Full-length LotR Parody Movies

[Huinesoron]

The Doriath Duet is finally animated! Just the revised Captivity Chorus and the videos will be up to date!

hS

[Galadriel55]

Neat stuff!

I got curious about how others have drawn the Trees, because surely someone's done it. I browsed through a bunch of pictures during my break. You know what I realized? All the Silmaril depictions give them a cold light, white or blue. But that's not fair to Laurelin! The beauty of the Tree pictures is that there is some blend of silver and gold, but the Silmarils, which are supposed to contain the light of both Trees, seem to have only silver. I really wanna know if there are any Tolkien illustrations with more warm or neutral/mixed colour Silmarils.

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

The Doriath Duet is finally animated! Just the revised Captivity Chorus and the videos will be up to date!

Updated!

The twinkling lights are a nice touch. Though I have to say I'm gonna miss the flowerstar and starlamp and lampflower ambiguity of Doriath decorations from the previous style.


Unfortunately I don't have much to contribute right now. I have been catching up on a lot of neglected assignments, and I have exams coming up again next week, so sadly my progress has and will be slow in the foreseeable future. I am just under halfway through Beren's solo chunk, and I will post a progress recording once I have that part finished.


PS: I am immensely amused and pleased about getting the Sickle in as many pictures as possible. ^.^ And by proxy each time figuring out which way a picture is facing geographically. And then realizing that there is probably some significance in facing North-West, towards Beleriand, from Cuivienen. None whatsoever, really, but definitely some if you want it that way. ^.^

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I got curious about how others have drawn the Trees, because surely someone's done it. I browsed through a bunch of pictures during my break. You know what I realized? All the Silmaril depictions give them a cold light, white or blue. But that's not fair to Laurelin! The beauty of the Tree pictures is that there is some blend of silver and gold, but the Silmarils, which are supposed to contain the light of both Trees, seem to have only silver. I really wanna know if there are any Tolkien illustrations with more warm or neutral/mixed colour Silmarils.

Well, Tolkien's own Silmaril picture (the heraldic device he drew for them) shows them in white, as does his Beren one... and of course the Evening Star is pretty white... but oddly enough, my own picture incorporates some gold:



I kind of like it; it's a bit stained-glass. I think the only place it'll show up is in the Making of the Silmarils shot, and maybe the death of Thingol.

In Silmaril-related news: the more recent cast photos from... one of the groups performing the Zong show "Sauron" wearing a crown with three big jewels in it. So they've definitely merged the two Dark Lords (or maybe Sauron was just borrowing it?).

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

The twinkling lights are a nice touch. Though I have to say I'm gonna miss the flowerstar and starlamp and lampflower ambiguity of Doriath decorations from the previous style.

Um. I get that. I could maybe add at least some of them back in next time I revamp this one.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Unfortunately I don't have much to contribute right now. I have been catching up on a lot of neglected assignments, and I have exams coming up again next week, so sadly my progress has and will be slow in the foreseeable future. I am just under halfway through Beren's solo chunk, and I will post a progress recording once I have that part finished.

No problem! There's no rush on any of this.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

PS: I am immensely amused and pleased about getting the Sickle in as many pictures as possible. ^.^ And by proxy each time figuring out which way a picture is facing geographically. And then realizing that there is probably some significance in facing North-West, towards Beleriand, from Cuivienen. None whatsoever, really, but definitely some if you want it that way. ^.^

Oh, I wish I could work it into all of them, or at least all of the Prologue. Actually I might juuuuust be able to legitimately put it in the entire Prologue, but the rest... maybe I'll start putting it in as a hidden image where it doesn't fit literally. (Luthien's Doriath has it, when we get to that. ^_~)

Ooh... or I could cheat by using the Pleiades. They're shaped like a pseudo-Sickle (Varda only had a few ideas, I guess, since she stuck Ursa Minor up there too), and they're just off to the right of Orion. So if I tweak Finrod's Land of Mem'ry and Amarie's woods, they'd fit in nicely. (And hey, they're even named - remmirath, the Netted Stars.)

I'll still have to add 'hidden sickles' to the daylight scenes, unless I drop back to 'must appear once per song', but that's not too bad. Thingol's Doriath, Nargothrond interior... oh, there's Galadriel's overview too. Hmm. I shall have to ponder.

hS

[Huinesoron]

You know what, they actually look a lot nicer with some gold in there. Huh.

The pattern barely-visible across the sky behind is a gold-silver aurora. I don't think it's remotely plausible as a sky effect under Treeslight, but what the heck.

hS

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

In Silmaril-related news: the more recent cast photos from... one of the groups performing the Zong show "Sauron" wearing a crown with three big jewels in it. So they've definitely merged the two Dark Lords (or maybe Sauron was just borrowing it?).

No... No, no no no. No, don't do it... (Though I guess they just had the same idea as you did, to simplify the two Enemies into one. But I really don't like that. Especially for the Russian - the knowing audiences will understand what each foe means anyways, and it's ambiguous enough there that the unknowing audience will assume either way. But don't explicitly make them into one!)

Originally Posted by Hui

Oh, I wish I could work it into all of them, or at least all of the Prologue. ...

You're having as much fun with this as with my musical instrument selection. I figured each character / style sounds like some instruments more than others, and in my head some instruments are permanently assigned to some characters. For Meeting/Dance, I thought I'd do a purely wind combo with no piano (we'll see how that turns out), mostly woodwinds, but I've included French horn (which is yet to make an appearance though). Because French horn is the most woodwindy-sounding brass I know of, but also because in Russian it's called valtorna, from the German Waldhorn or something to that extent, which means "forest horn", and you don't just pass up that kind of pun.

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

You know what, they actually look a lot nicer with some gold in there. Huh.

The pattern barely-visible across the sky behind is a gold-silver aurora. I don't think it's remotely plausible as a sky effect under Treeslight, but what the heck.

Would the Valar really create a world without an aurora? It's happening. ^.^


On a barely even tangential topic, while browsing through more Tolkien art I came across this Russian illustrator who does amazing black and white drawings which I absolutely fell in love with. His Sil and COH collections are worth browsing through. Some stuff is really impressive (like shapeshifting Luthien, and most of the Lay pictures for that matter). His LOTR has some nice ones too, though his hobbits look a bit trollish. The pictures are usually instantly recognizable, so I get a little annoyed when occasionally he has a wrong detail here and there, but only because they were so impressive otherwise. I love the First Age collection.

[Galadriel55]

Weekend here = justified procrastination = first progress report. Feedback?

My main concern is that the oboe keeps sounding like an organ, and I keep having to rework it to clean up the organiness, which has no business in this piece. I will probably still return to fixing some spots. It would be kinda funny to give Sauron some random organ music though, as he tries on different crowns in front of a mirror.

The other bit I struggles with a little is the rhythmic placing of Beren's 2-syllable lines (e.g. "for what"). Sometimes they seem to fall on the beats 1!2!(3,4), but sometimes it's (1)2!3!(4), and sometimes it could go either way and I just picked one arbitrarily. Let me know if any of them sound off.

Luthien is next, and I'm excited! Though not sure when the next big push forwards will be, as I may have run out of available procrastination time.

[Huinesoron]

Oh, brilliant! That's very good. I had a singalong, and the only line I missed was the first in the last stanza (nothing wrong with it, I just wasn't ready for it). It sounds great! I can't wait to hear the rest.

I'll try and put together the opening of the video at some point, unless I get too distracted trying to draw Feanor making his Oath; we shall see.

hS