Cartoon Style LORD OF THE RINGS Character Designs
Artist Francisco Guerrero has created this fun little collection of cartoon style Lord of the Rings Character designs. I've includes the artists notes for each character that he's done so far. The artist is currently in the middle of this project, so I'm sure more designs are sure to come. Check out the designs below, and tell us what you think! Big thanks to the artist for sending these our way!
The fallen Hobbit. I liked when reading The Hobbit you realized that something interesting was going on with Gollum. I guess that for the children's book narrative, you do not feel him so threatening, I imagined him as a creature who only wanted to play—in a sick way—, and it was a simple and secondary character. The Lord of the Rings takes him to another level, it is a complex protagonist, vicious, addict and schizophrenic. Andy Serkis was able to give life to him in the film, and I can't imagine anyone else who could play the character so well as he did and all the animators behind him.
Women play a small part in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was writing primarily a story about war, so he had to focus on developing soldiers, allies and enemies as well as the kingdoms involved. Despite having little involvement, characters like Galadriel and Éowyn are incredibly important to the events in the story.
I really liked what Cate Blanchett did with the character: mysterious, intriguing and with a deep voice that evokes the wisdom of her years. The concept and design of the city of Lothlorien is one of the most impressive and beautiful I've ever seen. It is based on the absence of corners of Art Nouveau and it was obvious for me to get inspired by the work of Alphonse Mucha for this design.
Legolas was one of the characters in the book that I was looking forward to see in film, definitely you knew more about him due to the friendship/rivalry with Gimli and his melancholic and mysterious feeling. In the film, I think it is well characterized, the costume and physical appearance, but in acting performance it was noticeable that this was the first significant role for Orlando Bloom. He is part of excellent action scenes and a couple of lousy jokes.
Gimli the dwarf, friend of elves who likes little hairy women.
It's been a long time since I did something about The Lord of the Rings, maybe a couple of drawings in old sketch books is all that I remember. I feel that Saruman was the villain of the story or at least the one you could visualize physically, but in the last chapter I felt that Tolkien downgraded the strength of character when he went to Hobbiton and enslave the villagers . In the movies, Christopher Lee was incredible, only the sound of his voice conveys great strength and authority, very impressive and is actually one of my favorite characters. Well, this sketch is really based on the film's character design, which I think is incredible.
This character needs no introduction. In the film, it is said that Ian McKellen was imitating the voice and body language of Tolkien to play his character, so we could say that Tolkien is Gandalf himself through the actor.