How His Dark Materials Made the Daemons Look So Real

Now consider a show like His Dark Materials , where the essential premise of the series is that every character gets his/her own Ghost, or daemon , a real-life animal who comprises part of that humans soul. Daemons are attached to their human (soulmate?) from birth and must settle on a final form during puberty, meaning that for children (a large portion of the Dark Materials characters) daemons are constantly shifting forms. Meaning youve got several shape-shifting Ghosts running around screen and talking every single episode.

If this doesnt sound like an expensive premise/budget nightmare, youre not thinking like a producer. Every new daemon character is a butt-ton of cash, series executive producer Jane Tranter told RadioTimes.com in a recent interview . Hear that? A but-ton of cash.

How did BBC do it? How did they animate and pay for so many Ghosts? Tranter breaks it down.

What are the actual daemon animals?

The first stage required the animators decide on the actual animals each daemon should be modeled after. For Lyras Pan, VFX supervisor Russell Dodgson and his team settled on an ermine, a kind of weasel, as the cute companionand a pine marten, a kind of mink, as Pans more mobile form. The team then started making behavioral decisions like which animal mannerisms each daemon would keep and which human mannerisms they would adopt.

UK fans, have you picked up the latest issue of @RadioTimes ? The Golden Monkey grabbed a copy but we were too afraid to approach him. Luckily, lead puppeteer Brian Fisher was able to calm him long enough for a picture... #HisDarkMaterials pic.twitter.com/BEnjjwnTOq His Dark Materials (@darkmaterials)

The next stage was making puppetsnot so much for the characters themselves, which remain entirely CGI, but for the sake of the actors.

Lin-Manuel Miranda told RadioTimes.com that his experience on the set of Sesame Street helped him interact with the puppets on Dark Materials. Ruth Wilson, who plays Mrs. Coulter, said she was afraid shed have to work with a tennis ball in place of her monkey daemon. The presence of the puppets and movements of the puppeteers became such essential features of the filming process that both directors and actors couldnt have imagined shooting without them. Great puppet actors bring out great performances.

How 'His Dark Materials' Animated the Daemons BusinessInsider USA Images

How are the daemons animated?

After filming, the puppets (and puppeteers) are edited out and the VFX team goes to work. All daemons are hand animated, says Dodgson. Not one of the daemons in the series is played by an actual animala stand-in that might have saved tens of thousands of dollars at times. The team simply didnt compromise.

Still, the team had to make changes to the book series, which features much more daemon interaction and form-shifting. It wasnt so much that these shots would be expensive (which, of course, they would be), rather their prevalence would take away from the acting performances, noted Dodgsonand constantly cutting to CGI animals might seem strange and awkward. So if you expected more daemon-on-daemon play, there's a reason for the scene selectivity.

Lyra and her daemon Pan BusinessInsider USA Images

How much did the animation cost?

Remember? A butt-ton.

While BBC hasnt revealed the exact cost of the series, its budget is believed to be somewhere between $50-60 million . In comparison, the final season of Game of Thrones cost about $90 million , but with much larger set pieces. And that was also the final season, with the average cost-per-episode for previous seasons hovering closer to $6 million . This per-episode number means each episode of His Dark Materials (there will be 8 per season, with season 2 now filming) will be just over that of the average Game of Thrones installment. And considering His Dark Materials hasnt yet featured any city-destroying battles, we can probably guess where a lot of the dough is going: the animation department.

What it cost per minute to animate any given daemon cant yet be calculated. But were certain its higher than most TV animation has ever been. And, so far, we think its totally worth it.