Wētā Workshop

Our latest vinyl figures—Hades and Persephone—are about to take centre stage.

From the shadowy depths of the underworld to the bustling streets of Olympus, these two figures are a stunning embodiment of love, mystery, and mischief.

Want the inside scoop? Make sure you’re signed up to our Lore Olympus newsletter and get all the details straight to your inbox: https://email.wetanz.co.nz/p/6XI1-BWM/lore-olympus-vinyls-hp

Small details play a huge part in creating a believable story world.

In The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, a rite of passage for young apes in the Eagle Clan is to scale the monolithic remains of overgrown skyscrapers to collect a single eagle egg to raise as a companion. To safely carry the precious eggs back to their homes, the young apes must create a kind of satchel.

To resolve how this might look, Wētā Workshop’s Textiles team started with a 3D print of an eagle egg and explored how natural fibres could be woven and twisted to create a secure, egg-carrying pouch.

The results are three similar but individual approaches to the challenge, carefully woven by hand and decorated with feathers and beads. These highly detailed pieces were then scanned by Wētā FX and digitised to allow them to be animated on the apes.

We made a splash with our costume work for the Metkayina clan in James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water! Working with Costume Designer Deb Scott, their costumes were inspired by sea foam, sea creatures, fish scales and more for the world of Avatar.

In the scene where Ronal shares a magical moment with the Tulkun, you can see her costume reflecting her softer side. The delicate colours and materials reflect her bond with the Tulkun, their motherhood, their babies.

Ronal’s costumes featured hand-painted and carved shells, pearls, wire, threads, beads, crystals and knotting. A mock version of this costume was created and tested by Wētā Workshop in a pool to inform the motion in the film.

Na’vi Artisan: Kate Venables
Art Director: Stephen Crowe
Concept Artist: Iona Brinch

After an extensive quest that did involve a trip to Mount Doom, we’ve found some behind-the-scenes photos of Sauron.

Pictured on a volcanic plateau in New Zealand, the Dark Lord’s bodily form looked like a tower of steel for The Lord of the Rings. While the armour was worn by several people over the course of filming (including our own Richard Taylor, who wore the leg and foot armour that shattered the sword Narsil), it was donned in these photos by Mike Hughes, one of our frankly very tall crew members, for the battle against the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

In this scene, Sauron is covered in dozens of individual pieces of plate steel our armourer Stu Johnson acid-etched with an intaglio decoration, an engraved design of a poison ivy-like w**d said to grow near the bridge outside Minas Morgul. In the absence of details in J.R.R. Tolkien's books, a team of artists looked to Sauron’s iron-crowned former liege, Morgoth, for inspiration, contrasting the delicate incising with great spikes and a horned helmet that resembles a horse’s skull.

It’s a lot to carry when you’re plotting your dominion over Middle-earth, so we also produced a full suit in painted urethane to ensure Sauron could move and do his stunts with relative ease.

Meet Raka, one of the gentler characters from The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This is one of two physical busts made for the film, used as a reference for the visual effects team.

You might be wondering, why would we make a physical bust when the visual effects are digitally created? While all the apes in the film were animated, matching the lighting between the animation and the real-world scenes can be extremely challenging.

By capturing images of the lifelike ape busts in each lighting setup, it gives the visual effects team a realistic reference to match in the animations, helping to add to the realism of the end result.

Lightning-fast punches. Warring saints. A reincarnated goddess. Tomek Baginski’s Knights of the Zodiac, the live-action reimagining of Masami Kurumada’s beloved Saint Seiya saga, tasked us with imagining what its hero costumes might look like on screen.

To bring the animation’s iconic character designs into the realm of film, our design studio studied the original inspiration for each of these characters. For Marin, Seiya’s masked mentor, we turned to the graceful but ferocious eagle. For Seiya, a young orphan destined to protect the mortal gods, this meant interpreting a Pegasus, with its lean musculature and elegant wings. And for Cassios, a knight in training, we homed in on his tactical military armour.

Concept Artists: Laura King, Ben Wootten and William Bennett

We’ve had a lot of good hair days, but these might be some of our best tressed. Time Bandits, a tale through the eons from Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris, has birthed some very hairy beings, namely, a baby woolly rhino and a full-grown mammoth.

The rhino, a cable-driven puppet about the size of a Shetland pony, needed to be able to “eat” grass, lie down, tilt its head and twitch its ears, so we worked with Supervising Art Director Brendan Heffernan and Production Designer Ra Vincent and built it with cable-driven animatronics and a breathing apparatus that could all be controlled by puppeteers.

The mammoth and its immaculate locks went one step further: as part of this big rig, two performers could walk in its shoes — or rather, its feet — and march around while harnessed in the suit, controlling its full movement, including its head. For a show based on Terry Gilliam’s 80s classic, it’s a fitting hark back to traditional puppetry with tender precision.

Time Bandits is available to watch on Apple TV.

