Eric Saindon is a good guy to have on a movie. He is smart but also easy going and is able to manage the balance between doing serious business, like being on set every day of filming three movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” and creating a good working atmosphere and getting along. An American, he is an important part of one of the elite visual effects houses in Hollywood, New Zealand’s Weta Digital. He is nominated for an Academy Award on “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” facing competition from the same company for work on “The Avengers,” and “Prometheus.” Definitely a friend to TheOneRing.net, he did an interview with FlickeringMyth.com that you can read right here.
Its full of little gems from Saidon like this: A significant innovation was developed by the R&D team. “We came up with a new hair for example on this project,” remarks Eric Saindon. “We call it Barbershop. We always hated the way you have to move pixels around to layout a hair. Grab CDs and move them around on curves to design the way the hair is done; that’s not how you do it in a salon. You would cut the hair, brush, blow dry and gel it, however you would do it in a salon and that’s how we redesigned our hair system. We gave the artists tools such as a blow dryer, gel, comb, brush, scissors and they actually grow the hair on someone or a creature.” The interview digs deep into the world of visual effects. Saindon is one of the interview subjects TheOneRing.net spoke with on our set visit to The Hobbit. That content is expected to see publication in 2013.