Lilia writes: I am so glad I live in Atlanta. Last night’s meet up with Alan Lee was so much fun! It was fun to think that my experience with meet up’s and getting to know other Ringers began with the Atlanta Moot back in June 2004 when I met Alan Lee for the first time.
I arrived two hours early due to my astronomy lab getting out early and had a clear way all the way downtown. So I just hung around till about 5:45 when Shuya arrived. We both already had our books, so we didn’t need to get them. About 6:15 we took our seats in a little area they had set up for Mr. Lee to do his presentation. We found out later that if you had bought your book there, you got a number to get in line for signing. If not, you had to go to the back of the line when he began signing. Oh well. RingersReprise, djdeathkiss and FoG all showed up about 6:30. Then later on, Elycia, her husband and Fiver showed up. (not together) But the seats were already full by that time. I think all in all there were about 50 people, maybe more, I’m not the best with numbers. I was actually surprised there weren’t more.
Once they got the projector set up Mr. Lee did a half hour or so slide show about his work on the films. Showed before and after shots, what he did, paintings and so on. It was very interesting to hear. And much of it wasn’t in the books. Once he finished he opened it up to questions. Some one asked if he had any other works he was doing and he said he’s working on Greek Mythology. I can’t remember what though. He said he would like to work on the Hobbit if it ever comes about. (Which he seemed to believe it would). In answer to a question about favorite artist and who inspired him, he mentioned, Turner, Rembrandt, DaVinci, Bottecelli and others.
Then the signing began about 8:00. As we didn’t have tickets we just stood/sat around for awhile and talked. We finally got in line sometime after 9:00. There was not a big rush or a huge amount of people, so this worked out well. We stood in line, talked some more.
We finally got up to the table to meet Alan Lee. He was so nice and seemed much more comfortable then when we met him in June for the Atlanta TORn Moot. More used to it I suppose. I got my book signed and told him how much I liked his art and what my favorite painting was. Then after a few others got there books signed, we all got a group picture. The Atlanta LOTR Meet Up group, and that should be up on his blog. He was, as last time, just as kind and friendly as he could be. He is so welcoming and you don’t feel at all afraid of him. He took the time to sign every ones books and some people had a lot of books (a couple of people with a large box or bag full) Even though we were the last ones and the last to leave, he was still very polite and happy to sign for us.
Chapter 11 did a great job handling all the people and even though we were so late in leaving (about 9:45) they didn’t rush us out and handled the crowd very well.
