Netflix’s ‘The Witcher’ the biggest TV series in the world

Netflix’s The Witcher has stolen the hearts of fantasy fans — and proven just how in demand stories within this genre really are. In fact, during the week of December 22 to December 28, The Witcher officially became the most in-demand streaming series in the world, replacing The Mandalorian, which previously held the place of top show worldwide. This data comes from Parrot Analytics, which releases regular reports on this topic.

The series based on Polish author Adrzej Sapkowski’s popular novels, stars Henry Cavill as Geralt the monster hunter, Anya Chalotra as a sorceress named Yennefer and Freya Allan as the mysterious mutant Ciri.

Cinesite was one of the VFX studios creating visual effects shots for the series. Overall VFX Supervisor Julien Parry discusses the various monsters and creatures in Animation Magazine.

“A mixture of practical and digital effects was utilized to bring the creatures to life and have them interact with the cast members Cavill, Allan and Chalotra. “Occasionally, we went pure CGI and had a proxy device for the actors.”

In the opening sequence of the first episode, Geralt of Rivia is in a swamp battling a massive arachnoid known as the Kikimora. “A lot of our creatures have numerous legs!” laughs Parry. “In the case of the Kikimora, director Alik Sakharov (Game of Thrones) wanted it to be like a fighting machine. It’s tricky to keep the creature balanced and attacking at the same time. We knew from the script what type of creature it needed to be, did some quick motion studies and shoehorned those all into place to come up with the final animation.”

Read Julian’s interview in full here. The first season of The Witcher is now streaming on Netflix globally featuring Cinesite VFX, we look forward to sharing more details on our work soon.

In the case of the Kikimora, director Alik Sakharov (Game of Thrones) wanted it to be like a fighting machine.

 

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