From a draughty hut to Hollywood: the rise of Peter Jackson’s secretive animation giant

It is mid-morning and despite the spring sunshine the animator’s den is gloomy; the only sound whispered voices and the low hum of tapping keys.

A dozen of 100 animators hunch over large computers in partitioned warrens, their work-spaces shaded by large sun umbrellas opened above their desks.

“Shhh,” says the public relations staffer leading me through the studios of Weta Digital, staring reverentially at the artists.

“They’re creating”.

Ten years ago, Weta’s animators were housed in a draughty wooden house with a leaky roof. The tiny visual effects company, co-owned by director Peter Jackson, was initially solely reliant on Jackson’s films for work and made its name with ground-breaking motion-capture characters such as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In the early days they only worked on one film at a time, and employees from that era still can’t fathom how the company made ends meet.

“It was us against the world, a band of brothers and sisters, all in the trenches together,” recalls Daniel Barrett, who abandoned a career as a sculptor to join Weta and animate a giant’s toes.

A decade on, Barrett is now head of the animation department and has twice been nominated for an Oscar.

Read more…..

Home page….