1280_681277441897649_536404643_n We’re delighted to bring you an excerpt from Cinefex‘s forthcoming behind-the-scenes account of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

Joe Fordham’s 26-page feature in Cinefex 141 includes in-depth interviews with the film’s effects artists — and Peter Jackson — and is accompanied by 28 behind-the-scenes photos and frame clips from the movie. Many of them are exclusive to Cinefex.

Here’s a teaser exclusively for TheOneRing.net readers:

To define the warring cultures, production designer Dan Hannah worked with conceptual artists Alan Lee and John Howe, senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and [Peter] Jackson’s design teams at Weta Workshop and Weta Digital.

“We ended up doing an extraordinary amount of armor, weaponry and prosthetic work on Battle of the Five Armies,” said Weta Workshop co-founder Richard Taylor.

“I was very excited about what this film would offer because there’s probably never been a film battle of this scale and complexity before. And our work in creating characters and designs carried right through to the work that Weta Digital created in such an extraordinarily short length of time.”

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Cinefex Issue 141 is at the printers right now, and will be available online (web and iPad editions) as well as in bookstores from next week.

The issue also features Chappie, from director Neill Blomkamp; Jupiter Ascending from “The Matrix” filmmakers Andy and Lana Wachowski; plus Unbroken, from director Angelina Jolie.

[Pre-order Cinefex 141]