Weta’s Richard Taylor gives Maggie Wicks an exclusive sneak peak at the armoury and tools of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
How hard could a lion be? Especially when your team is the boys (yes, all boys) of Weta Workshop, the team that brought Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings to life. But of all the creatures created for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – the horse-pig minaboars, the mole-like Boggles, the bladed Ankle Slicers -Aslan the Great Lion presented the most difficulty.
Majestic, gracious and noble, Aslan had to convey the impression he could carry a nation through war. He had to have human complexities and a talking, non-comical, mouth. And somehow, he had to remain just a lion. For a crew used to dealing in cave trolls, winged beasts and armour-swinging oliphants, this was a tough call. So they were stoked to find him almost in their backyard, in Whangarei.
Yes, Aslan is from Whangarei, and his name is really Zion. Zion is a member of The Lion Man’s pride and was discovered by Ben Wooten, Weta’s design supervisor. Wooten spent a day with Zion, observing him, photographing him, and Aslan was finally born.
Wander through the weapons gallery and you’ll see Weta’s most recent project, Narnia, come to life. Hanging on the wall in embossed red leather is Lucy’s medicine bottle and dagger with an intricate flower motif. The leather has been hand-worked by Mike, a South Island leather-worker from a long line of saddle-makers. Susan’s bow has Aslan’s face looking out, so that her goose feather arrows will always follow his sight line. Her horn and quiver are made to appear as if they were carved from a single elephant’s tusk. And there’s the White Witch’s ice crystal poison vial she uses to taint her Turkish delight.
The detail is extraordinary – right down to the minotaur-themed armour buckles and the whisker holes and lion-shaped chins on Peter and Edmund’s helmets. “Kids’ limbs grow at an alarming rate,” says our guide and Weta co-founder Richard Taylor. “This suit was remade three times before shooting began. To get those motifs was an exhaustive six-month process. And although as a movie audience you may never get a chance to study it close up, without the detail it would feel like a flat world. A blank piece of leather or a smooth steel sword would just look odd, even if you didn’t know what was wrong with it.”
[read the rest at Stuff.co.nz]