Notes on Gollum (The Two Towers)

This post is simply an update of some notes i've taken while looking into how Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films was created from a technical viewpoint mainly looking at the process involved and how it evolved into the final character in the film.

His design began with 2d concepts then his body was sculpted using real life inspiration to make him look realistic. The sculped model was then scanned to copy the scuplture as a 3d model. Origionally he was designed as a purely 3d and animated character and only a voice actor was needed, however they soon found out that expression and voice acting couldnt be seperated if they wanted a believable character. After this they began doing scenes with Gollum differently they did it in two stages firstly they did a animation reference pass with the live actor in shot to help the animators and also so that the rest of the actors know how to react to this 3d creature. Then they would do a mime pass which was initally going to be the final shot which was simply the same scene without the live actor that would be Gollum. Then due to the performance given by Gollums actor they decided to change his design mid production to make Gollum look more like him and be able to imitate his facial expressions more precisely. Gollum was resculped using the actor for reference and the actor now became the motion capture artist for Gollum. Gollum was animated in the end with a combination of motion capture and keyframed animation, facial expressions hand and feet movements were keyframed at all times and a lot of the more unrealistic shots that couldnt be motion captured also were. Roto-animation was a technique heavly used which is where the animators would use the animation reference pass of the film and animate over the live action shot while copying the actors movements acurately then edit the actor out. Originally the animators had a different view of the character than the actors so it was important for them to get to know the character better before continuing to animate him.

That is most of the relevant information i have taken from the various documentrys on Gollum from The Two Towers film. The main parts of this that i believe will be the most useful in  the future is the multiple passes of a live action scene and the use of Roto-animation.