The author of A Song of Ice and Fire (I live in hope that there will be more books!), George R. R. Martin spoke to The Independent during the Santa Fe Literary Festival.
During the chat, he spoke dismissively of the supposed rivalry between The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon (TLOTR: ROP is out from September 2 on Prime video, while HOTD debuts on August 21 on HBO).
The battle for fantasy supremacy. It’s The Rings of Power versus House of the Dragon — who will win? I don’t know why they always have to do that.
I hope both shows succeed.
Acknowledging his own competitiveness and desire to hopefully “succeed more”, he nonetheless declared that the existence of both was good for fantasy and science fiction and that he wants to see more such shows on television.
BBC has enlisted noted Tolkien scholar John Garth for this Middle-earth quiz that may actually stretch your knowledge of The Lord of the Rings.
Garth is best-known for his award-winning book Tolkien and the Great War as well as The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth.
There’s no “what is the name of Frodo’s sword?” questions in this quiz. Instead, he’s set 15 tricky questions that will test your ability to recall some fine details about Tolkien’s novel.
Since early childhood, artist Jackson Robinson has always wanted to do something artistically inspired by The Lord of the Rings. Recently, he’s finally been able to turn that dream into reality with a wildly successful Kickstarter project launching a deck of The Lord of the Rings-themed playing cards featuring his own hand-drawn art.
Over 6,400 people have backed his The Fellowship of the Ring deck of luxury playing cards in just under a month. It’s now 25 times more successful than its initial goal.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck, standard edition (front side and rear side of pack). Source: Kings Wild Project.
“I knew it would succeed just from the love of the IP and my followers, but I had NO idea it was going to be as successful as it has been,” Jackson told TheOneRing.net.
Robinson says that he’s worked as a professional illustrator for more than 20 years on big brand names and franchises ranging from Star Wars and Marvel Comics to Disney and Coca-Cola, but he’s always loved The Lord of the Rings. His favorite artists working in Tolkien’s milieu includes John Howe and Alen Lee, but he also loves the work of Donato Giancola and the woodcuts of Tolkien Society best artwork category award-winner Tomas Hijo.
“Like many others, the richness of the story and characters within Professor Tolkien’s work drew me in. I also always found it fascinating that I could never seem to be at the bottom of the well of creativity in any of his works or worlds,” Jackson says.
He says that the first significant piece of Tolkien artwork he made was a map of Middle-earth.
“I did this over 20 years ago, during my undergraduate years at the University of North Texas. The map still hangs in my office today.”
A virtual tour of Jackson’s home art design studio. We are officially envious of his collection of swords from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.
However, his interest in playing cards dates from around 2013. He says he only fell into it by accident while working in the videogame industry in Los Angeles.
“I did my first playing card Kickstarter to earn some extra money. It went viral, and I haven’t looked back. I was able to start designing playing cards full-time,” Jackson says. This was the basis for the company he founded — Kings Wild Project.
He says that ever since he started Kings Wild Project, a Lord of the Rings deck has been on his bucket list, and he immediately began researching the requirements for an official license from Middle-earth Enterprises. One of the prerequisites was that his business needed to have been operating in its industry sector for a minimum of five years.
Jackson says the day after Kings Wild Project reached the five-year-mark, he contacted Middle-earth Enterprise requesting to become a licensee to design The Lord of the Rings-themed playing card decks.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck, legacy box edition. Source: Kings Wild Project.
He typically begins his creative process with a lot of reference gathering, looking for materials and art styles to draw inspiration from.
“Then I start sketching a character or court card. I usually start with the King of Spades. I will work on one court card or back design until I feel I ‘find it’, and continue the same process with the other characters and cards,” Jackson says. “So many things I deliberately DON’T plan… It is as if the story is being retold for the first time as each new character is revealed during the creative process.”
Frodo (left) and Samwise (right) cards from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck. Source: Kings Wild Project.
Jackson says he typically doesn’t need to iterate designs very often.
“But I went through a massive restart with [the deck for] The Lord of the Rings. I had almost finished almost half the deck when I wanted to try something different. I ended up going with the new direction but, in the process, created two decks that have the same character lineup but are done in two very different styles.”
His favorite cards from his Fellowship deck are the Glorfindel card for the deck that’s now up on Kickstarter, and the Frodo card from his initial “scrapped” deck. He says he plans to return to that alternative deck at a later date.
Glorfindel (left) and Legolas (right) cards from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring playing card deck. Source: Kings Wild Project.
Plans don’t stop there. He also has a deck themed on The Two Towers tentatively expected to launch on Kickstarter in late Fall, and one for The Return of the King in early 2023. He hopes to produce a deck themed on The Hobbit in the Spring of 2023. He told TheOneRing.net that he was also recently granted a license to produce two-sided The Lord of the Rings jigsaw puzzles. Look out for a Fellowship of the Ring puzzle in time for the holiday season this year.
Readers can visit Kings Wild Project to find out more about his playing card projects, including his Fellowship of the Ring-themed deck. At the time of publishing, the Kickstarter for The Fellowship of the Ring deck has 50 hours before it closes. You can check it out here.
