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New Line Studio's epic fantasy movie, "The Golden Compass" released in India on the 4th of
January 2008. The movie's amazing creatures were brought to life by state of the art computer generated animation and visual effects imagery by talented digital artists from not only the usual
studios in Hollywood, but also from right here in India. A significant portion of the animation and
visual effects in "The Golden Compass" was beautifully realized by Indian artists at Rhythm & Hues
Studios in Mumbai, in what is yet another landmark achievement showcasing Indian artistry, talent,
and ingenuity on the global stage.
The Golden Compass is New Line Studio's most ambitious project after its efforts on “The Lord of
the Rings” trilogy. This $180M USD aptation of the first novel of Philip Pullman's “His Dark
Materials” trilogy is based in an alternate but parallel universe, that is filled with numerous fantasy
characters and fantastic worlds.
To realize this grand vision of the story, director Chris Weitz picked the renowned Michael Fink as the
senior visual effects supervisor. Michael Fink who supervised the visual effects on features like
Batman Returns, X-Men, and Constantine, chose Rhythm & Hues Studios to be the lead visual effects
studio to execute some of the most complex shots in the movie. He also supervised 8 other studios
from around the world that contributed to the rest of the animation and effects of the movie.
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Computer generated daemons animated in the scene by Rhythm & Hues Studios
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In the parallel universe of the Golden Compass, every human is accompanied by a daemon which is an
animal-like manifestation of the person's soul. Based on Rhythm & Hues's academy award nominated
creature animation in the Chronicles of Narnia, Mike Fink entrusted the company with the creation and
animation of these daemon characters. Every daemon in the movie is a fully computer generated
photo-real character. Rhythm & Hues worked on integrating these daemons in around 800 shots of the
movie and had a team of around 500 people working for a little over one year on the project.
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Before and after pictures of the vfx and animation work done by Rhythm & Hues Studios
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Unlike the typical outsourcing scenario, where only manual intensive or back office operations as sent
overseas, Rhythm & Hues India was involved in all stages of the creation of the visual effects and
character animation on the movie. The Indian artists were involved from the early stages of previsualization
of the characters and helped with various R&D exercises to determine the character of
the daemons as well as the look for the transformation of the daemons from one form to another. The
Indian artists were also involved in all stages of the creative process from modeling the characters, to
tracking the footage, to animating the characters, lighting them, and then using final compositing to
deliver the completed shots. Overall, over 150 employees in India worked on over one third of the
animation and visual effects shots done by Rhythm & Hues.
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Animation and vfx by Rhythm & Hues Studios
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The quality of the imagery from India integrated seamlessly with the rest of the world class work in
the movie and is another landmark project showcasing the talent and passion of Indian artists on the
global stage.
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computer generated daemons changing forms – by Rhythm & Hues Studios
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