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The Spiders of ‘The Hobbit

The Spiders of ‘The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug’ - NYTimes.com

Along Came a Computer-Generated ...

The Spiders of ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’

Clip: 'The Desolation of Smaug': A spider attack scene from the second installment in Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" trilogy.

By MEKADO MURPHY

Published: December 18, 2013

Enlarge This ImageThe latest installment in “The Hobbit” trilogy is likely to make arachnophobes squirm. That’s the hope of the director Peter Jackson, whose own fear of spiders helped infuse some important scenes in“The Desolation of Smaug” with creepy, crawly discomfort.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The armature of a spider from the film with a covered version below it.

Enlarge This Image

Warner Bros. Pictures

A visual effects translucency test for one of the spider's legs.

The spiders lurking in the forest of Mirkwood are among the perils Bilbo Baggins and his traveling companions encounter on their journey to reclaim the dwarf kingdom of Erebor. Unlike some of the more fantastical creatures in the series, the spiders look and feel more familiar, albeit supersize. They were the visual-effects children of Weta Digital, led by Joe Letteri. He and his team tried to make the spiders immediately recognizable as such, but enhanced to amplify their menace.

The biggest change was to their faces: These spiders have jaws and fangs. “We wanted you to get the feeling that they’re biting you with teeth, that they would swallow you whole if they could,” Mr. Letteri said, speaking by phone from Los Angeles. “But the bodies and heads were based on realistic designs.”

The design evolved from several sources, including a reference photo Mr. Jackson found of a particularly creepy spider. Those designs were fine-tuned in the textures department, which defined color patterns for the creatures and added details, including wrinkles. That department’s supervisor, Gino Acevedo, worked alongside the creatures department to add distinct details, like legs that were translucent.

“We wanted what we called a ‘beer bottle effect,’ ” Mr. Acevedo said, speaking by phone from Weta Digital’s base in New Zealand. “If you look at a beer bottle, it has that amber look and color to it, especially when you hold it up to the light. When the legs were backlit, you saw an internal structure inside with veins.”

The research also included discussions with a spider expert, Phil Sirvid from Te Papa, the Museum of New Zealand. “We took a bit of a field trip, met Phil and looked at his creepy collection of wild-looking spiders,” Mr. Acevedo said. “He gave us amazing reference images taken through an electron microscope of spider parts, things that you never knew spiders had.” For instance, they were surprised to learn that spiders have pores, which were incorporated into the design.

Mr. Jackson wanted the spiders to look ancient, as if they’d been trudging around in the forest for many years, so Weta aged them with flaky skin, calluses and more.

“We wanted it to look like when you get a sunburn and the skin peels away and underneath is a new skin,” Mr. Acevedo explained. The spiders were also given boils to make them look diseased, and soiled with dirt and mud. “Some of this stuff is so subtle that you don’t pick it up,” he added. “But if you didn’t have it there, the creature would look too clean, or as we call it, ‘CG perfect.’  ”

A version of this article appears in print on December 22, 2013, on page AR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Along Came a Computer-Generated ... .

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▶ MEDIEVAL WEAPONS & COMBAT: The Shield

▶ MEDIEVAL WEAPONS & COMBAT: The Shield - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWZkitw1_Fw#t=2114
 Dueling Shields

KODT Live Action Series Kickstater Live

KODT Live Action Series

** OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE ***
*** For Immediate Release 12/8/13 ***

Knights of the Dinner Table Live Action Series now being funded on Kickstarter

If you are interested in helping fund this project, visithttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/d20e/428504285?token=bd558b5aand make your pledge.

HOODY-HOO!!! Introducing a new frontier for fans of Knights of the Dinner Table magazine. D20 Entertainment has been granted the license to produce a Live Action Series/Movie of KODT.

That’s right! With your help, fans of the comic and geeks of all types will be able to watch the antics of their favorite characters brought to life. B.A. Felton, Bob Herzog, Dave Bozwell, Sara Felton and Brian Van Hoose are all chomping at the bit to jump out of the pages of the comic and onto television, computer and hopefully movie screens. Here’s how it went down.
A few months ago, just prior to GenCon, we at Kenzer and Company were approached by an old friend with an interesting proposal. Ken Whitman (D20 Entertainment ) wanted to do a Knights of the Dinner Table webseries.
Now over the years, Jolly, Dave, Steve, and Brian have been approached perhaps a dozen times about doing such a project. From the guy with a video camera and perhaps more ambition than know-how to a few big name animation studios whose names you would immediately recognize.

As tempting as all those offers were, they came to nothing because of one thing: The Development Team wanted to make sure they had creative input/control. They just weren’t willing to take a check and put these beloved characters in the hands of strangers (especially when one studio exec insisted on changing the Knight’s background from ‘losers’ (her words) to teens who were “heroes” in their day to day lives outside the game).
Giving up complete creative control is just something they’ve been unwilling to do. Unfortunately, most studios weren’t willing to negotiate on that point. So, as the years have passed, and offers have come and gone, the likelihood of a KODTfilm project just seemed to diminish, to the D-Team’s disappointment.

Enter D20 Entertainment.

Not only did Ken Whitman agree to the D-Team having creative control on the proposed project, he insisted on it. That got the ball rolling. Now the ball is in your court. If you want to see your beloved Knights (and possibly other KODT characters) come to life for a webseries, or perhaps even a 90-minute movie (depending on funding) then visit D20’s Kickstarter site and contribute to the KODT movie project. There are exciting rewards for contributing and finally, the fans of this long-running (more than 200 issues now) comic will have a chance to help make this dream a reality.

Kickstarter ends February 8, 2014, however many unique items will be sold out in a very short time so make sure you get your pledge in early.

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If you are interested in helping fund this project, visithttp://www.kickstarter.com/projects/d20e/428504285?token=bd558b5aand make your pledge.

For more information bout the KODT: LAS, please contact Ken Whitman at sales@D20Entertainment.com

If you would like to schedule an interview with any of the actors, Kenzer & Company, or d20 Entertainment, please contact Barbara Blackburn at barbara@D20Entertainment.com