When I first found about Turner Mohan (my previous posts about him are here), I was just over one of those periods of binge-reading the Silmarillion and imagining the extraordinary world created by J. R. R. Tolkien. And I couldn’t believe what I found.
In his huge Deviantart gallery, Turner Mohan gives extensive descriptions about each of his sketches. He puts a lot of effort in analyzing in a very logical and historical way why the peoples and races of Arda look like that, produce those clothings, live in those architectures. Not only he is a talented artist, not only he has an impressively deep knowledge of Tolkenian lore, but even more he is a kind of fantasy anthropologist. Some examples (taken from the link) are below:
(Maybe I love his art so much because we imagined things in a similar way, so it’s like he draws almost exactly as I thought, for example with the first elves being similar to native americans, and eaarly orcs similar to primitive men.)
his description:
In the Lord of the Rings, the elves are presented almost across the board as these saintly, somewhat removed beings. They are ‘the Wise,“ stewards of the World and advisors to the younger races, their words giving hope to our mortal heroes in their darkest hours. They are getting ready to depart forever for the West, and hand over the world they have loved and fought for for countless millennia to mankind, and one senses that this last battle against the evil of Sauron is for them a tying up of theological loose ends, before they leave men to inherit the Earth. To those previously familiar only with LOTR and 'the Hobbit,’ it is perhaps the greatest surprise of 'the Silmarillion’ and the rest of Tolkien’s posthumously released work to see the elves presented as "young;” proud, impetuous, dynamic beings who act on impulse, who can be jealous, manipulative, abusive, evil. With none is this more apparent than with Feanor and his sons, and I don’t think it’s any mistake that they are particular favorites of fans and fan-artitsts. In them we get to see the (what would have to be) tremendous, really super-human, pride and contempt of these immortal beings, aware of their role as “princes” in a world ordained for them by their Creator and possessive of their status as the “firstborn” in the face of emerging humanity. With Celegorm and Curufin, antagonists to the first-ever human/elven coupling of Beren and Luthien, we really get to see this up close; Celegorm’s self absorbed, un-feeling “love” for Luthien, and Curufin’s stewing, murderous indignation after his humiliation at Beren’s hands. Their driving emotions follow patterns of romantic jealousy and prejudice that are all too familiar and, really, all too “human.” Coming from the bottomless wisdom and kindness of figures like Elrond or Galadriel, well, its a surprise, and something of a shot in the arm for the creatures in whom Tolkien invested the greatest part of his love and creative energy, but who often come off in his best known works as just little anemic.
A note on design: the garments for these two have a little bit of everything in them, Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Germanic, Japanese, Elizabethan, Native American, even a bit of 1700’s “georgian” styles. I’m increasingly attracted to the idea of the elves, in their material culture, as pan-cultural, or more like proto-(human)-cultural; they were, in themselves and in the things they made, these beings of beauty and natural artistry “beyond the measure of men” that mankind remembers from our mythic prehistory, and who all human cultures through our long history have sought, unconsciously, to recall through our arts and mythos.
And a note on Celegorm’s hair: as a son of Feanor and Nerdanel, yes it was almost certainly Tolkien’s intent for Celegorm to be dark-haired. I expect his descriptor 'the fair’ (“fair” being used in antiquated English and often by Tolkien to mean both beautiful and/or light-colored) has been the major cause of the popular imagining of the character as a blond but, well, the image works, it sets him so perfectly as the classic, gleaming prince opposite gritty, human Beren. I’ve entertained the idea (and may get to one day show it in a colored image) of celegorm as nearly sheet white (and white, rather than golden, haired) perhaps the product of a kind of elven Albinism, regarded by them (as it likely was by much of ancient humanity) as not a defect but this rare and kind of awe-striking anomaly.
his description:
“But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. For who of the living has descended into the pits of Utumno, or has explored the darkness of the counsels of Melkor? Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before the Beginning: so say the wise. And deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery. This it may be was the vilest deed of Melkor, and the most hateful to Ilúvatar.”
