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.
