WETA Workshop - The Professionals Professional

Weta Workshop is a special effects and prop company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film.

Founded in 1987 by Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger as RT Effects, Weta Workshop has produced creatures and makeup effects for the TV seriesHercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess and effects for films such as Meet The Feebles and Heavenly Creatures. A digital division, Weta Digital, was formed in 1993.

Weta Workshop's output came to worldwide prominence with director Peter Jackson's film trilogy The Lord of the Rings, producing sets, costumes, armour, weapons, creatures and miniatures. It supported the creation of Reclaiming the Blade (2009), a documentary film on stage combat, historical European and Asian swordsmanship.^[1]

The company name comes from the weta, "New Zealand's coolest little monster, a bizarre and prickly prehistoric cricket". - Wikipedia.

Without a doubt, Weta workshop is the top of the line place to work if you are a 3D modeller or artist and over the past 3 years I've actually come to realise that I want to aspire to join the Weta Workshop as they predominantly deal in creature design and other weird and wonderful artworks. 

The most recent work I have from the Weta workshop is "Smaug, Unleashing the Dragon", which is jam packed full of truly beautiful concept art thats right down my alley. 

Im hoping to take some time out of working after university has finished to fully build up a professional portfolio to show to the art department of Weta in the hopes of working for them at some point in the future. 

When I started this course I actually wanted to work for Bethesda, which is still an option as they also deal in a lot of creature design. Another company I'm interested in is Gearbox studios, who deals with the Borderlands games. But the top of my list is Weta workshop without a doubt. 

I'm actually beyond excited about my prospects of joining the creature design crew of Weta, all I need to do is build up my portfolio and to present it in a beautiful format thats good enough to show the Art Directors of Weta. Then if all goes well its a permanent 24 hour flight to New Zealand to start my new life as a professional creature concept artist!