Wednesday, January 25, 2023

The Hobbit animated film

Here is a rarity I ran across in the book "Film and TV Graphics 2: An International Survey of the Art of Film Animation" by Walter Herdeg (1976, Zurich : Graphis Press ; New York : Distributed by Hastings House.)

This is concept art for a proposed animated version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" , by Geoff Dunbar and Oscar Grillo (Dragon Productions, London).  This production obviously never came to fruition , but it's interesting to see something pre-Rankin & Bass, pre-Bakshi era in relation to animation of Tolkien's stories (and yes, I'm aware of the Gene Deitch version).

(click to view larger)

 

This is the cover of the book these pages appear in:


You can find a scan of the book on Archive.org .

https://archive.org/details/filmtvgraphics2i0000herd