It’s! Finally! Finished! The Balrog's description is rather vague. The book describes it as a very tall, man-shaped, but overall rather unclear form. It's also described as having mane. It held a whip in its left hand and a sword in its right hand. And basically everything is on fire. I looked at online forums to see what people's opinions were on the 2001-02 Balrog; the majority of people really seemed to like the direction that design took, despite the liberties that were taking with it. I personally love the sense of fear that the movie Balrog was able to portray, so I was definitely inpsired by some of its characteristics. Now that was also one of the main problems I faced; the movie Balrog is so incredibly iconic, I found it very difficult to come up with something unique that inspired that same sense of dread. Like the other characters, I really wanted to focus on giving the Balrog a shape. At the same time, the Balrog also needed to have a sense of ambiguity. On top of that, I also wanted to show that, like Gandalf, the Balrog was a Maiar spirit. There's a huge amount of scribbly thumbnail sketches I did for the Balrog and the overall painting composition before even beginning the final piece. So the actual painting provided me with a whole host of other challenges, the biggest of which was the amount of effects it required. I basically had to research a lot of smoke, fire, and lava and then figure out how to render them all in a "design-y" fashion while keeping the original shapes that I had planned for. After several weeks, it finally started getting to a place where I was happy with it, and at that point I just had to continue rendering it our more and more. And that took a while :) So there it is everyone: Durin's Bane! #balrog #gandalf #lotr #lordoftherings #moria #bridge #khazaddum #shadowandflame #youshallnotpass #tolkien #characterdesign #design #conceptart #visdev #visualdevelopment #fantasyart #creature #creatureart #creaturedesign #illustration #procreate #digitalpainting #digitalart #art #artwork https://www.instagram.com/p/B3TVTiojx90/?igshid=3jjfrfxz06bi
