In this article, The New Zealand Herald’s Helen Frances speaks to Weta concept designers and illustrators Ben Wootten and Paul Tobin about how they got their starts in the industry.
Wootten joined Weta in 1996, and has worked on King Kong, The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His knowledge of animal anatomy and behavior (he studied zoology at university) was key to creating the dinosaurs for King Kong.
Paul Tobin began his career at Weta Workshop in 2003 when the first Narnia film and King Kong were underway. Tobin says he was “lousy at drawing dinosaurs” so he stayed with Narnian fantasy. His background in ancient history and archaeology proved the inspiration for concept designs for Peter and Edmund’s armour and weapons and Susan’s horn.
Read more here. Photo by Steve Unwin.
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Sideshow Collectibles Online Comic-Con event is in full swing and day 13 brings us the first pre-order for a collectible from 
Middle-earth. The next statue in The Lord of the Rings statue line is the Twilight Witch-king statue! It is a superb looking mirror image of the Ringwraith statue released a while back. This statue gives fans a chance to pair this up with the Ringwraith and show what both Frodo as well as the other Hobbits/Strider saw while on Weathertop. This outstanding statue costs $275 with a $27 NRD but you have time to save up as this won’t release until March of 2013. [Pre-Order]
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The Folks at Weta Workshop via their Facebook page Weta Workshop delivered a great teaser image of the upcoming environment Barad-Dur: Fortress of Sauron. This sure-to-be-amazing collectible will be unveiled to the world at Comic-Con in just a little less than a week’s time. Until then Weta is allowing fans to follow the process in bringing this collectible to the market place with a series of articles entitled Overcoming the Fear: Barad-Dur-Fortress of Sauron. Stay tuned to TORn as we bring you all the pictures, video, and information on what will be a must have for any The Lord of the Rings fan.
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Sideshow Collectibles via their Sideshow Experience page announced with a production peek, the Dark Lord Sauron Premium Format. This video shows us some great images of the detail this collectible will have as well as give us a great idea just how LARGE this piece will be. Hopefully, Sauron will be making the trek to Comic-Con 2012 where we can get a real look at how amazing this piece will be. Until we have more information make sure you check out the production peek video at least once or twice.
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Weta Workshop has finally answered a long-held wish for fans who collect The Lord of the Rings. For years fans have been 
asking for a diorama consisting of the nine walkers as they trekked from Rivendell to Mordor to destroy The One Ring. Well, now we get the first set in completing the collectible many of us has wanted with set one of The Fellowship of the Ring set 1. This set is scheduled to ship in quarter four of this year and come with a price tag of $200. Weta states that announcements for the other two sets will happen in 2012.
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Now is the time to dig out all your Hobbit, Elf and Rohan gear, clean up your Orc armor and grab your Wizard robes. It has been at least 8 years since we’ve had a chance to wear our Middle-earth finery, and now with just 3 weeks to go, San Diego Comic Con 2012 will kick off. With both TORn and WB doing panels about the Hobbit, and companies like WETA, LEGO and Gentle Giant, among others, selling Hobbit themed merchandise, Middle-earth will be everywhere. Here at TORn, we know that no comic con is complete without costumers, so we would like to officially invite all past, present and future Tolkien costumers to pack up their gear and plan to wear it on Thursday.
The TORn panel will be at 10:15am on Thursday at the con, and while it would be nice if all Tolkien costumers could attend the panel, we know some of you may not get in. What we would really like to do is a mass a big group shot after our panel, out on the Outdoor Amphitheater behind the Sails Pavillion, overlooking Coronado Bridge. Our panel will end around 11:15am, so given the typical chitter chatter that always follows such events, lets plan for about 11:45am out on the Sails Terrace area. If you have older costumes you’ve got in storage, please pull them out and bring them. If your costume is book based rather than film based, no worries. If you have a costume based on Tolkien artwork, or the Silmarillion, bring it to San Diego. And if you are working on a new Hobbit era costume, wear that too (unless you are entering it into the Masquerade, don’t want you getting into trouble). All Tolkien themed costumes are welcome and encouraged, TORn would love to show that our community is large and creative and enthusiastic. If you have any questions, please contact Garfeimao@TheOneRing.net.
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