Wizards 1

Gandalf, the wandering wizard. What a great character. I'm going to spend a couple of days working on his face before I get into costuming.

God, finally a character with a giant beard to draw.

That last one is definitely the direction I'm taking him.

It's been an interesting mental exercise trying to fill in the rest of Tolkien's universe just using the information given in the Hobbit and not checking any of the gigantic LOTR wikis I'm sure exist out there. I've been having fun taking his descriptions of these characters and what they do in this relatively small story and imagining the rest, even though it's all written somewhere.

I read the Hobbit long before I could sit down and muscle my way through Fellowship and beyond. It just moves so much faster, especially when you consider that Fellowship starts with what, two hundred pages of wandering? That's tough to handle when you're ten, even if the scene in the barrow downs is rad. There's a lot more singing in The Hobbit, also. Bonus.