01 August 2007 San Diego, USA wasn't the only place to find Weta's monster makers out showing their work last week. Across the world in A Coruña, Spain, Weta make up artist Frances Richardson and actor Lawrence Makoare entertained rapt crowds, offering a special day-long insight into what it takes to turn a man into a monster!

Reprising his famous The Lord of the Rings role as Lurtz, Lawrence took to the make-up chair again, but this time in front of an auditorium filled with fans. Over the course of the day, Frances transformed Lawrence into his grim Uruk-hai alter-ego, all the while fielding questions from the crowd via interpreter. After a six hour application, Lawrence then leapt from his chair, fully armoured and made-up and spent an hour mingling and meeting with fans in the auditorium, before jumping in a car and heading out to the ancient stone town of Santiago where more folks were able to get up close and grab pictures with Middle-earth's meanest Uruk-hai.

Finally wrapping up the makeup removal at 11pm, both Frances and Lawrence were exhausted, but had nothing but wonderful things to say about their experience, as did their Spanish hosts, the good people of Ilux Visual Technologies. Weta's makeup demonstration was in support of The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy Exhibition, which is currently in Spain showing at Fundación Caixa Galicia's two venues in A Coruña and Santiago de Compostela till Sunday 16 September.

Our Spanish speaking readers may enjoy checking out what the Spanish press had to say about having an Uruk-hai and his Weta wizardess in town for a day...

La Voz de Galicia
El Correo Gallego.es
ELPAIS.com
El Ideal Gallego