In The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, our main character is Noa, a young ape coming of age in the Eagle Clan. Wētā Workshop worked with Director Wes Ball and in collaboration with Aaron Sims Company on refining the look of Noa, played by Owen Teague.

The process utilised both digital and physical clay sculpting to find a balance between human and chimpanzee features that would be both relatable and endearing.

Pictured here is our beautiful physical Noa bust, meticulously hair punched and used as an on-set lighting reference by the VFX teams and as an early concept sculpt maquette of the same character.

Prepare to journey back into the shadows of Middle-earth with our newest Miniature Statue: Shelob.

Pre-orders go live on Wednesday 28 August at 2PM (PDT), but until then, preview the piece at: https://www.wetanz.com/shelob-miniature-statue

Or pre-order in store at the Wētā Cave.

🌟 Artist Spotlight: Shaun Bolton 🌟

From his early passion for stop-motion to his iconic work at Wētā Workshop, Shaun Bolton's journey is truly inspiring.

Starting at Wētā in '96 with plans for King Kong, Shaun's path soon shifted to The Lord of the Rings. His meticulous craftsmanship has since brought to life memorable Middle-earth creatures, including the cave troll, Gollum, and the Mûmak.

Shaun’s attention to detail, whether in intricate textures or rustic elements, is unmatched. His work on detailed environments like The Fountain Guard of the White Tree and the upcoming Radagast in Rhosgobel statue showcases his dedication to authentic, story-filled art.

“Even the most mundane objects, like a rock, have a story,” Shaun says. His journey from stop-motion to sculpting highlights how the best art comes from those who learn, adapt, and stay true to their craft.

See more of Shaun's work at: https://www.wetanz.com/artists/shaun-bolton

In 2022, we were thrilled to have Wes Ball, Director of The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, approach us to help refine several characters and costume prop elements for the Eagle Clan and Marauders, which went on to be digitised by the incredible artists at Wētā FX.

Wes had an amazing vision for what he wanted for the two clans, and our teams relished the challenges of turning concepts into real, believable elements that felt part of the film’s world.

Over the following months we scavenged weaving materials from beaches, forged scrap metals into jewellery, created photo-real ape busts, and answered the question, what is the simplest way to weave flax to safely carry an eagle egg?

The creepy crawlies are coming, including this one. Director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the sci-fi horror featuring many, many Facehuggers we’ve made, is out now. Run to your nearest cinema like your life depends on it.

20th Century Studios

Middle-earth isn’t just a world; it’s a living realm that stirs our deepest imaginations.

For its creatures, we didn’t just create fantastical designs; we developed entire biologies grounded in the natural laws of our own world. We studied bone structures, evolutionary traits, and survival strategies to make them true denizens of Middle-earth.

The Miniature Skulls Collection captures these details, offering a glimpse into the anatomical intricacies that bring each creature to life.

Own a piece of that legacy:https://www.wetanz.com/skulls-of-middle-earth-collection-001

Long-time friends and funny guys Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement have teamed up again, this time with Iain Morris for Time Bandits, a TV series adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s irreverent 1981 adventure caper that follows a boy called Kevin who joins an unruly crew of time-travelling thieves. High-stakes decade-hopping naturally ensues. Between the Stone Age and the star power (Lisa Kudrow), there’s also a couple of quetzalcoatluses.

The largest flying reptile that’s ever been discovered received the Wētā Workshop treatment for this fantasy comedy, with our team working with Supervising Art Director Brendan Heffernan and Production Designer Ra Vincent to make a host of different creatures including two versions of the giant pterosaur: a feathered, stately mother and her wrinkly, wide-eyed hatchling.

For the former, we created an intricate model just over a metre in scale to be used as a reference guide by VFX, experimenting with semi-translucent prints, 3D-printed wings and fur transfer of synthetic fibres to emulate feathers.

Her offspring, a pink silicon puppet with moving eyes, a gaping beak and flapping tongue, was crafted complete with an enormous egg that was slimed-up on set and designed to be magnetically resettable once it opened — a crackingly good idea for retakes.

See more of this plumage and progeny on Apple TV.

Join us for the next Collectors' Clubhouse Hangout - this time at Wētā Workshop Unleashed!
Discover the secrets behind ‘The Art of Designing Collectibles’ with our concept artist Simon Lissaman and creative consultant Daniel Falconer. Plus, get an in-person look at our new Miniature Skulls Collection.
📅 Date: Saturday, 24 August
🕛 Time: 12pm (NZST)
📍 Location: L5, 88 Federal St, Sky City Precinct, Auckland
🎟 Tickets: $15 (limited spaces available)
Don’t miss out—grab your ticket now and be part of this exclusive event!

The Art of Designing Collectibles Join us for the exciting third instalment of our Collector’s Clubhouse Hangout – this time at Wētā Workshop Unleashed, an exclusive event for Wētā Workshop fans in Auckland on Saturday, 24th August 2024.

