8 Cool Details About MakingThe Dark Crystal: Age of ResistanceFrom Its Incredible Documentary

A wonderful thing bechance when you wheel the cite on the concluding episode of The Dark Crystal : Age of Resistance : you ’ve finish watchingone of the bestTV shows of the year . But thenanother wonderful thinghappens : The Crystal Calls , an almost time of day - and - a - half farseeing fashioning - of documentary , immediately queues up .

If you ’re anything like me , no matter how late is was or well-worn you were by the clip you ’d finished Age of Resistance , the bare revelatory creation of such a documentary film was enough to goose you up with more energy to watch it at once than a fistful of espresso . The Crystal Calls is a attractively solemn love alphabetic character to craft , a lens into the passion that brought Jim Henson ’s incredible visual sense of an alien , fantastical world into the 21st C . It ’s also just jam - packed with some really neat tidbits about what it really took to do all that , and the long - road there .

https://gizmodo.com/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistance-saves-its-best-surp-1837816428

Seladon, Tavra, and Brea, making similar faces to ours when learning just how much work goes into making an episode of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

Seladon, Tavra, and Brea, making similar faces to ours when learning just how much work goes into making an episode of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.Image: Netflix

It ’s well worth a watch , but if you necessitate more convincing , here are eight small details from it to whet your appetite for some behind - the - scenery tool goodness .

1) The suggestion to make Age of Resistance live-action came from Netflix.

in the beginning the Jim Henson Company approached Netflix with the intent of pitching an invigorate series based on the beloved film . But creatives at Netflix had a tabulator offer — they did n’t want to make an animated The Dark Crystal , so what would it take to do it all with literal puppets ? The Henson squad leapt at the prospect , despite knowing the cost would be mellow , and the seed of Age of Resistance were sown .

2) Originally, a test pilot was made with completely CG Gelfling.

betimes on however , it was n’t conk out to be a completely live - activeness series . In 2016 a tryout reel was made with the help of VFX workhouse Double Negative , boast a Skeksis furrow a vernal female gelfling through the Crystal Castle . The thing was though , only one of them was a marionette : the Gelfling was a strictly CG creation , with Lisa Henson , a producer on Age of Resistance as well as girl of Jim Henson himself , citing her father ’s fairly disappointment that more was n’t done on the original film to make Jen and Kira feel more lifelike . at long last , the clash between a perfect CG character and a real marionette was too much and it was settle to make do creature Gelfling once more .

3) There are still some CG enhancements to the puppets, though!

That ’s not to say CG still did n’t play a role in their development . While the Gelfling in Age of Resistance are all puppeteered , physical quality — craft with the same kind of latex the originals were , controlled with a mixing of radio - hold animatronics , rod , and the puppeteers themselves — after offering a test bobbin base on footage from the original movie , the VFX squad grace the base performances for Age of Resistance ’s Gelfling with subtle blinks and facial movement to humanise the Gelfling even further .

4) The Podling language is real.

J.M. Lee was the writer of several Dark Crystal young adult novel prior to Age of Resistance even be as a concept , that ultimately serve , alongside antecedently released graphic novel , as the ground for a raft of the world - building concept for the show , like the seven Gelfling clans being a matriarchal social club .

But Lee ’s other major contribution in the writer ’s room was his involvement in linguistics , creating a Podling - English reference guidebook given to doer and puppeteers that broke down the phonology and structure of Podling language so they could both accurately label it , but attempt to convey meaning that felt real and intelligible if you examine to translate their language into English .

5) The crew turned to a YouTuber to help make one of the show’s cleverest moments come to life.

As if there was n’t enough creative flexing in this show , they also added a fucking tool show within a tool show ! The mythology - loaded instant of puppetry craft by the Heretic and the Wanderer to show Deet , Rian , Brea , and Hup what they need to do to fight back against the Skeksis is one of the most visually imaginative moments in the show .

But while the production crew on the series was muddle packed with master puppeteers , for the even smaller puppets these puppet were meant to be manipulating , they turned to YouTuber Barnaby Dixon , who had antecedently gone viral with his videos about fabulously intricate finger’s breadth creature creations he ’d made . you may check out some of his videoshere !

6) Puppeteering a Skeksis is no easy feat.

From a tiny scale to a far vainglorious one , the Skeksis were an entirely different challenge for the puppeteer on the show . The newfangled puppet for the villain were actually larger than the ones made for the original movie and were n’t simply just rested on the articulatio humeri of their puppeteer like a Gelfling or Podling could be .

The Skeksis were built on a rig a puppeter could whip into — with just about enough space for a secondment to also hide under and facilitate manipulate — that gave them the freedom to move with their hand held up manipulating the head and mouth of the Skeksis , while attached around their diaphragm was a minuscule screen that allow the performing artist get multiple camera feeds to serve both shape their performance and also see out of the Sekis costume . A flake more elaborate than simply flummox your hand up through a puppet ’s head !

7) Two generations of the Froud family helped bring the show to life—thanks to the Baby from Labyrinth.

The artist Brian Froud , responsible for capturing the quaint antic earth of Thra for the original plastic film and his married woman Wendy — a puppet maker on the original picture show who meet Brian while making it — also worked on Age of Resistance in similar capacities . But the Frouds were also fall in by their boy , Toby , who act as a creature and costume designer for Age of Resistance . That mean that the Frouds were often collaborate as output continued , translating Brian ’s art ( he design many , if not most , the characters and costume for Age of Resistance ) into tangible object .

https://gizmodo.com/the-baby-from-labyrinth-was-a-key-player-on-the-dark-cr-1836608202

And yes , really , Toby Froudreally isthe baby from Labyrinth . All grown up , but still working with his parent ! Now his workplace just happens behind the camera .

Image: Netflix

Very early concept art for some of the potential heroes of a new Dark Crystal.Image: Netflix

8) Lore the stone guardian was going to be fully CG, until it was decided to simply blue screen his puppet performers out of the picture.

Even with the decision to be a live - action , principally puppet - establish show , not all characters and creatures in Age of Resistance are purely puppet — while there were full - scale leaf puppets of them for some scenes , the spider - like Arathim , for example , were mostly realise in computing gadget graphics . Lore , the pit guardian Brea uncovers hidden underneath the can of the All - Maudra , was going to be one of them … until the puppeteering team saw early designs for the eccentric and potential animation techniques to bring the pile of rocks to life and got stir about the vista of making Lore a lavish , multi - person puppet . The key ? accept that they could get Lore ’s puppeteer clad in aristocratical screen - material jumpsuits and simply redact them out of shots afterwards .

A CG Lore model to heighten the work done on set with the physical tool was also made — with the twist that it was animated with a wire frame rig that did n’t just compose Lore himself , but emulated the style the actual creature was controlled on set , with three human beings ( one for each sleeve of traditional knowledge and then one for its trunk and feet , essentially having Lore strapped on front of them ) walking around behind , to accurately create a alike pace and movement mental process for the time Lore take to be partially or amply CG .

The Crystal Calls is something rare — especially for a cyclosis service task like Age of Resistance . Behind - the - scene material is commonly left to the confines of bite - sized social media snippets or home dismission bonus feature , never enough to truly dive into what it takes to make any show , permit alone one as unambiguously craft as Age of Resistance . It ’s every morsel worth the watch as the show it ’s actually about is .

Image: Netflix