Video: Bringing daemons and ice bears to life in His Dark Materials

If you’re a His Dark Materials fan, you’ll know that in the books, Lyra’s daemon Pan has about 35 different forms – as the spirit animals or ‘daemons’ of children aren’t fixed in form. When it came to bringing Pan and all his forms to life, the special effects crew of HDM settled on about eight different forms to express Lyra’s thoughts and feelings.

Watch the video on the making of the ice bears and daemons

This is just one of the interesting things we learned watching HBO’s behind-the-scenes featurette on Bringing Daemons and Bears to Life in His Dark Materials, now streaming on Showmax.

“The show has an unusually high baseline for visual effects,” explains Russel Dodgson, VFX Supervisor. Did you know that the bear fight at the end of season one took six months of animation? There were 1,500 creature shots in total in season one, 50 different daemons, and the eight-episode first season contained a total of three full viewing hours of visual effects – the same as a feature-length film done entirely in CGI.

Watch the latest episodes of His Dark Materials Season 2 on Showmax, express from the US.