The Hobbit Chronicles (It’s the beards!)

To coincide with the release in the UK and US today of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Weta has released this beautiful hardback behind the scenes book of the art, design and craft that went into creating The Hobbit. It’s given the team behind the Lord of the Rings movies a chance to revisit and expand upon their design for Middle-Earth, from showing more of Bag End to designing the costumes and makeup for Dwarven women- complete with luscious beards!

Our author of Burnt Ice, Steve Wheeler, helped create knives, swords and cutlery for the films and the Sir Julius Vogel Award winning artist behind the covers of Mary Victoria’s Chronicles of the Tree, her husband Frank, helped design many of them too!

From the designs presented in the book it seems logical to work out where they have decided to split the story for the films, but to keep this post spoiler free we won’t mention it here!

Personal favourites around the office include the incredibly detailed individual designs for the dwarf costumes and the wonderfully feral Istari wizard, Radagast the Brown, played in the movie by former Doctor Who, Sylvester McCoy!