The expressions of a computer generated 3D character Galilei are created by an actor Jyrki Tamminen (also voicing the character) equipped with an infrared facial capture camera. His facial movements are joined together to correspond Galilei's expressions modeled into the computer (Indigo workstation by Silicon Graphics) beforehand.
The development started in 1993 with the financial support from both Finland and abroad. The actual animation process took roughly a year and a half by six main animators. Live sequences from the studio with Galilei form the third of the total length of each episode.
The episodes consisted of pre-rendered and live sections. In the live sections children could talk with Galilei the dog over the phone and help him out. Galilei had a habit of getting in all kinds of trouble during the pre-rendered sections. During the calls, Jyrki had the motion capture rig on for animating eyebrows and mouth. For the rest, he used a joystick (a BeeBox from BG Systems). Live sections were broadcast live in Finnish national TV from a Silicon Graphics Indy. Any glitch would have been instantly visible on national TV. I think this was pretty much the first time ever for a real-time 3D animation on a nationwide TV broadcast. Max Headroom was neither 3D nor live :) Naturally, kids thought it was perfectly natural that they could be chatting with a cartoon character.