In case you didn’t already know, Weta Workshop recently released an amazing Smaug the Terrible statue that is available to pre-order on their site; you can find more information about it here. Creating this statue was a team effort from many of the departments at Weta and it first starts out with digital sculpting (to learn more about digital sculpting, read their earlier article), in this case from artists, Lindsey Crummett and Gary Hunt. After they complete the figure, it gets handed over to the manufacturing team who take care of a number of things including molding and painting.

Daniel Falconer, Weta’s collectibles concept designer, and the team then come up with ideas on how the figure will end up looking, how big it will be, how it will be posed, how awesome it will be etc. There are many factors that go into their decision such as artistic merit, cost, and manufacturability. (In my opinion, they absolutely nailed it!) With the help of Weta Digital, who were the creators of the 3D model used in the films, Weta Workshop can use the model as a base to make the figure look as authentic as possible.

Not only is it important to make Smaug look like the real thing, it’s also important to make sure the final product is durable enough to produce, and to pull this off, certain areas of the body were thickened such as the wing membranes. After the figure is completed, it’s then split into various parts so it is easier to print and manufacture. A 3D printer is used to print out each part, and after that is complete it’s up to the talented artists at Weta to work their magic and make the statue really come to life. Read more about the process it took to create Smaug in Weta’s full article here.

 

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Author: Myla Malinalda After being dragged to see The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001 with her dad, Myla fell head-over-hobbit-feet in love with Middle-earth. Myla would love nothing more than to be able to live peacefully in the Shire and go on the occasional adventure with Bilbo. She has a habit of becoming too attached to fictional characters and buying too many copies of the same book. Myla enjoys creating art whenever she can and collecting all things relating to Tolkien.