort ≠ exempt from criticism or anything negative about the movie.
@@ssffe529 Still tho. Have some respect for it. And I never said It was illegal to say it was bad; just be nicer about it
@@rachel_kim384 But this show had a fraction of the budget of TLK and the animals look both realistic and expressive in this yet not in TLK
«As the vfx-team could EASILY paint out the puppet»
VFX Team: :/
By far the best CGI animal renders on tv/movie
Now I understand why the interaction between the humans and the CG animals in this show felt so dynamic and soulful. It is the best one I have ever seen on screen so far.
Hats off to the puppet masters, directors, VFX and production teams for the length of efforts to make this beautiful show.
LOVE His Dark Materials!!!
And this is part of why every previous adaptation flopped so horrendously. The daemons are essential to this story!
Fantastic. The animals in these were one of the things that made it so magical - especially the facial expressions and eye-contact between Lyra/Mrs Coulter and their respective daemons. The clever approach clearly paid off!
Having watched the Golden Compass and not His Darkest Material is so weird because I feel like I've seen all those scenes but the actors are different! 🤯 I guess that means that both are pretty truthful to the original book 👏
Btw this video was pretty interesting and the work behind the series seems incredibly laborious and expensive. The finished result looks great, I'm looking forward to watching this one day!
the new series is much, much closer to the books, both in in the plot and also thematically. the movie kinda avoided the whole anti-religion/pro-enlightenment thing the books have. the series is not shying away from that at all.
I really don’t know visual effects like that but I would think it’d be so much extra working taking out the puppeteers
Yeah rotoscoping is a pain
"Fisher has the intricate and difficult job"
VFX artist: **laughs in rotoscoping**
I liked how they used puppetry as well as CGI.
It’s a shame they never finished the Golden compass
yeah, but we have this now, so who cares. the series was far better and closer to the books (even if some of the casting choices were a little suspect...)
My thing is how short these seasons are Chile 😩😭
@@cedriccages3622 seriously? You watch a video that explains just how much time goes into making the effects for this series, some taking years then complain at how short the seasons are? The show is commisioned by BBC and HBO. BBC is British and has different labour laws surrounding film and TV than America. Actors and people who work on these things MUST have proper breaks and not be overworked by law. This is not the case in America which has a massive problem with people in the industry being overworked so much. Hence why American shows are often 22 episodes long each year and British shows are between 6 and 12 episodes a year.
@@l692 good for you. 👏🏽
The real heroes of film and TV....
I can't believe the girl who played Lyra had to ride on top of another human for the scenes when Iorik carried her. X'D
sooo well made with the puppets and the animation.. love it..
I loved his dark materials can’t wait for season 2
Me too. But I'll never get over Lee dying
Same over here, dose anyone know when it will come ?
@@sarsimran7025 Sometime this November?
Camilla E not with coronavirus lol it’ll come out next year
@@sarsimran7025 What do you mean?
Some people do not have to worry about; ..
"explain the process"
Other people d0.
Liking the goddamn c0mment because, yes.
Just finished watching the season earlier this evening. Perfect timing!
Not enough Daemons in the show. That’s my only gripe.
Seriously? They showed them way more than I expected
Remember that GoT was the most successful show on TV and they could only show the dragons for a few minutes per episode (with many episodes without them). Meanwhile this show has multiple CGI creatures per episode and since they're based on real animals, the CGI needs to be perfect. Dragons are easier to CGI since they don't have fur and there's no real-world equivalent to break the illusion.
@@VladTudorIonut Your point about GOT doesn't make sense.
Paul Anthony they’re saying it’s much harder for this show to pump out CGI animals with fur because it takes a shit ton of more time and is just overall more difficult. Thus the lack of more shown.
@@VladTudorIonut The daemons rarely have physical interactions with humans. It's much easier to composite small animated figures into space when they don't cause changes to the world or humans around them. A stoat/cat/mouse/moth makes a tiny shadow. A dragon tears up the earth as it walks.
Most of the shots with the daemons are stagnate or basic pans which makes 3D tracking/lighting the scene all the easier. The camera movement in GoT is much more dynamic.
Also (and I'm not hating on these animations) the GoT dragon models are way more sophisticated when compared to some of the models used here. No, the dragons don't have fur, but they have wings that are made of semi-translucent skin (6:42 which they stated were the trickiest to do) an extremely detailed scale pattern and they breathe fire.
Also, in terms of scale, GoT was working with 10x the amount of actors, 10x the amount of locations, and whether you know or not, 10x the amount of CGI just used on building the background/buildings/weather/ice walkers/dire wolves/giants/mammoths/horses/ships/armies/etc. Compare a scene of the gyptian army fighting to an episode like the Battle of the Bastards, The Long Nights, or The Bells.
