In case you missed yesterday’s inaugural daily post, we’ve decided to turn “An Eagle’s View of Middle-earth” from a weekly post to a daily post! We noticed that there were so many Tolkien/Hobbit/LOTR -related stories making headlines that it only seemed fair to keep you up-to-date with all of awesomeness happening in the fandom on a daily basis.
We are not willing to comment on why we were looking for Hobbit pillows (walnuts had absolutely NOTHING to do with it), but we found this gorgeous pillow cover from one of our favorite geeky Etsy shops, Rooby Lane. Rooby uses her talents for geeky fashion, but she occasionally throws in items to decorate your nerdy abode. (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Alice)
Last week, Cartoon Brew ran a story in which prolific performance capture artist (and the man behind Gollum) Andy Serkis was quoted as saying that “what [the animators] are doing is painting digital makeup onto actors’ performances.” The big story circulating the interwebs today is the response by Weta’s animation supervisor/designer and 3-time Oscar winner Randall William Cook to Serkis’ comments. “Gollum was a synthesis, a collaborative performance delivered by both Andy and a team of highly-skilled animation artists,” he said, in rare, but refreshing show of internet civility. (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Lily)
According to the latest report from Service Alberta, there were 53,090 babies born in the Canadian province in 2013; 25,789 girls and 27,301 boys. And of those, three were named Thorin, four were named Arwen, and two were named Eowyn. Look out! Alberta’s population of Tolkien geeks is alive and well (and reproducing)! (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Lily)
We were lucky enough to interview the Tolkien-inspired artist Gerwell last year, and he just keeps putting out amazing Silmarillion artwork! His image of Manwë featured above has quite literally left the Middle-earth News team speechless. (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Myla)
Sylvester McCoy plays Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit films, but to director Peter Jackson, he was first and foremost the Seventh Doctor of Doctor Who fame. “I discovered at the end of filming that Peter Jackson was a Doctor Who fan and was particularly fond of Doctor Who number 7,” he told Niagrara The Week. McCoy even auditioned for the part of Bilbo Baggins in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films but the role end up going to Ian Holm, whom he described as “brilliant.” (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Lily)
Gino Acevedo from Weta Digital discusses why Wellington is an awesome place to live and how he got involved with Weta. He was invited 15 years ago by Richard Taylor to come work on The Lord of the Rings. Since then, he has worked on all of the major productions Weta has been involved with, most recently The Hobbit and Avatar 2. (spotted by Middle-earth News reporter Amanda)
