It

PERFORMER	Eddie Izzard voice
	Rob Tygner puppeteer
DEBUT	2004
DESIGN	Jamie Courtier creative supervisor
	Sharon Smith head of design, sculpt

It is an irascible sandfairy, or Psammead, and the title character in the Creature Shop film Five Children and It. His scientific name is Psammead Crustacea Anostrraca Decapodlium Anthropodolous Wishasarus, and he is approximately 8,311 years old. The ill-tempered and cynical fairy lives inside a shell on the beach, and is discovered by the five children. He grants each of their wishes, but with the proviso that they will always go wrong, or vanish at sunset. It also frequently surfaces briefly, in a cloud, painting, or mug, to observe the results of the wish

Director John Stephenson described the character as follows, in the film's production notes:

“Henson's are very good indeed at characters and creature design. It took a year and a bit to design 'It' and he grew on us by stages. Our creature is a bit Alice in Wonderland-ish, with his whiskers like a sea-lion or a walrus. He's meant to be more than four thousand years old but he is still able to be cuddled.”

It was created through a blend of animatronic puppetry and, in some scenes, digital animation. The animatronic head was designed by Adrian Parish and the body supervised by Richard Darwin.

External links

• It on the Henson Digital Puppetry Wiki