Book Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles II - Creatures and Characters

Informative and amazing visual companion

The first Hobbit Chronicles book looks at the art and design. This second volume looks at how these characters are then created, through make-up or digitally.

You get to see Bilbo, Gandalf, dwarves (again), Thorin, orcs, trolls, eagles, giants, goblins and their king, oversized rabbits, Radagast's hedgehog friend, Stone Giants and the Gollum. Oh, no dragon, not yet.

The book's filled with highly detailed pictures, film stills and behind-the-scenes photographs. There are pictures of the cast working with silicone hand and leg prosthetics, make-up process, sculptures of dwarves, 3D models and more. The book's back has a scale size chart that's helpful at showing all the characters relative to each other.

There are interviews with the actors and the many staff that worked on the set. The extensive writeup talks about the challenges of creating these characters and creatures, getting them to move, the accents and language, the digital effects and the 3D models. It's fun reading about the film production from the first person account.

You get a good idea the amount of effort put in to create a film like this. Even for the 3D models created, they did not just model the muscles but also all the bones within even though they are not going to be seen on screen.

It's a really informative book packed with content.

Highly recommended to fans of the film.

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The price of the book varies depending on who the publisher is. You can get from Harper Design if you're in USA, and Harper Collins if you're outside USA.

From publisher Harper Design: Amazon (US | UK | DE | FR | IT | JP | CN)

From publisher Harper Collins: Amazon (CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP)

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The price of the book varies depending on who the publisher is. You can get from Harper Design if you're in USA, and Harper Collins if you're outside USA.

From publisher Harper Design:
Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn

From publisher Harper Collins:
Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp