Our Work on The Rings of Power

Middle-earth has always had a place in our hearts and on this revisit thanks to Amazon Prime, we got to work on some amazing characters, creatures and environments.

Then team created the dwarf kingdom of Khazad-dûm as a thriving community deep under the Misty Mountains. This enormous volume was designed full of cascading waterfall simulations, thousands of lighting rigs, hundreds of individually animated characters and an ingenius modular system for adding dwellings and architectural features.

The sentinel citadel of Ostirith was modeled and placed digitally on the spectacular shores of Lake Quill in Southland, New Zealand and given a matte-painted backdrop of the valley where Men had previously sided with Evil and therefore were under constant surveillance by suspicious Elves.

The ice troll we created for the Durnost sequence may have been terrifying but the ‘insane chihuahua inside a 600lb pug’ as the team describes the Warg in Episode three, is definitely next level. Our concept designer Nick Keller – a veteran of Middle-earth design - ensured we delivered on the brief to conjure something above and beyond.

The series provided many opportunities for complex Compositing, blending plate elements with digital assets, animation, simulation and FX.

In one scene, as Galadriel dangles precariously on an ice wall from the hilt of her dagger, the face was just about all that was kept of the green screen performance and her cape, lower body and even a lock of hair were animated separately to complete the picture.

Wētā FX also created a stylised animated sequence of the origins of Mithril, complete with a Balrog, and our effects department also created the foul and devastating ash cloud that resulted from the creation of Mount Doom, laying waste to much of the Southlands.