18 June 07 WETA BUG SCOOP: Now that the Body Art Awards have been held, I can reveal our behind the scenes work on this very cool project!

The Body Art Awards were held in Auckland over the weekend, and now that the awards have been completed, we can reveal our other work on this project!

Weta Workshop created the trophies for these very special awards. Designed by the Workshop team and sculpted by Ben Hawker, these trophies were created for the winners of each of the categories of the Body Art Awards.

"It was quite a novelty working on this project", said Ben. "We wanted the piece to be figuartive, functional and relate to the ethos of the awards all in one. We thought the best way to go was to start with a nude figure, pre empting the idea of the Awards, combined with a paintbrush."

This year?s NZ Body Arts Awards will have ten separate categories including airbrushing, body painting, prosthetics, masquerade, tribal and fluorescent illusion.

Weta Workshop's Gino Acevedo and Richard Taylor, were guest judges at the awards, and according to Gino, the level of entries were awesome. He said the event was a great success and said much about the growing interest in the art in New Zealand. "The level of competition had really stepped up a notch this year", said Gino.

Above - winning entry of the fluorescent illusion category.

"It was obvious a lot of hard work and preparation went into all the creations and the standard overall was really high, which was great to see."

Check out the Weta Gallery for more pix of this years' awards.

Got some of your own pix? Send them to wetabug@wetanz.com!