Written by My Middle-earth Member Bandoras.
Jon Hodgson, Art Director at Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd, has contributed to over 200 gaming products, from role-playing games to card games. He’s contributed to several companies including Wizards of The Coast, Games Workshop, Upper Deck, Paizo, Green Ronin and Cubicle 7. His work outside of role-playing games has been featured by the BBC and even used on the children’s television program Bob the Builder.
Mr. Hodgson was kind enough to grant the Middle-earth Network an interview so that we could find out what it feels like to contribute to the growing mythos of Tolkien’s work as well as how it made him feel to work along such famous artists as John Howe.
Bandoras: First of all, thank you for giving me the privilege of this interview, Mr. Hodgson. You’ve contributed hundreds of fantasy images over the years to several major products associated with gaming; collectible card games, table top role-playing games, miniatures games. Could you give our readers a glimpse into your creative process, given you’ve done so much work and the fact that you now work primarily in a digital art?
Jon: Thank you for the generous introduction, James.
I think the wonderful thing about the creative process is that very often it’s hard to know when it starts. This goes double with Middle-Earth work: So many of these characters and locations are already known to me, and have been rolling around in my head for decades, just as they have for so many Tolkien fans. So the early stages are trawling that mental soup for the best parts of each mental image, or sensation. There comes a point where this is too confusing, where there are too many possibilities, and that’s the time I’ll reach for a sketchbook. Frequently I make a piece entirely using the computer, but for Middle-Earth illustrations I’ve found it somehow more appropriate to make pencil drawings, initially. Probably due to the work of the great Middle-Earth artists whose work is such an inspiration. I’ve filled several sketchbooks since starting work on The One Ring. Once I have an idea I think works I’ll make a tighter sketch and usually it goes into the joint Cubicle 7 and Sophisticated Games team for approval. This is a really healthy collaborative process, and I really enjoy kicking ideas around with those guys. I think we all really trust one another now, and are all working with the same goal of making imagery that is suitably invested with the spirit of the text.
Once we have an approved sketch I’ll make a nice high resolution scan and start the digital painting process. It’s actually remarkably similar to they way I worked in traditional media: A series of “washes” to build up some tone and colour, and then painting with opaque “paint”. I mostly make use of a couple of pieces of software: Photoshop and ArtRage.
On most jobs I listen to random music, but for One Ring work I have a selection of mood appropriate playlists to help me. Lots of folk music, some classical.
B: The first piece of artwork of that you composed that sticks out in my memory was The Owlbear. Immediately my mind went to Mirkwood, even though that piece was not associated with Middle-earth. Could you tell us what Middle-earth means to you, and how you interpret Tolkien’s world in your art?
J: Oh gosh. It’s a hard one to sum up. One of my most formative influences in becoming a fantasy artist was spending long, long hours poring over David Day’s Tolkien Bestiary. It’s funny to hear a mention of the owlbear piece (made for Paizo Publishing), because that’s a very good example. As an aspiring fantasy artist if you get asked to draw deep woodland I think you’re almost guaranteed to be thinking about Mirkwood. I know I was making that piece, and I think those things all feed round into eventually being lucky enough to get the opportunity to try my hand at the “real thing”. Which is an odd turn of phrase for something so patently unreal. I have to be careful of late, because I feel so very spoiled getting to work on Middle-Earth material. I’m not sure where there is to go in terms of ambition after this. Tolkien’s work has such depth and richness, and is so grounded in his knowledge of languages, that it’s a real joy to work with. With that comes a consistent struggle to feel worthy.
Interpreting Middle-Earth is a huge challenge. There are layers on layers within the work – Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are tales related by a narrator who is not entirely trustworthy. And is translated into English from another (invented) language. So there is huge room for interpretation, as we see in the various works we see based in Middle-Earth, ranging from the marvelous and deceptively simple illustrations of the mighty Cor Blok, to the much more popularly accessible movie franchise. Given the nature of the source material it’s very hard to say one is more right than another. Luckily with The One Ring I’ve fallen into a very like-minded team. We’re making a very straight forward interpretation that sets Middle-Earth as a place largely analogous to our own world between 500AD and 1000AD. We feel this fits Tolkien’s inspirations very well and provides a deep and credible well of inspiration on which to draw. I’m very happy at how well it has been received, since the movies, which take an entirely different tack are so well loved. Quite rightly too. Fortunately I think they leave space for an earthier visual interpretation.
B: You’ve mentioned in the past influences on your art were Angus MacBride (who contributed a lot of art to ICE’s Middle-earth Role-Playing), the prolific J.W. Waterhouse, and even Tolkien himself. Give us an idea what its like to walk in those same paths as these greats as well as working alongside such famous artists as John Howe?
J: Oh you have no idea how terrifying it is. I try not to think about it. These kinds of thoughts will drive you to distraction and are terrible for productivity. It’s a strange feeling when for most of your own artistic life you’ve weighed and measured the various artists painting Middle-Earth. I suspect I’m rather more charitable in my assessments now.
