Digital Trends takes a look at The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and the way director Peter Jackson brought the film’s fearsome, fire-breathing dragon to life.
Building a better dragon in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
From the moment that plans were first announced for a live-action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, fans of the 1937 novel began pondering the ways in which the mighty dragon Smaug could be brought to life on the big screen with all the majesty of his literary counterpart. Continue reading “Building a better dragon in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
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WETA Digital has released a brand new two and a half minute video exclusively to the The Hollywood Reporter detailing the creation of the dragon Smaug. Thanks to Ringers Makaw, Brandon, Will P., and Jesse for notifying us about the video!
The Hollywood Reporter also spoke to Smaug VFX artist David Clayton (who is nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the film) about the process of translating actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s motion capture performance into the fire-breathing creature you see on the screen in The Desolation of Smaug. Continue reading “Bringing Smaug to Life: New Making-of video from Weta Digital”
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As we told you a while back, our friends from Weta Workshop have another amazing book detailing The Hobbit Trilogy up for pre-order. Now, we get to see what the cover of the book will look like, which is a great shot of Smaug and Bilbo having their conversation inside Erebor. This book will go behind the scenes to show us the work that went into briging to life the best dragon fans have ever seen on the big screen Smaug the Terrible. Smaug: Unleashing the Dragon is packed with exclusive images and amazing insights by the talented artists at Weta Digital. You can pre-order Smaug: Unleashing the Dragon right now from Weta’s website for $19.99 with it shipping in April of this year.
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He’s the biggest star of the movie so there was a lot that went into creating Smaug, the dragon the size of a 747 that rules over Erebor with greedy malevolence in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
Here are five things you need to know about the dragon Smaug.
Continue reading “Five things USA Today wants you to know about our deadly Draconic friend”
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Lauren Davis from SF webzine io9 explores why, “in a media landscape overstuffed with dragons, do we still care so much about Smaug?”.
This was first published last month, and I missed it at the time, but it’s a very worthwhile read that delves into (among other things) the literary origins of Tolkien’s dragons — the story of Fafnir, and, of course, Beowulf. Follow the link at the bottom to read the complete article.
Why Smaug still matters
“A dragon is no idle fancy,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Whatever may be his origins, in fact or invention, the dragon in legend is a potent creation of men’s imagination, richer in significance than his barrow is in gold.”
Continue reading “Why Smaug still matters”
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Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, Alain Rhett, tries to use phsics in this interesting piece on Wired to estimate exactly how much energy would have been required to melt all that gold in that cool scene in The Desolation of Smaug — you know the one we mean.
After watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug I quickly realized my initial estimation for the amount of gold under the mountain was WAY too low. There are some other things I noticed, but perhaps I should give a SPOILER ALERT. Continue reading “Melting gold in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”
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