Have you ever wanted to listen to the sounds of Mirkwood? Hear the flow of the Brandywine River? Or perhaps stand in the midst of whistling winds on Caradhras? Soon, you will be able to – thanks to the extraordinary concept and creativity of Jordan Rannells.
Jordan is a composer and sound engineer, with many years experience in the business. His work will be familiar to some Middle-earth fans: he’s an editor for the Prancing Pony podcast. He also has his own podcast – Music of Middle-earth – and, as if that wasn’t enough, he worked with renowned Tolkien artist John Howe on his audiobook Ultimate Fantasy Art Academy.
But Jordan has a dream and a vision – or perhaps one should say, a ‘hearing’! He has long felt that audio books are lacking something. In computer gaming, the artificial realm is brought to life with music, sound effects and ambient sound; the same has long been true of radio plays. And yet, when we listen to books record by brilliant readers such as Stephen Fry and – most recently in Middle-earth – Andy Serkis, we generally only hear their voices delivering the text.
Jordan has a plan to change that. He’s creating (to quote his own words) ‘an audio soundscape to accompany your journey through Middle-earth while you read J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings’. He tells us:
This is something that has never been done before. It is on a scale far above any of our wildest Tolkien fan dreams. I will have CHAPTER SPECIFIC audio.
I will be writing an entire score. Each piece will run alongside the length of an entire chapter of the book.
I will be using advanced 3D immersive audio equipment to record the natural world. These recordings will be inserted into the Soundscape to make you feel like you are walking alongside the Fellowship.
I will be designing and mixing sound FX for creatures like the Balrog, Ringwraiths, and many more to appear along your journey through the story.
All of these layers will be presented separately and together to have a multitude of listening experiences for your adventures in this world. They will be composed and mixed for the purpose of listening while you read, but these files will also be excellent for relaxing, D&D nights, immersing into other fantasy worlds, and more!
Composer and Sound Engineer Jordan Rannells
Jordan recently shared with TORn some insight into HOW exactly he will create this incredible soundscape. Thanks to the latest technology (such as 3D microphones), he can capture locational sound, which will surround the listener. He intends to record specific, different sound environments for all the realms of Middle-earth (no two forests will be the same!); and to have continuous, through-composed audio, with no looping. He also plans to create different speed versions of the soundscape – with one timed perfectly to be played as background whilst you listen along to Andy Serkis’ recording of The Lord of the Rings!
All of this is a huge undertaking, of course! We’re looking forward to hearing how Jordan’s journey to create this audio feast progresses; we hope to connect with him in the coming months, as he conjures and explores his soundscape for Tolkien’s world. Meanwhile, if you’re as excited by this project as we are, you’ll definitely want to know more – and see how you can get involved, and perhaps even lend your voice to the work! Click here to read all the details about this amazing undertaking. We wish Jordan the best of luck – can’t wait to hear the finished product!
IGN reports that, during an interview at the 2022 Calgary Expo, Sean Astin confided that the “preview” for The Rings of Power gave him “the chills”.
“I for one am excited,” he said. “I saw the preview for it, and it gave me chills. It looked like they got it. I’ve been saying the whole time, they’re gonna do it right. There’s no way Amazon is gonna pay almost a billion dollars for a franchise just to screw it up.”
Sean Astin at Calgary Expo 2022
(Ed: it’s a bit ambigiguous, but we’re pretty sure Sean means the teaser trailer and that, unlike, the Vanity Fair folks, he has not seen the initial episodes.)
Astin, who was being interviewed by bestselling author Sam Maggs, said he hopes the Amazon TV series will bring new fans and renewed awareness to Peter Jackson’s films. And he added that, even if the series didn’t prove a hit, he still supported the attempt and “people with being determined and trying and expressing themselves.”
“I feel that way about all remakes. You have classics that you think ‘please don’t touch that,’ but the truth is, nothing can ever take it away.”
IGN writer Cian Maher spoke with Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd as part of their seven show re-union tour of North America.
As well as sharing a few of the foursome’s many reminisces of their moments together on the set of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Maher observes that even now they share a close bond and friendship.
An excerpt:
“Billy said this thing recently about the scene of second breakfast, where we stop and Aragorn is saying, ‘What’s going on?’ and we have the second breakfast thing,” he says. “I didn’t remember this, but Billy is totally right and jogged my memory. That was an incredibly rushed scene because it started flash-snowing [Wood clarifies that this was in November, so this shouldn’t have happened in the Southern Hemisphere]. And Pete basically came over to us and was like, ‘You’ve got about 45 minutes to an hour to get this and go, otherwise we’re in real trouble with all of our gear.’ And we got what ended up being a real amazing moment in the film, but it was fast.”
“It was meant to be like a half day’s work,” says Wood. “It was so fast.”
Boyd explains that as an actor, that kind of hastiness usually leads to disappointment. Astin, meanwhile, recalls being concerned that maybe not everyone cared about a scene the hobbits were all excited about because it wasn’t strictly necessary for the film.
“But then it becomes a scene that a lot of people talk about,” says Boyd. “And it was honestly done in like, an hour. And then we’re sitting on washing machines drinking whiskey like… what just happened?
