Nadja's Ghost Doll & Her Visual Effects Explained

"What We Do in the Shadows" on FX has come a long way from the movie it spun off from. It's dabbled in all kinds of freaky monsters and apparitions to fill out the world, and Creepy Doll Nadja is a welcome addition. And while it's great to see the team behind the series utilize practical effects, a small amount of CGI  was still necessary for a pretty understandable reason. Paul Jones went on to give props (no pun intended) to Bob Munroe for applying the effects to make Creepy Doll Nadja talk, "To get the mouth moving would have been very difficult on not so much the budget but the schedule we had. It's a very, very, very quick turnaround on everything we do on the show. So, Bob Monroe, our visual effects supervisor said, 'I can animate the mouth. If you give me eyes and a head movement, I will digitally manipulate the mouth.' So when she starts talking, the mouth will be CG and the rest of it will be my animatronics."

It turns into a seamless blend of practical and CGI effects so that no one team has too much on its plate. During the interview, Jones also mentioned the surprising inspiration behind the doll's design. Naturally, he wanted it to resemble Nadja but didn't necessarily want a one-to-one likeness. Creepy Doll Nadja is more of a caricature of Natasia Demetriou, as he explained, "I kind of watched a lot Family Guy while I was sculpting it, and so I kind of have Natasia as a Family Guy character – almost." 

It's been a lot of hard work, but the results speak for themselves. And it's undoubtedly great to see Creepy Doll Nadja become a recurring character so that all the work gets as much use as possible. Hopefully, Nadja's human spirit never moves onto the next plane of existence.