How Digital Domain Brought HBO’s Skeleton Man to Terrifying Life in “IT: Welcome to Derry”

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PH: Skeleton Man instantly stands out as one of the most terrifying creations in IT: Welcome to Derry. What were the first visual or thematic ideas that guided your design approach for this character?Nikos Kalaitzidis: We were inspired by the horrifically beautiful and bizarre dark images created by artists such as Dan A. Peacock and Max Verehin. Ultimately, production chose an illustration from Dan A. Peacock. The actor, transforming into Skeleton Man, Peter Schoelier, was amazingly cast due to his tall and thin physique, which was helpful to marry the illustration with the actor. The task was to come up with a photoreal creature that combined the look of the illustration with the actor's physical attributes.

PH: How did you strike the right balance between maintaining the grounded tone of Welcome to Derry and pushing into the supernatural horror aesthetic of the Skeleton Man?

Mitch Drain: There was a bit of a delicate dance addressed through animation and design to maintain the thread between the old man and Skeleton Man. Originally, an otherworldly movement was employed to heighten the supernatural aspect of the character, but as the sequence evolved, a more natural, humanistic movement was desired. I believe this was the right choice as it grounded the Skeleton Man in the same reality as the boy. His horrific appearance did the rest.
PH: Did the creative team reference any real-world anatomical or historical imagery when developing the look and feel of Skeleton Man's performance?Nikos Kalaitzidis:We were inspired by the walk cycles of the Komodo Dragon, and we found contortionists online who were able to walk in an upside-down arc. Also, the director, Andy Muschietti, shot a live-action test of a person walking slightly abnormally and "puppetteers" who helped the actor rapidly snap their limbs when they moved. We used this as a reference to find the animation performance of the creature. Once we came up with a few walk, or crawl, cycles, we immediately blocked in each of the shots with animation, which immediately brought the sequence to life.
PH: The transformation sequence required removing the actor's eye and teeth frame-by-frame. Can you walk us through that process and how you ensured the performance remained emotionally authentic?
Mitch Drain: We had a full head and body scan of the actor to work from. Traditional modeling, texture, and lighting techniques created the appropriate look, while very accurate matchmove and shot modeling were needed to match the performance of the actor, which gave us all we needed performance-wise. For the actual transformation, animation needed to blend from matching the gait of the actor to the hybrid two and four-legged movement of the Skeleton Man. Various stages of the transformation were created using blend shapes that the animators blended in and out of to create the transformation.
PH: This marks one of the first uses of Digital Domain's Gen Man 2.0 system. How did this technology enhance realism and flexibility in creating the Skeleton Man compared to previous workflows?Bob White:While a lot of the GenMan 2.0 updates are under-the-hood improvements, the completely revised topology and UV sets were huge advantages to some stages of Skeleton Man. Once he's fully transformed, he needed to be his own new geometry to support his facial deformities (the missing nose, the holes in his lips, etc), but the improved geo meant that we were able to push displacements and muscle deformations in a much more well-defined way than previous iterations allowed.
PH: How did you handle lighting and texture integration to ensure the CG elements felt seamlessly embedded in the live-action environment?Mitch Drain: Production supplied us with LiDAR and HDRs to allow for the creation of the actual set location conditions. As with most integration of CG elements in a photographed environment, it was necessary to creatively add bounce light and shadows to fully integrate the character. The forest had a lot of vegetation that the Skeleton Man needed to interact with. Shrubs, bushes, and leaves needed to be removed and replaced with CG counterparts to show proper interaction, along with ground displacement to fully integrate the character with the environment.
PH: How closely did you collaborate with the director and cinematographer to choreograph the transformation shot, and how did that partnership influence your final VFX choices?Mitch Drain: We worked primarily with VFX supervisor Daryl Sawchuk, who has worked with the director, Andy Muschietti, in the past. As an accomplished animation supervisor, Daryl knew how to achieve the movements Andy desired. Working along with Ellen Hoffman, Digital Domain's animation supervisor, we were able to iterate and evolve the character movements based on the director's vision.
PH: Horror often relies as much on what isn't shown as what is-how did you and HBO's team determine when to use full CG versus practical or implied effects for maximum impact?Mitch Drain: Much of the credit for that goes to the director. The sequence had been carefully storyboarded. There was little doubt that the Skeleton Man would need to be a CG creation. Having said that, Peter Schoelier, the actor portraying the character in human form, needed no help other than missing teeth and one eye to get the horror started!PH: Looking back, what are you most proud of in bringing Skeleton Man to life, and how do you think this character expands the It universe in new ways?Mitch Drain: A character like Skeleton Man is a gift to any visual effects artist in that every discipline can stretch their creativity and bring something unique to the character. For me, it is the subtleties that may go unnoticed that I am proud of. The integration with the environment, when Skeleton Man brushes up against a bush, displaces fallen leaves, or scratches the bark of a tree stump. These things cement the CG character into the shots in such a way as to help suspend disbelief and allow the viewer to forget it is VFX.

PH: How do you see advancements like Gen Man 2.0 shaping the future of creature and human VFX in television horror?

Bob White: GenMan 2.0 lets us work in much higher muscle deformation fidelity and gives us a lot of extra leeway to really push a generic human setup to its absolute limits.