After more digging, message board member Compa Mighty found the transcript of a recent chat in which Gino Acevedo, Sr. Prosthetics Supervisor and Visual Creature Effects Art Director at Weta Workshop, reports that he’s looking forward to working on Smaug and the spiders in The Hobbit and is already trying to come up with ideas for the Dwarves: “At this point there has only been some conversations about it [The Hobbit] and in my spare time I am just trying to come up with some designs for all the dwarves.” He also talks about the prospect of working with Guillermo Del Toro.
From Compa Mighty: Hello, in the same Hellboy thread I sent earlier today there was talk of Gino Acevedo, Weta Workshop’s Sr. Prosthetics Supervisor and Visual Creature Effects Art Director saying he was already thinking about the dwarves for The Hobbit. There’s a link to a transcript of a chat with Gino with some nice things to highlight:
akildare: Hi Gino, what was the hardes Job on Lord of the Ring and are there any preperation going on for the Hobbit.
GinoAcevedo: Probably the hardest job was Gimli and the old age Bilbo. These were very challenging make ups. At this point there has only been some conversations about it and in my spare time I am just trying to come up with some designs for all the dwarves.
Cirdan: what creature in the Hobbit are you looking forward to most?
GinoAcevedo: Smaug of course! And the dwarves and the spiders. There are so many it is going to be quite a challenge but I’m really looking forward to it.
Ithuriel: If you are already thinking about the hobbit, do you think about changing the design much in comparison to LOTR or will you try and stay as close as possible to the design of the M-E we all know?
GinoAcevedo: I think it will be very much related, except of course it will be a younger world.
Faineth: when will you start to work for the hobbit??
@GinoAcevedo: Not sure they are still working on the script, so I don’t really know sorry.
Eolise: Okay, one question from me, when working on the character Gimli, I am sureyou had times that you had to do something but in your head you wanted to do it another way…
GinoAcevedo: Gimli was a real challenge to do as far as make up because we were experimenting with new materials like the silicon as we went along we found different techniques that were working better than some of the first techniques that we were using. Since then we have come up with even better techniques of materials and adhesives that we use now.
[MY NOTE: interesting as to what they could do with the dwarves today.]
Cirdan: It seems pretty shure that Guillermo del toro will direct the HOBBIT. Have you ever worked with him/met him?
GinoAcevedo: I have never worked with him before but have always wanted to. My friends back in LA have worked with him on his other films and I have met him and he knows of me through my friends and also because I do a lot of airbrushing, which he really loves.
So that’s what I got from a quick skim!
