Design Blog 6, Designer

Richard Taylor is a New Zealand designer and filmaker.  He is a good friends with Peter Jackson and he worked with him on a number of films.  He created the props, costumes, prosthetics, and weapons.  He did work on Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings The Return of the King, and King Kong.  Where he won a multitude of awards, including a total of 5 oscars.  He won best achievement in visual effects in King Kong (2005), he won best costume design and best makeup for Return of the King (2003), and he won best effects, visual effects and best makeup for Fellowship of the Ring.  He was also nominated for best costume design for Fellowship of the Ring.

Here is a picture of an Orc, one of the grunt type enemies in the movies.  The design concept is based off of J. R. R. Tolkien's book, but Richard Taylor really brings it to life.  The make up is designed to turn a human being into a creature of mythology.  And everything from the swords to the armor has been designed specifically to make this movie come to life.  

Next, in the movie King Kong, he went all out in design concepts.  Even though the beasts depicted are based on old concepts and ideas from decades ago, the creatures still are marvelous to look at.  The dinosaur is based on conventional ideas, but just the fact that it is look life like is what makes this movie and these designs stand out.  The main attraction is King Kong, and even every little hair on his body brings out the incredible time commitment requirement and shows how much work they put into designing him.  

Though a lot of these movies employ a heavy use of CGI, or computer generated images, the designers still need to put all the ideas and concepts together in order to build this world.  Look at how many soldiers are in this picture, in reality there are maybe a couple dozen men down there.  Every thing in this movie was designed from the ground up.  Look at the buildings in the background, they make you really feel like your in the middle ages, yet in a fantasy setting.

Richard Taylor did an outstanding job creating these worlds.  He honestly deserved these Oscars.