“We finally made a character that Jim Henson wanted in the first film.”
Brian Froud
What caused him to say that? Well, when describing all the work that goes into creating and making puppets come alive in New York Magazine’s Vulture, it says:
“By allowing for the erasure of puppeteers, green screen also proved useful in creating puppet characters that couldn’t be realized in the original film, like Lore, a pile of animated rocks that has a special place in Brian Froud’s heart. ‘The shapes and form of that character are precisely what Jim Henson saw when he first came to the landscape I live in so many years ago,’ he says. ‘I’m absolutely delighted we’ve created a character not only true to the spirit of the original film but true to the spirit of Jim Henson.’”
You see Froud show this excitement again in a SFX Q&A that isn’t on YouTube so I brought all that together as well as highlighted other footage that explains it more. This includes a clip from the making of documentary of the original 1982 film titled World of the Dark Crystal, which aired January 9, 1983 on PBS, where Henson and Froud talk about what they envisioned for Thra in regards to the mixture of flora and fauna.
Check out the original SFX Q&A or the combined video interview: