The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug opened last weekend to critical praise that ran the gamut from "not as boring as the last one" to "actually kind of decent in its own right," but pretty much everyone agreed that the best part of the movie was the towering, fire-breathing dragon Smaug, voiced by Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch. Feel free to observe this collection of behind-the-scenes shots of the British actor mugging for the camera and crawling on top of tables like a giant lizard while wearing little motion-capturing dots all over his face.
Funny thing: Cumberbatch didn't have to do motion capture for Smaug at all, since humans and dragons don't look enough alike for the technique to really be useful, but he volunteered as a way to get into character, with these pictures as a memento. Check them out below, alongside an interview with Weta Digital's special effects supervisor Joe Letteri about the challenges of bringing Smaug to the big screen.
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