Weta Smithy Peter Lyon in the Mix at Comic-Con

Amongst the colourful characters who flood the San Diego Convention Center Comic-Con was New Zealand smithy Peter Lyon, who has worked the past 16 years for Weta Workshop.

“When I started at Weta I was doing weapons and armour for re-enactors and collectors,” Lyon said at this year’s event. “It was just one of those incredibly lucky coincidences. I was living in the same city as [Weta founder] Richard Taylor, I had the skills he needed and it was the right time.”

He specialises in swords – almost any you see in the six films of Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit are his creations – though Weta’s upcoming work on the 2016 release Warcraft was done by much more modern means, he said.

“Those are a tribute to our 3-D modelling department,” he said standing beneath fanciful displays of the armour and weapons of the film based on Orange County-based Blizzard Entertainment’s mega-popular “World Of Warcraft” videogame. “They’re not limited by physics and reality, and while I could make them it would take a lot more time and money.”

Lyon, a self-taught swordsmith and armourer, was raised in Shannon.

Original article by Peter Larsen, The Orange County Register, July 11, 2015.


Tags: Orange County Register  Peter Lyon  San Diego Comic Con  Weta  Weta Workshop  

Amy Brown’s New Novel Inspired by Women and Art

Amy Brown’s New Novel Inspired by Women and Art

Like many writers before her, New Zealand-born Amy Brown takes inspiration from the Australian feminist icon Stella Maria Miles Franklin in her captivating debut novel My Brilliant Sister – but instead…