Posted on 05/20/2002 7:14:10 AM PDT by maquiladora
The special effects produced by Oscar-winning Weta Workshop in Wellington for The Lord Of The Rings film trilogy was better than anything ever produced before, says a visiting animation expert from Germany.
Sven Pannicke, executive producer of animation at the Animation Institute in Ludwigsburg, said people were stunned by the quality and quantity of computer animation in The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring.
It was on a scale never before seen and unlikely to be matched anywhere else in the world, he said.
"You could realise the same effects wherever you want, but not at this level. It's too much for any other company I know. So I think they are absolutely standalone."
He said the amount of work that went into the special effects for the trilogy, including set and character creation and computer animation, was staggering.
"The feeling of the people behind the work is that they are absolutely involved with their animation in their minds. You have to be crazy to be involved in such a project. I really love this," he said.
Mr Pannicke was in New Zealand for four days last week, participating in an exhibition of German animation at Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, called Animated Film From Germany.
Mr Pannicke said animation, which takes three main forms – character, stop motion and computer animation – is becoming a global phenomenon.
The short animated films running as part of the exhibition showed how animation could appeal to people because many of them did not have speaking characters, he said.
"It is, for me, the most international film-making. It is very concentrated with the story and the emotion ... you have a very, very strong picture and very strong music."
Mr Pannicke toured Weta Workshop to see how animation was done in New Zealand, and on Friday he visited Massey University to look at the work New Zealand students were producing.
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