His Dark Materials

Season 2 Key Art Animation

Project

Animate the Season 2 Key Art of His Dark Materials

Using elements sourced from densely layered Key Art, we breathed life and movement into the artwork. Each individual part was animated so that as a whole it would have a coherent and complementary motion; breathing and swaying in sync. It was designed to be awe-inspiring and eye-catching without providing a distraction to viewers passing by the artwork on the street.

Process

To match the unnatural movements of the Season 2 antagonist known as “Spectres”, we used an array of liquid and distortion effects on static artwork.

We gave each character on the Key Art bespoke animation loops that fit with their character traits, including the beating of an eagle’s wings or the twitching of a Pine Marten’s snout.

A central element of His Dark Materials is “Dust”, a fundamental particle of nature seen within the show in key scenes. We used artwork provided by the show filtered through distortion effects and supplemented with plug-in effect particles in order to replicate the motion of Dust.