Bay Raitt, who worked on the facial system for the hero creatures of the films, recalls, “[Creature technical director] Sven Jensen built controls for Treebeard such that you could control how jerky the bark on his face would move around. Even if you were moving his cheeks in a relaxed fashion, you could adjust how jerky the little pieces of bark would clunk around on his face. The idea was that he was supposed to be a really old tree, and to have him moving with a little difficulty. Steven Hornby was the lead animator on Treebeard, and he sort of ‘nailed’ that abrupt movement.”

In distinguishing between keyframing and performance-based animation, Raitt observes: “When you do motion-capture, it looks realistic and it's dramatically relevant, but sometimes it lacks dramatic energy. When you do [straight] animation, it usually has a lot of dramatic energy and it's dramatically relevant, but it lacks realism. I think really solid animation, or really solid motion-capture, is when you get all three: when it's relevant to the scene, it has dramatic energy, and it looks realistic.”

Treebeard as an animatronic puppet (top), with Merry and Pippin in his arms; as a digital model (center); and as his final rendered self (bottom).

Raitt continues, “If you do have to error on one side or the other, it's sort of a subjective choice whether on the side of ‘does it look realistic,’ or ‘does it have the energy’...I know that Peter and Randy seem like they both appreciate energy more than realism. So, when you look at the Cave Troll, Balrog, Treebeard or Gollum, to some extent, there are moments where the energy comes through loud and clear, sometimes at the expense of the realism. From my experience, that subtle piece will play well through time. The technology will continue to get better and better, and things will become more realistic, but the dramatic energy that each of the characters has in the scene is pretty timeless. Like the old stop-motion films, King Kong or Mighty Joe Young, they have that energy, so even though it might not look completely realistic, it has this attitude to it. I think that's what Randy has in spades, and it comes through in his direction and the work he does, and what he demands out of all of us.”

In the third and final film of the trilogy, The Return of the King, we can look forward to new characters such as Shelob, the giant evil spideress. Rumor has it that Peter Jackson is a bit of an arachnophobe — so hopefully the creepiness and scariness of the character will translate well to the screen for audiences to share.

Raitt says, "It looks like the third movie is going to live up to expectations of being bigger, badder, louder...just everything. It's going to be intense. The spirit in which The Lord of the Rings is being made…everyone working on the film is a fan of the books. I came down here to work on the film, because my mom read me The Lord of the Rings as a little kid, and I was obsessed with Gollum as a child. There's quite a few of us that fit into that camp. These are sort of the unmakeable movies, and we're all pouring our blood, sweat and tears into making them, working into the wee hours, because we want them to be cool."

Greg Singer is an animation welfare advocate, eating in Los Angeles.