The Silmarillion, chapter 3 “of the coming of the elves and the captivity of melkor”
Orcs fascinate me; the perpetual foot soldiers of Evil, inherently cruel, nasty creatures that are ultimately the end result of horrendous, deforming torture, both in origin as a species, and, I would imagine, on an individual level by the cruel, brutal nature of their societies. Do orcs love their children? Their parents? Are they capable of having friends even amongst their own kind? All questions that Tolkien leaves largely, frustratingly, unanswered; nowhere in either his books or in the jackson films do we ever get to see orcs as anything other than these horrible all-purpose antagonists, fighting, growling, and just being generally unpleasant, but I would think, just like humans or any other type of creature, that the vast majority of their actual day-to-day existence is spent just kind of getting through life; breathing, eating, sleeping, shitting, having sex where they can get it, sitting still, walking around, letting their minds wander. who knows where those minds go? if they sometimes, in a quiet moment, rise out of the squalid meanness that seems to be their psychological fallback position?
Physically i wanted these to have the feel of debased, devolved creatures; their bones and muscles bent and warped away from the greek perfection of their elvish progenitors. tolkien’s world doesn’t seem to operate by evolution - both humanity and all other living things in middle-earth simply springing to life, garden-of-eden style, more or less fully formed - but the orcs (and other evil humanoid creatures like trolls/giants) seem a good opportunity to draw from a lot of the physical traits of pre-humans, or of our cousins in the ape and monkey families, to give them the feel of having basically evolved backwards. There is strong and, to me, very convincing theory that a lot of the mythology of trolls and goblins and such are a leftover from early-modern man’s interactions with the then-dwindling race of neaderthals, and certainly this seems to have influenced the physical portrayal of fairy tale monsters throughout history, right up to the classic illustrations of John Bauer and Arthur Rackham, and i wanted to keep these in that fairy tale goblin tradition, while taking them through perhaps a more serious, conscious biological lense; weather-beaten faces and bodies, long arms and torsos, short bow legs, bunched, narrow shoulders, crooked necks, big hands and feet, prehensile toes, rough, feral body hair distribution.
- [For Lord of The Rings] I had to do huge battle scenes, and in Hollywood films when it gets to big crowds it’s really only at most two thousand people. But Tolkien writes about Helm’s Deep and ten thousand Uruk-hai, and the only way to do that was in a computer. So we created the “Massive” software, where each of the computer people makes its own choices. At the first test screen we had 30 CGI people running at each other and half of them turned and ran away, so we had to dumb them down and tell them to stay fighting.
- You don’t know how the battle is gonna turn out?
- No. If you have orcs fighting elves, you teach CGI orcs how to fight like orcs and CGI elves to fight like elves. You’re literally not in control. You have this huge battle scenes with horses for and that renders for about three days and we don’t know what it’s gonna be like, so we wait and see.
- [Per il Signore degli Anelli] dovevo fare scene di battaglia enormi, e nei film di Hollywood quando si tratta di grandi folle in realtà al massimo ci sono duemila persone. Ma Tolkien parla del Fosso di Helm e diecimila Uruk-hai, e l’unico modo di farlo era a computer. Quindi abbiamo creato il software “Massive”, dove ogni “persona da computer” fa le proprie scelte. Ai primi screen test c’erano 30 persone CGI che si correvano addosso, e la metà si è girata ed è scappata via, quindi abbiamo dovuto renderle meno intelligenti e dirgli di rimanere a combattere.
- Quindi non sapevate come sarebbe andata la battaglia?
- No. Se hai degli orchi che combattono gli elfi, insegni agli orchi CGI a combattere come orchi e agli elfi CGI a combattere come elfi. Non li puoi controllare. Hai queste scene di battaglia enormi con i cavalli e le fai andare per circa tre giorni e non sai come verrà, quindi attendi.
Just imagine for a minute, you’re walking through an old library, and you turn and see this wedged into the shelves. You step through, and find yourself in Bag End—your feet on the green grass, and a gentle spring breeze rolling past as you wander under the bright blue sky.
