27 June 07 Wellington gallery TheNewDowse will open their Becoming Kong exhibition this weekend, and to celebrate are hosting heaps of cool Kong workshops with Weta crew!

The exhibition Becoming King Kong takes you behind the scenes to reveal the amazing creative journey that took King Kong from the imagination to the world's cinema screens.

The exhibition sprawls across four galleries, enabling visitors to pour over original sketches, animal skulls, life-sized sculpted models, detailed maquettes, stunning digital artwork and rarely seen moving-image footage used in the development and production of the movie.

Above: Prosthetics Supervisor Gino Acevedo doing 'research' with an animal friend.

Especially cool are the workshops and fun activities TheNewDowse is putting on over the course of the show. There is the Becoming Kong holiday programme for kids, which features chances to make your own DIY Dinos (roll up your sleeves and fashion your own T-rex, or Stegosaurus from faux fur, glittery fabric and coloured paper), a kids quiz & competition.

Three of our crew will be at the gallery over the course of the exhibition, giving workshops. Weta Designer Greg Broadmore is hosting a photoshop workshop. Greg will be showing some of the techniques he and his colleagues used to create the illustrations from King Kong.

Above: An illustration by Greg Broadmore for King Kong.

Weta sculptor Bill Hunt, who sculpted many of the expressions for Kong, will give a demonstration on sculpting on Sunday 12 August and our Senior Prosthetics Supervisor and Visual Creature Effects Art Director Gino Acevedo (pictured above) will take a seminar in special make-up, prosthetics. Gino designed the prosthetic make-ups for Skull Island Natives on King Kong he also oversaw the special makeup requirements that Weta Workshop provided for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Check out TheNewDowse website for more info on these cool events.