Much of the time when working as an illustrator there are a large number of veils between you and your work, and that of your heroes, influences and the very best in the field. You have plenty of places to hide. It’s not like that with Middle-Earth. You know that as a matter of course you will annoy and disappoint as many viewers as you satisfy. And you will be directly weighed and measured against the work of people you personally adore.
Right at the beginning of the project, I almost backed out when I had to prepare some samples for approval by John Howe. There’s a ton of excuses you can tell yourself when an art director doesn’t like your work but when it’s one of your artistic heroes making that call? There’s nowhere to hide, and that’s naturally a scary process to undergo. But in the end, what can you do? It’s very much the kind of work I’ve always wanted, so it’s a nettle to be grasped, and you hope you do the project justice.
Thus far people have been very kind.
I feel hugely fortunate, and take the work enormously seriously, since that’s the part I can control, at least in part. If you’ve watched the videos I made about reading and research for the job I’ve tried to gain as much extra knowledge as I could. Whilst I was very familiar with The Hobbit, LOTR and The Silmarillion I hadn’t read the Letters, or much of The History of Middle Earth series, which I have been working my way through over the last few years. I’m hopefully reading myself into being quite the armchair expert on Anglo Saxon and Viking archeological finds. For the imminently forthcoming Tales From Wilderland I got the chance to paint the cover over John Howe’s pencils. Which was an overwhelming experience to begin with. How do you even start such a thing? But you have to start everything somewhere, and see it as a positive experience, which I did.
B: Having spent so long working amongst gamers, have you taken up any of these hobbies? If so, what are your favorite games?
J: Oh for sure – gaming itself was my starting point. I loved Fighting Fantasy books as a kid: they were a huge craze at my school. I would have been 8 or 9 when a neighbour showed me Talisman the board game, and the first edition of DnD. I fell in love with Talisman, though I struggled to understand at that point how DnD was a game. Soon after I discovered there was a Fighting Fantasy book which showed you how to play a “proper” roleplaying game. Then came high school and Dragon Warriors. DW was never released in the US first time around, but it was huge here, and in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It appeared in a series of paperback books, much like the Fighting Fantasy/Chose Your Own Adventure books. From there it was the usual teen geek parade of DnD, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Palladium, TMNT, Cyberpunk, WFRP, Vampire, all that great stuff.
These days I own a third of the company that publishes Dragon Warriors, and I believe it was my art in those books which brought me to Francesco’s attention for work on The One Ring.
A ring indeed!
I don’t get to play much these days, and if I’m honest work often keeps me away from the gaming table. But hey. At an upcoming convention there is a chance to play in a game of TOR with Francesco up for grabs in the charity auction. I will be bidding!
B: Do you have a favorite work of Tolkien’s, whether artistic or literary?
J: Hmmm. Ok I’m going to cop out and go for artistic first, and do literary too. In the recently released “Art of the Hobbit”, we can see the full image he painted for The Hobbit. That is an AMAZING piece of work. It’s an incredible painting for a relative layman to have made, and I adore it.I love all the big three, in literary terms. Possibly The Hobbit wins for it’s accessibility, highly sequential nature and whimsical tone. But it’s a very tightly run race, and my answer probably depends on which way the wind is blowing.
B: What’s the future looking like for Jon Hodgson? What can we expect from your art and The One Ring?
J: It’s looking busy, put it that way! And long may it continue! I work full time for Cubicle 7, as both an illustrator and art director, and we’re always working on a host of great stuff. It’d be nice to give you the exclusive scoop, but I like my job!There’s so much going on behind the scenes both within Cubicle 7 and Jon Hodgson Illustration that I can’t talk about, but it’s all really positive stuff. The announcement has been made recently that The One Ring is moving to a slightly different structure than originally announced. That means in practical terms for me continuing to power ahead with a lot of supplementary material. There are half a dozen separate projects all underway right now, with more to come. It’s going to be an exciting year or two at the very least!There’s very little in Middle-Earth that isn’t a challenge and an inspiration to paint or draw. And so most of the time I just concentrate on what’s directly in front of me. If I think too hard about it outside of that narrow concept I think I might explode.
B: Thanks for taking the time to let me interview you Jon. I can’t tell you how absolutely thrilling it is to get to talk to you. I’m really eager to see what is in store for both you as an artist and Cubicle 7 as a whole.
J: Thanks for interviewing me!
At the time of writing Jon Hodgson is in his late 30s and lives in Scotland, UK though he happens to have been born south of the border in England. To see some of Jon’s fantastic art, visit his website. More information on The One Ring: Adventures over the Edge of the Wild and Cubicle 7 can be found here.
Some of Jon’s clients have included:
The BBC
Accenture
David & Charles
Wizards of The Coast
Games Workshop’s various subsidiaries – Black Library, Sabertooth Games, Black Industries, Warhammer Historical
Upper Deck
Paizo
Cubicle 7
Ulisses Spiele
Uhrwerk Verlag
Euromoney Magazine
Digital Artist Magazine
Drumond Park
Red Redemption
Project Quest
John Adams Trading
Magnum Opus Press
Green Ronin
Alderac Entertainment Group
Hot Animation
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