Part I

(Part II Coming Soon)

written by Daniel Falconer

	Virgina Lee sculpts 'Escape off the Road'

f you’ve read the books or seen the film, chances are you’ve seen Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythical land of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, through the illustrative vision of renowned Artist Alan Lee. Along with John Howe, Alan Lee has been illustrating the world of Tolkien for decades, shaping and moulding the visions of generations of readers of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and most recently paired up with Howe to provide conceptual designs for Peter Jackson’s epic three-film adaptation of that literary masterpiece. But Alan is not the only Lee to share his interpretations of Middle-earth with the world.

Meet Artist and Sculptor Virginia Lee, daughter of Alan Lee, Sculptor for ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films Art Department and now making her commercial debut as creator of the first of Sideshow/Weta Collectibles’ fantastic new wall-plaque scenes. In an exclusive interview, Lee shared with us her experiences working on the films and living in New Zealand, and gave us a special insight into the creative and technical challenges involved in capturing a moment of Middle-earth drama as a collectible sculpture.

"I came over (from England to New Zealand) in March of 2000, and sculpted architectural props like statues and fountains, in particular for Minas Tirith. I had not long finished a degree in illustration in London. I had always been drawing and started sculpting when I was about fourteen. I did a mixture of both in my Illustration Degree, incorporating my sculpture in an illustrative way. I also worked in England for a while on a commission basis, producing my own sculptures as well as making accessories to accompany the work of renowned Doll-maker Wendy Froud. She was my main inspiration actually, for sculpting."

For the work she did on the films in the Three-Foot-Six Art Department, Lee recounted how she branched out, learning new techniques and working with new materials. "I hadn’t had a huge amount of experience in sculpture, especially large scale. (For ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films) I was mostly sculpting in plasticine, which was then molded because it’s more refined work, but I had a little flirt around with polystyrene towards the end. I enjoyed the whole experience. I sculpted in relief (low prominence sculpture with compressed perspective), doing statues in alcoves and decorative fountains for Minas Tirith."

This in some ways prepared Lee for the task she would undertake when production finished at the Art Department and began work sculpting for Weta Workshop. Having been the special effects provider for ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Weta had then branched out, going into partnership with Sideshow Toy of Los Angeles to produce high end sculptures based on the films, though as Lee pointed out, "none of the relief work I had done up to that point was as detailed as the collectibles that I embarked on at Weta."

'Escape off the Road' (Flash Required)

The first task Lee undertook was the complicated sculpting of a wall plaque entitled ‘Escape off the Road’. Lee’s wall plaque is the first in a new line of collectible low-relief sculpted scenes from Sideshow/Weta depicting dramatic moments from the first of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movies, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’. In the ‘Escape off the Road’ scene, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin take shelter under the roots of a gnarled old tree to escape from a terrifying Ringwraith. In accordance with the aspect ratio of the film itself Lee’s scene was sculpted in a widescreen format.

As Lee discovered, working in such extreme detail and overcoming the technical difficulties of the crushed perspective proved quite a challenge. "To start with I was inspired by a sketch that (Visual Effects Art Director) Christian Rivers had done but I then took it off down my own road. I’d do a plasticine maquette of it first and just work out the general composition of it, the various planes I’d be dealing with, how deep it should be, and then it was really a matter of playing around with it until it felt it looked right, but also trying to take into consideration what was going on in the scene. It’s not exactly like the scene in the film. There’s a bit of artistic license, like a sculptural illustration really.

"I felt the prospect of doing the first wall plaque quite daunting. To begin with I was working quite tentatively, focusing on one area in detail at a time. I later established how important it was to block out all the elements very early on in the process, making the relationships between the parts work well. It was a very complex and challenging piece to do. I think a huge challenge was working on one thing in such detail for such a long time. I’d never worked longer than a month on one thing (the total sculpting time on the ‘Escape off the Road’ wall plaque worked out at twelve weeks).

"I had never tried to get likenesses using forced perspective, but it actually wasn’t as tricky as I had initially thought. I just had to take into consideration that things in the immediate foreground were more three-dimensional than those in the background, where I was dealing with only a few millimetres in depth. From this I let the sculpture evolve. There was a lot of mulling over of all the things all the time. I don’t think there really was a formula actually, at least not a conscious one. It was very intuitive really. I’m sure there are quite logical ways of approaching it as well."

To be continued...
Coming Soon: Part II - Virginia Lee