***This article originally appeared in the Sept./Oct. ’22 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 323)***
In 1989, celebrated fantasy author and comic-book writer Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Stardust, Coraline) introduced the world to Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams in Vertigo Comics’ The Sandman series. After years of being in development hell, the comic’s adaptation has finally made its way to Netflix with the 11-episode first season directly inspired by the first two volumes, Prologues and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House.
“In the comics you have a fabulous array of ways of depicting images,” notes Gaiman in a recent interview. “But they aren’t people who live, breathe and move.” This new adaptation provides the opportunity for the characters such as deities which represent powerful natural forces known as the Endless to be embodied by actors. “With Tom Sturridge we got lucky in a lot of ways because we got somebody who looks exactly like the Morpheus in the comic. Kirby Howell-Baptiste doesn’t look exactly like the Death in the comics, but spend three minutes in her company and you know exactly why she was cast.”
Capturing the Human Elements
The series has a strong visual through line with Gaiman’s popular source material. “Dave McKean had famously done the covers for the comics, which were a combination of paintings and collages,” says the show’s executive producer David S. Goyer.
“We brought in Dave to do the title sequences. We would pull from the panels and say to our individual visual effects vendors, ‘Your remit is to actually make this scene drawn by various artists two dimensionally photoreal.’ That was always the remit with the different characters. How could you make it photoreal whether it be Martin Tenbones, Mervyn Pumpkinhead, Goldie or Gregory the Gargoyle.”
After Apple greenlit Goyer and Josh Friedman’s Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation, Allan Heinberg took over showrunner duties. “We saw the show as an emotional family comic-drama and the visual effects would help us create these otherworldly realms,” notes Heinberg. “But the focus was always ‘human’ for all of us.”
Visual effects supervisor Ian Markiewicz was also heavily involved in the story development with Heinberg. “Ian had a desk in the writers’ room and would spend several hours a day with us developing the visual effects and budget side of things organically at the idea stage before we would put it in any outline,” says Heinberg.
Production designer Jon Gary Steele says he really wanted to be part of the project. “I had 125 images that were all as ‘out there’ as the graphic novel, which everybody loves. All the heads of the departments showed these images to their teams to get them excited about what they’ll be working on,” he notes.
Building the Universe
One of the production’s major set builds was the Undercroft. Steele explains, “I wanted to have all of the elements of fire and water. It was built as an underground dungeon and has a moat running around it on the inside with flames everywhere. We built tons of lighting fixtures to hold flames. The centerpiece that Morpheus is locked up in went through so many different looks. It was hard to get everybody to agree on it.”
The sets were filled with practical atmospherics. “When Morpheus is captured, there were lots of smoke, flame bars and fire that had to ignite,” reveals special effects supervisor Mark Holt. “We built all of these candles where you would push a button and they would self ignite. It was like a spirit being born. Every little thing has a gag in it that we had to do live on set.”
There was also extensive interaction with Morpheus. Holt explains, “He’s got his cloak on. There were lots of wind effects. We have all that stuff in camera where you see hair blowing. We were trying to combine wind effects where you’ve got flames involved. You can’t have too much wind — otherwise, you could set fire to things.”
Framestore, ILM, Important Looking Pirates, Untold Studios, One of Us, Rodeo FX, Union FX and Chicken Bone VFX created 2,900 visual effects for the 11 episodes, while previs and postvis were handled by Proof and animatics by MonkeyShine.
“Matthew the Raven [voiced by Patton Oswalt] is the most advanced bird asset created at Framestore,” notes VFX supervisor Ian Markiewicz. “He has an intense feather system. It’s going to be exciting to see all of the different things that he can do in terms of performance and how intricate that feather system is — whether he’s grooming his wings or fluffing them out or taking flight or landing.”
He mentions that most of the Raven’s work involved the character either on the ground or perched. “He has long scenes with other characters and that means he has performance needs,” says Markiewicz. “He is in those scenes. A lot of them had a practical bird to photograph with actors reacting to it, which was immensely invaluable.”
Deak Ferrand at Rodeo FX assisted with the conceptualization of Morpheus’ palace, referencing sculptures from around the world. He explains, “An interesting challenge is that the palace in the comic book evolves all of the time. The initial process was figuring out how that palace looked in its pristine state. But then also one of the big reveals at the end of Episode 101 is that the palace falls in deep ruins. Our thinking was that [Morpheus’ kingdom] The Dreaming should be a representation of the collective consciousness. It was important to us that the palace itself reflected a broad cultural context.”
Heavenly Gate
Production designer Jon Gary Steele moulded a section of the Gate of Horn, one of the two gates in The Dreaming which were carved by Morpheus when the world was young. “He built a 20 x 25 approximate full section of the gate, which was beautifully carved and placed at the base where some of the sequences were staged,” recalls Markiewicz. “That small 20 x 25 section became part of the gate that was 300 feet wide by 300 feet tall, but it was a process of how best to divide those elements across departments and figure out how to leverage everybody and all of the crafts people. The show always tries to give something in the form of practical. Whenever possible, I would be the first person to lobby to not shooting on greenscreen.”
He also points out that the team always kept dog-eared, annotated or screen-grabbed copies of Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House on hand. “We leaned heavily into the source material as a guide and always had Neil Gaiman nearby to shepherd us,” he says.
Gaiman says he himself enjoyed the visual effects process of the project. “There are episodes of The Sandman where what we shot gives you a fabulous taste — and then, you know with the visual effects it will be even better,” says the fantasy master. “Then, there are some episodes that almost feel like sketches. We’ve cut all of the action, but until we see what the people are looking at and reacting to it’s not going to look real. Then we have characters who are partly visual effects. Matthew the Raven is an amazing amalgamation of real ravens, puppet and visual effects. I technically know when we’re in visual effects and when it is real, but once the episode is finished, even I’m not sure. It’s astonishing!”
You can catch the first season of The Sandman now streaming on Netflix worldwide.
