In order to animate Gollum’s face, Bay Raitt, Jason Schleifer and Tom Kluyskens designed this unique interface, which allowed for a maximum of control within a minimum of space. Each animator could create various “poses” of the entire face for easy emotional manipulation, while still maintaining absolute control over each muscle motion. There were more than 800 individual sculpts used in the final facial system. Unless otherwise noted, all images © 2003 New Line Prods. Photos by Pierre Vinet.

What do you do when you have come to the end of a long, intense adventure? When you’ve packed your bags, said your goodbyes and all is quiet? When you close your eyes and breathe in the first taste of “new” air? You know what I’m talking about… the first breath where you don’t have that “thing” hanging over your head. There are no more shots to finish, no renders to check, no emails to answer. You’re done. Fade to black. Roll Credits. The lights come up. What now?

I’ve just stepped out of a screening of The Return of the King, the final film in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, taken that breath and I don’t quite know how to react. You see, these films were an enormous journey, and I don’t mean for the characters you see on-screen. For those of us behind the cameras, who’ve fought our own battles, seen our own heroes rise and have helped give birth to this phenomenon — this enterprise that is LOTR — it’s been an experience that is difficult to know how to absorb.

With sub-surface scattering, specular maps, dirt maps and more, Weta Digital was able to create an incredibly detailed surface of Gollum’s skin, helping integrate him into the “reality” of Middle-earth.

In The Beginning…
Only yesterday, it was March 1999. I was sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas with John Sheils (Weta Digital’s effects supervisor at the time). He was showing me a tape of some of the work that Weta Workshop and Weta Digital had been doing to prepare for the upcoming trilogy. This was before any actors had been picked, before Weta Digital had grown to fill five buildings (including mo-cap) and before many of us even had heard of a little restaurant named Eva Dixon’s (destined to become the “Weta Cafeteria”).

How was anyone to know that the little spinning blue creature I saw before me would become an obsession for so many people in a little less than three years?

Gollum was unique in that everyone had their preconceived notions about who he was, what he should look like, how he should act, how he should move… but nobody really had the authority to define him other than Peter. We knew that he was going to be the toughest character to create, as he had to “live” along-side the pivotal actors Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, so Weta Digital took to him with a passion.