Today I got my art book of Smaug: Unleashing the Dragon. The one thing with
dragons is that they appear as mythical creatures. The book shows us how they
created Smaug and how film, drawing, book and myth come together by computer
animation.
The fire breathing dragon Smaug looked very different at
first then the one we meet in the film. The one we meet in the film is fierce
and sound like thunder and isn’t the one you would like two meet in real life.
If you see the first drawings of Smaug it has a snake
head and it looked like Loch Ness. After a while it get the shapes of a real
dragon. Especially when you see how they played with light.
As king under the mountain Smaug is scary and loves to
kill by fire breathing. He hates everyone who come into the mountain. The treasure
is his and he earned it by killing.
What I like about art books is the explanation on how
they choose to make a creature like that and how they make the whole dragon
work. It explains a lot why they choose to do it like that and how the result
will be afterwards.
As we know they took Benedict Cumberbatch to do the
voice of Smaug. Some people say he did only the voice but that isn’t the real
case. They took his face by motion capture and let them do the facial expressions
of Smaug.
The textures they made to create Smaug are wonderful
and very detailed. Even if he breathe fire the texture changed.
There is even an explanation if you could fight with
fire against this dragon. It is a great book if you like to know how things get
created this time Smaug.
Weta Workshop announced a new art book about Cloaks
and Daggers pre orders are available now.