I'd suggest just looking at the VFX breakdowns for GoT to understand just how much work went into some of their shots. I'm really not trying to hate on all the work that went into this show but the amount of work that went into GoT was on another level.
These are best looking animals on the level that even cinema movies didn't achive.
This is really good. Other franchises like Star Wars can learn some things from the production team of His Dark Materials.
It is just breathtaking to watch the series. Loved it. ❤❤
5 years later: "How actual animals and CGI are used to create realistic animals"
Pure talent!
Finally, puppets on set for the actors to focus on and react to. It's gotten so old watching actors stare off into mid-field while vaguely gesturing in a direction
7:32 I'd ask if I could keep that model if I were the voice actor for Pan
It is a really cool series
David and Dan, take notes.
*"Too much CGI for direwolves"*
I will never look at it the same way.
Imagine making a cgi snake using a real snake...
They didn't the snake is actually one of the cast's pet
@@meganishere so it’s a real snake… like I said
perfect! ✨
I read this book! I really liked it
A wonderful voice over. Very professional and easy to listen to.
My back hurt looking at this. But its amazing
Genius
Doctor Who fx are about to be lit.
That's a clever way to do that
They should have used a snake puppeteer as well
As a video game lover, there's something really amusing to me about them rigging the CGI in Unreal Engine. It's a great engine when used effectively, but it's also just typically known as the "baby's first game maker" since so many bad indie Steam games are made on it, lol. Also viva la puppetry! It's an art I've honestly missed in modern media. But between this and the new Dark Crystal, I've been getting my fix.
I would not say it’s just a great engine but probably the best off the shelf engine for AAA games.
Isn't unity knows for the indie stuff?
UE is the big AAA engine of the bunch.
Geniuses.
I've heard of people trying to make fake footage of us bigfoots like this
Why are you here
@@lem1738 don't be rude
no, thnx it’s just weird seeing Bigfoot here lol
@@lem1738 he's probably just curious
Just Some Bigfoot With Internet Access you are literally everywhere... what the heck
Woah
*GOOD LORD THE PUPPETS*
Great
"CGI killer puppetry"
Dark materials "hold my strings"
Interesting. God bless and have a wonderful day
Me(an idiot): aww the men are hugging aggressively
Poor cat. I was sitting near mine when that scene happened! 🐈
As a VFX artist you need to know martial arts
still some people think being VFX artist is just video editing
Amazing to se Unreal Engine was used for the animations
wait, isn’t that kinda the golden compass?
based on the same book series
cool, thanks!
The monkey puppet is very creepy
100th comment: when i heard it took 700 days just for the bear, id been like screw it the hate is worth ignore more than the time it took
Hahah now imagine those puppets being what you see in the actual movies :D
i feel sorry for the vfx cleaners that have to rotoscope out the puppets to make way for the CG animal. especially on moving camera shots
I still want a sequel!
am I too early?
Marvel job
168th?
Huuu scary
did it hurt??
@@SpartanLawOnline wtf
maybe unpopular opinion but the movie was so much better than the tv show... the daemons look more gritty, although their vfx was much improved upon in the show
Having read the books, the show is a much better adaptation of them than the movie, even an improvement on the source material in places.
Yes, when people talk about the Daemons, I must admit the movie does a better job at creating them, but when it comes to storytelling, the show does it better.
Also Dafne depiction of Lyra is way better, His Dark Materials is one of my favorite books and I remember beeing very disappointed in the lead actress for Lyra in the movie she didn't get Lyra's vibes and personality right and it really bothered me. Dafne is perfect for the role ❤
Why the monkey face look so similar to coulter
Is this a sequel to the golden compass ?
Its the golden compass but this time its a tv series not a movie
It’s based on the same book series, except this is a more faithful adaptation.
I cringed so hard when they said " unreal engine game simulator"
Freedom Of Motion not great for games, brilliant for feature films and tv though
it is a engine, it doesn't mean fortnite.
The golden monké
Thats CG...?? Oh my god...
Hi
Production company Bad Wolf?!? Anyone else not gagged?!?
What's the story behind it?
@@iqbaalannaafi4944 Dr who bad wolf
First?
Potatö Salad Me toooooo!
I just had to say how wonderful your channel today
5th
I tried to watch this show but the first episode and the first half of the second episode bored me to death.
By the way whose animal is that Polar bear?
De Von no one.... But the bear eventually teamed up with Lyra.
@@sorestedhebytheTumtumtree I love your username
The bear's soul is in his armour in HDM universe.
Does it mean dark by he his killing animals
The limping visitor speculatively blink because united kingdom neurochemically unfasten behind a lethal minute. forgetful, shrill open
I mean........ Realistic animals???? OK sure...................
Let's say so.....
Jee I wonder just how much money was wasted on this snit
That girl from Logan is in more movies and she is so bad in every one.