Thirty years ago, a film about an infamous pair of matricidal teens was released in a whirl of giddy adolescence and ferocious murder. Heavenly Creatures, the eerily compelling crime drama based on a true story in 1950s Christchurch, New Zealand, would also become a Hollywood springboard: it introduced Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet to the world, marking their feature film debuts.

We helped realise the film’s fantasy land of Borovnia, crafting 70 life-sized suits for its clay-like townsfolk.

Every so often we present our artists with a challenge: a for-us-only, low-stakes exercise to refine their skills, try new techniques and design for properties they’ve long desired to explore. This task? To imagine the subterranean Morlocks from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the 1895 novel that sees a Victorian scientist cast 800,806 years into the future.

In the book, Morlocks are a kind of small, spectral humanoid that evolved (or devolved) from homo sapiens, whose hobbies include lurking in deep dark tunnels and eating their surface-dwelling cousins, the Eloi.

Below ground, would these ape-like creatures have used old subway lines and their signs for directions? Would those signs have eventually lost all meaning over time, existing instead as sacred symbols they could tattoo and paint on their faces? These concept drawings imagine an answer.

Discover all of the artwork from this challenge at ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yDlbo8

Art Direction: Vaughan Flanagan

Lisa Birchall has spent a decade immersed in the world of Middle-earth, initially joining Wētā Workshop to look after events....like Comic-Con International! Now she’s busy exploring new opportunities for our wider business. It was awesome to see her represent at TheOneRing.net panel, “I Am No Man: The Creative Women of Middle-Earth” alongside Fredrica Drotos from Middle-earth Enterprises, Margaret Mauvais from EA - Electronic Arts, Harless Snyder from Wizards of the Coast and Cathy Udovch from There and Back Again Travel. A big thank you to Kellie Rice from Happy Hobbit for getting everyone together!

Women In Middle-earth SDCC 2024 Panel ft EA, Magic, Weta, Middle-earth Ent & more Moderated by K.M.RiceFeaturing Frederica Drotos, Middle Earth EnterprisesCathy Udovch, There and Back Again TravelMargaret Mauvais, EA GamesLisa Birchall, We...

“We knew from the jump that we didn’t want Rashida [Jones] or our other actors to be acting opposite a tennis ball or some kind of CG thing,” Katie Robbins, showrunner of the new Apple TV sci-fi dramedy Sunny, told IndieWire. “You wanted a corporeal being there to make it feel authentic.”

That corporeal being is a “homebot", an advanced robot assistant with big eyes and a gentle voice we helped bring to life. Read the full story to find out how.

‘Sunny’ Needed a Very Specific Robot — Here’s How the Apple TV+ Series Pulled It Off Sunny, the new A24 show on Apple TV+, needed to create a robot that could be a real friend. Here's how they did it. [Interview]

We challenged fellow creator and Warhammer aficionado Pete The Wargamer to recreate our monumental 1:6 scale Lieutenant Titus statue as a classic 28mm miniature.

Using our feature-rich and fully detailed statue as a reference, watch as he meticulously chops, swaps, cuts, and kit-bashes his way to victory:

Building A Better TITUS - Space Marine 2 Wētā Workshop Kitbash Download and play Tacticus Free Today: https://play.tacticusgame.com/petethewargamer And use my code: PTW0724 to get free rewards! Y...

How far would you go to “get the shot”? Margaret Moth, the subject of Lucy Lawless’ directorial debut, Never Look Away, worked to be as close as she could to the realities of war, spending two decades reporting across the globe in strife-torn areas for CNN.

To help portray some of the New Zealand-born video journalist’s most death-defying moments in this documentary produced by GFC Films, we designed and manufactured a series of meticulously detailed models and physical-scale dioramas of Tyre, Lebanon and Sarajevo, Bosnia. A portrait of a life in crossfire, captured in miniature.

This month in our home of New Zealand, Never Look Away is screening in cinemas across the country as part of New Zealand International Film Festival.

In our galaxy far away is a beacon, a sort of remote space lighthouse that guides interstellar ships as they make their way through the unpredictable corners of the cosmos. So goes Beacon 23, the sci-fi thriller series based on the short stories of author Hugh Howey, who tapped us for their second season to design an alien.

Following the lighthouse-in-space analogy, we conceptualised this extraterrestrial with extra tentacles, the coiling strands mirroring those of a jellyfish and its bulbous, cephalopod-like head taking cues from squid and octopuses.

Did it need to make sense from the perspective of an earthly human? Absolutely not. That’s what makes this mysterious floating being as beautiful as it is enigmatic.

Art Director: Vaughan Flanagan
Senior Concept Artist: Tahiwi Trenor-Hunt
Production: Brooklyn Dineen

BOAT ROCKER

Thanks to everybody for joining us this past week as we kicked things off with the exclusive premier of Late Night Reveals; sitting down with our artists and getting the inside scoop on all our upcoming and newly released pieces.

We saw 14 new collectibles spread across 4 fandoms, some we’ve long known and loved, and some we’re just getting started with.

Thanks for tuning in, and we hope to see you all again for more fun and excitement next time. Cheers to you all.