(warning: return of the king spoilers)
Wow! Good thread. This is my first time to see other Middle-earth inspired images. Quite an eye-opener for one who is not a Tolkien scholar. I enjoyed reading other people's replies. Thanks. As for my own concept of middle-earth, well... I saw the movie first (FOTR), so I was basically robbed of the opportunity to imagine. But I'm happy with the images I got stuck with. And I'm grateful to the movie, it made me read the all the books. I was shockt when I read the first one. There was sooooooooo much more.
Tom Bombadil was one of the characters that totally captured my imagination. Fascinating, though there was something very sad about him... can't pinpoint what exactly. I wanted to know more about him (and Goldberry) and their magical house in the woods and their history. I envision their realm to be something like the paintings of John Baptiste Camille-Corot, beautifully green but sad (don't know why). Oh well, too bad PJ left them out. The ents are another thing. I totally fell in love with them when I encountered them (in the book). I was happy with PJ's visuals. But in my head, they were much taller and bigger and broader. Making them smaller though, allowed them to interact with the weeeee hobbits. So that's cool. I didn't picture Treebeard as Gimli for sure. And I was disappointed not to see Quickbeam. Hmm.. I could go on and on about the ents but I better not.
Gollum was not as I previously saw him (plenty of times) in my head. He was greener and smaller in my mind. When I first saw the movie-Gollum, I thought he looked too human. I was appalled when he tried to eat Sam, I thought PJ turned him into some sort of an orc or something but as the movie went on, I recognized him- the Gollum I fell in love with in the book [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]. PJ's depiction of Gollum is a tribute to the ‘book-Gollum' and to Tolkien himself, in my opinion. I could be wrong but even though Gollum is sort of a monster, I thought he was written lovingly (sorry for the corny word). And that's how PJ created the image (and characteristics) of Gollum. I don't know how I'm going to deal with his death when it comes in December.
Hmmm.. I better stop now before my post reaches Tolkienesque-proportions. Here are some photoshop paintings I made (fan art). They suck but what the hell.
My vague idea of "The Grey Havens"
And here's my vague idea of
where the entwives (and entmaidens) have gone.
Thanks for letting me rant. Sorry if I went off-topic.
p.s.
I did not expect 'the battle at Helm's Deep' to be so grand, I can't imagine how PJ would depict 'The battle of the Pelennor Fields'. Omg. I can't wait.
[ February 04, 2003: Message edited by: propagandalf ]