The Peoples and Creatures of Middle Earth,5th Round,LPL6 ?

[Captain Blood]

I am with you Lars!
Elves don't have pointy ears, they are just particularly fine-looking people.
Orcs don't have faces like pigs, dogs, crocodiles or monkeys, or any combination thereof. They are just particularly vicious, ugly-looking people.
According to Tolkien, who let's remember, invented orcs 

So much second, third, fourth and fifth rate sh*t has been piled on Tolkien's inventions by so many lesser imaginations, that we have quite lost track of how the world of orcs, elves, dwarves and men was meant to look, according to the man who created it.

 

[Plynkes]

... we have quite lost track of how the world of orcs, elves, dwarves and men was meant to look, according to the man who created it.

 

Considering Tolkien only ever approved of one artist's interpretation of his work, and that was Cor Blok, maybe he isn't the best person to ask...








So according to Tolkien, the best LotR rings figures would be ones we make ourselves out of pipe-cleaners and plasticine.  


(Actually I really like Cor Blok, but I can see how some people might not.)

[Heldrak]

And finally, there were some lesser Maiar incarnated as orcs (legendary Orc generals which ever returned to battle after suffering mortal wounds). In the late Third Age, there would be some Maiar-blooded orcs (very few indeed, but the perfect excuse for a shaman, a huge elite Orc....).

I take exception to this statement. The incarnate Maiar in Middle-Earth are the five Istari (Wizards), Sauron, any Balrogs that may be lying around, Melian the Maia (mother of Luthien) and possibly Ungoliant. While Morgoth presumably had other corrupted Maiar lieutenants (lesser than Sauron), none of them are noted as incarnate in Orc form.

[Heldrak]

My favourite pet-peeve. Elves don't have pointy ears! At least not in Tolkien's world. I forgot exactly where but he specifically denies pinty ears as that looks to much like fairies. So here again my mantra: No pointy ears!

This is correct. The main descriptor for Tolkien Elves seems to be "faces full of light". Otherwise they seem to be indistinguishable from extremely beautiful humans. No mention is ever made of pointy ears.

[Blackwolf]

I am with you Lars!
Elves don't have pointy ears, they are just particularly fine-looking people.
Orcs don't have faces like pigs, dogs, crocodiles or monkeys, or any combination thereof. They are just particularly vicious, ugly-looking people.
According to Tolkien, who let's remember, invented orcs  

So much second, third, fourth and fifth rate sh*t has been piled on Tolkien's inventions by so many lesser imaginations, that we have quite lost track of how the world of orcs, elves, dwarves and men was meant to look, according to the man who created it.

 

 And I'm with you Richard (and Lars). Could not have said it better myself Tolkien was creating a myth cycle based on either history or the myths of other countries,for instance The Children of Hurin is in some ways a retelling of the Kalevala.
    So Elves do not have pointy ears,nor in my mind do they use pseudo katanas/naginatas. And if you read some early works Elves sometimes wore beards (Beleg Strongbow),Cirdan certainly did. As for Legolas being blonde phhhhth!
 And the best miniature ranges for Elves? Well I go for Red Box Games,however Tre needs to sculpt a few more chaps. Thunderbolt Mountain do a couple of nice minis,they can be a little flouncy......

[Blackwolf]

Changed the title of the thread,so we don't end up with multiple threads or go off it altogether......

 Cheers

 Guy

[Hammers]

As for Legolas being blonde

To paraphrase: 'Legolas don't surf'. Not the real one, he can't:

[FramFramson]

Oh god, there's not much I hated more from those movies than that scene.  

<<-- is one of those "has-read-the-Silmarillion-a-half-dozen-times-or-so" kinds of idiot.

For myself, I think John Howe's work is the closest to what my mind's eye's sees when I read the stuff. But an alternative take on the imagery, there's also Angus McBride's huge body of work done for Iron Crown Enterprises. It's often inaccurate, but he's a wonderfully skilled artist (thanks to his history as an Osprey artist, his work is very detailed with regards to clothing and gear and he has a great grasp of motion, action, and character) and did a LOT of material, including many regions or peoples that didn't get any attention elsewhere.

[capthugeca]

I have always liked the Miniature Figurines Mythical Earth Orcs and Man Orcs.

[sukhe_bator]

whoaa capthugeca,
OLD SCHOOL Old school - I liked my old Minifigs Man Orcs so much I reincarnated them as a pike regiment...

[Blackwolf]

Yeah, I had almost the complete Minifigs LOTR range.Long gone now,their Uruks were good. I did use Minifigs Normans as my Riders of Rohan however.

[Captain Blood]

I have always liked the Miniature Figurines Mythical Earth Orcs and Man Orcs.

This. Totally and unequivocally. Minifigs 'Mythical Earth' range might have been somewhat basic quality by today's standards (well it was, what, 1976?) but surely came closest to the fairly uncomplicated look of the peoples, arms and armour Tolkien describes in the Lord of the Rings. And some lovely character in certain of the figures.

(With the possible exception of the balrog, which resembled a cuddly lion mascot in a romper suit!)

I too actually love the Peter Jackson films, which were massively influenced by John Howe and Alan Lee. It's just a different vision of Tolkien's world, and one which isn't actually very true to the book. Far too ornate / gothic / baroque, in all sorts of ways, and influenced by far too many other mythic and design ideas which just aren't in the Lord of the Rings. Before they ever got to work on the films, Howe and Lee, with their endless Tolkien calendars down the last 30 years, plus game design artwork and much else besides, are probably the two men most responsible for subverting Tolkien's own idea of Middle Earth, and replacing it with their own much more ornate vision in the popular imagination.

Personally, I think this is a zillion times closer to Tolkien's vision / description of the Mumakil in the garden of Ithilien, than any pile of Warhammer Fantasy Battles crap.

I did use Minifigs Normans as my Riders of Rohan however.

So did I! 
God those Normans were good (at the time). 

[Blackwolf]

Yeah they were cracking! The horses I remember were good too,but then I was only 13.....

 Those Cor Blok pictures are brilliant,very evocative. They suit the feeling of LOTR jolly well. John Blanche did some very good illustrations for the Tolkien Bestiary which were lovely,much less mannered than his later work.

[Pentaro]

I like any interpretation of Middle Earth as long as it looks good. I remember a couple of books I got as Christmas presents as a kid, with lots of drawings by different artists. Sometimes the Pelennor Fields looked like the Bayeux tapestry, sometimes it looked like a Jack Kirby comic-book, and I loved all of them (actually, as an 80s kid, I pictured orcs with pig faces when I first read the novels - I blame the "Dungeons and Dragons" TV show). My own collection is a mix of GW official miniatures (I love their Rohirrim) and early medieval stuff.

As for Peter Jackson, he just filmed his own vision of the story, and that's not a bad thing per se. I'm not a fan of the films but they could have been a lot worse. The problem is, they were so successful that we're going to see the PJ look everywhere from now on. Which, by the way, is exactly the opposite to Cor Blok's

[Mister Rab]

Wow - I'd never even heard of Cor Blok before today, and I thought I was quite a Tolkien afficionado. I think I still love Alan Lee (and really don't like John Howe  ) over any of the other 'mainstream' LoTR illustrators, but I'll be looking out for some more of those Blok images.