Wētā Workshop Ltd

After an extensive quest that did involve a trip to Mount Doom, we’ve found some behind-the-scenes photos of Sauron. Pictured on a volcanic plateau in New Zealand, the Dark Lord’s bodily form looked like a tower of steel for The Lord of the Rings. While the armour was worn by several people over the course of filming (including our own Richard Taylor, who wore the leg and foot armour that shattered the sword Narsil), it was donned in these photos by Mike Hughes, one of our frankly very tall crew members, for the battle against the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. In this scene, Sauron is covered in dozens of individual pieces of plate steel our armourer Stu Johnson acid-etched with an intaglio decoration, an engraved design of a poison ivy-like weed said to grow near the bridge outside Minas Morgul. In the absence of details in J.R.R. Tolkien's books, a team of artists looked to Sauron’s iron-crowned former liege, Morgoth, for inspiration, contrasting the delicate incising with great spikes and a horned helmet that resembles a horse’s skull. It’s a lot to carry when you’re plotting your dominion over Middle-earth, so we also produced a full suit in painted urethane to ensure Sauron could move and do his stunts with relative ease. #wetaworkshop #lordoftherings #lotr #sauron #tolkien #costume #film

A great big woolly rig goes for a movement test before final hair and paint work. Find the finished mammoth we made in all its glory in the Apple TV+ fantasy series Time Bandits. #wetaworkshop #timebandits #practicaleffects #puppet

Rosemary wasn’t the first. We had one hell of a great time working with Director Natalie Erika James for Apartment 7A, the prequel to the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby, premiering September 27 on Paramount+. #wetaworkshop #Apartment7A #ParamountPlus #horror

Meet Raka, one of the gentler characters from The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This is one of two physical busts made for the film, used as a reference for the visual effects team. You might be wondering, why we would make a physical bust when the visual effects are digitally created? While all the apes in the film were animated, matching the lighting between the animation and the real-world scenes can be extremely challenging. By capturing images of the lifelike ape busts in each lighting setup, it gives the visual effects team a realistic reference to match in the animations, helping to add to the realism of the end result. #wetaworkshop #apesmovies #designstudio #film #visualFX #VFX #props #practicalFX

Lightning-fast punches. Warring saints. A reincarnated goddess. Tomek Baginski’s Knights of the Zodiac, the live-action reimagining of Masami Kurumada’s beloved Saint Seiya saga, tasked us with imagining what its hero costumes might look like on screen. To bring the animation’s iconic character designs into the realm of film, our design studio studied the original inspiration for each of these characters. For Marin, Seiya’s masked mentor, we turned to the graceful but ferocious eagle. For Seiya, a young orphan destined to protect the mortal gods, this meant interpreting a Pegasus, with its lean musculature and elegant wings. And for Cassios, a knight in training, we homed in on his tactical military armour. Concept Artists: Laura King, Ben Wootten and William Bennett #wetaworkshop #knightsofthezodiac #costumedesign #conceptart

🌟World of WearableArt x Wētā Workshop Intern Spotlight: Chiaki Shimizu 🌟 Chiaki Shimizu is a designer’s designer. The Tokyo-based artist and fashion aficionado spent a year in Paris, where she cut her teeth at Dior Homme and presented a capsule collection at the French capital’s fashion week. The things that preoccupy her brain and have inspired some of her recent works are myriad: the wearable tech of Iris van Herpen; the brightly coloured sculptures of Yinka Shonibare; the Back to the Future musical. She cites costume designer Eiko Ishioka, who won an Oscar for her work on Francis Ford Coppola's gothic horror Bram Stoker's Dracula, as a driving force for the kind of creative she wants to be — thoughtful, accomplished. Chiaki is both of those things, having recently completed an internship at Wētā Workshop, which she received as the winner of the Wētā Workshop Emerging Designer Award at the 2023 World of WearableArt Show. Over July this year, she dipped into our various departments, learning leatherwork, gleaning delicate techniques from the costume department, and training to draw on a pen tablet in the design studio. One of her biggest takeaways? “I thought the process of each person in each field taking responsibility for their work while discussing it with each other was wonderful, as they had to connect it to the next person in the next department.” That a truly great work was made possible, she explained, by being made together. The World of WearableArt Show is a New Zealand arena spectacle that wraps music, dance, aerial arts and storeys-high AV around the world’s premier wearable art competition. We can’t wait to see what the finalist designers have created for this year’s 2024 WOW Show: DREAM AWAKE, on from September 26 to October 13 at Wellington’s TSB Arena. #wetaworkshop #worldofwearableart #costumedesign

Every dog has its day, and at Wētā Workshop that day also happened to be International Dog Day 🐾 To mark the annual celebration of our furry friends, we held our inaugural Wētā Workshop Woof Awards. The sought-after accolades spanned eight categories including Most Mischievous, Best Singer, and Dog That Looks Most Like Its Owner, and were open to all of the crew’s canines who regularly hang out at our workshop. It goes without saying that the competition was tough, but all winners graciously took home their prestigious titles along with a certificate and some handmade dog-friendly cookies. The festivities were topped off with a morning tea featuring human-friendly biscuits and more. #wetaworkshop #internationaldogday #InHouseCatering #SmackBang

We’ve had a lot of good hair days, but these might be some of our best tressed. Time Bandits, a tale through the eons from Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris, has birthed some very hairy beings, namely, a baby woolly rhino and a full-grown mammoth. The rhino, a cable-driven puppet about the size of a Shetland pony, needed to be able to “eat” grass, lie down, tilt its head and twitch its ears, so we worked with Supervising Art Director Brendan Heffernan and Production Designer Ra Vincent and built it with cable-driven animatronics and a breathing apparatus that could all be controlled by puppeteers. The mammoth and its immaculate locks went one step further: as part of this big rig, two performers could walk in its shoes — or rather, its feet — and march around while harnessed in the suit, controlling its full movement, including its head. For a show based on Terry Gilliam’s 80s classic, it’s a fitting hark back to traditional puppetry with tender precision. Time Bandits is available to watch on Apple TV+. #wetaworkshop #timebandits #film #props #puppets

A journey back to Middle-earth, this time as an anime original. Set 183 years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, this is J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy tale like you’ve never seen it before — through the eyes of director Kenji Kamiyama. #wetaworkshop #waroftherohirrim #lordoftherings

In The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, our main character is Noa, a young ape coming of age in the Eagle Clan. Wētā Workshop worked with Director Wes Ball and in collaboration with Aaron Sims Company on refining the look of Noa, played by Owen Teague. The process utilised both digital and physical clay sculpting to find a balance between human and chimpanzee features that would be both relatable and endearing. Pictured here is our beautiful physical Noa bust, meticulously hair punched and used as an on-set lighting reference by the VFX teams and as an early concept sculpt maquette of the same character. #wetaworkshop #apesmovies #designstudio #3Dmodel #film #visualFX #VFX #props #characterdesign