Happy Birthday, Daniel!

What kind of fan site would this be if I missed the birthday of the beloved, the preciousss

Daniel Falconer!



Happy Birthday, Daniel!

Busy, busy, busy

Inspired by Daniel's commitment to his art and craft, I have taken a more serious approach to my writing and photography. I've got a part-time job now and I'm writing more. I'm limited in my free time now, and as a result, something's got to give. It was a pleasure to create this site about Daniel Falconer, I hope you all embrace his enthusiasm and find ways to channel his creative spirit into your own lives!

Peace & happiness!

-Carolyn

Another Report from Fellowship Festival

Just got another report from the Fellowship Festival...thanks to Kristin for her report and pictures!


Hi, Carolyn!

I went to the Fellowship Festival in London this August and one of the fondest memories I bring home with me is meeting Daniel Falconer. I had admired his work before the Festival, but knew very little of him. Like anyone who have met him, I have to say he is incredibly sweet, down-to-earth and genuinely interested in what you have to say. And so talented! I could listen to his panels all day. I very much enjoyed the costume panels he did together with Julia McGee (jedielfqueen.com), and was especially happy to hear him talk about the Haradrim and Easterlings, as I think those costumes are absolutely amazing.

I also attended his panel where he talked about designing Treebeard, very interesting to see the different sketches that led up to the Treebeard we see in the films. We also got to see some of the upcoming WETA collectibles that they've been working on for Narnia and King Kong.
I very much hope I will have the pleasure of meeting Daniel again, he is such an interesting person to both talk with and listen to.

-Kristin

Fellowship Festival fan report

Thomas in Denmark writes:


Hello Carolyn.

I was lucky enough to attend the Fellowship Festival this weekend and meeting Daniel Falconer and listening in on his panels was one of thehighlights of my life thus far. He is so talented, so nice, so funny andsodown to earth! And being a self-proclaimed geek himself (he went to greatlengths to explain how he just sees "geek" as another word for"enthusiast") . I'm sure he enjoyed the whole weekend just as much as the rest of us.

Sadly his panels didn't exactly have the luck of the draw, and every single time he had to battle for attention with other very interesting activities like the Radio Play or Richard Taylors Orc mak-up sessions. But I did get to sit through the start of the elven armor panel and the entire "Secrets ofMiddle-earth" panel. Especially the latter really appealed to the nit-picker in me.

For an hour this amazing artist talked about how he and several other peopleat Weta (who were already huge LOTR fans before the project) did everythingthey could to make the movies as dense and complete as possible in relationto the lore in the books.Of course I'd already heard about the etchings on the inside of BernardHills breast plate and the frescos in the background in Rivendell that were there even though there were no chance of them showing up on screen. But as it turned out there are just layers and layers of this stuff all through the trilogy and in places you would never imagine! Carvings on shields telling Bayeux tapestry-like stories from the Silmarillion and similar attentions todetail never before seen on a movie production - all taking hours and hours to create only to be shown only briefly in the final cut or not at all.

It was all deeply fascinating and Daniel Falconer mixed fun and informationin a unique blend all through the panel, finishing off with a slide show with several of the crew cameos and proving that everyone in New Zealandreally DID work on LOTR, when he pointed to his wife's cousin in the background of the coronation scene in "Return of the King". Of course I got he autograph (quite a few more than I could have hoped for, actually) and a chance to talk to him one on one later, and he was still just this amazingly cool guy doing what he loved and enjoying to the fullest meeting people, who appreciated his work! What an amazing man!

Greetings,
Thomas in Denmark

Thomas & Daniel...long lost twins?? ;-)

Thanks for the report Thomas!

Filtering the Fellowship Festival reports

Still going through the Festival reports, so I hope to have some Daniel-related things to post soon. Until then, I'll share a poem I came across by Thomas Robins who played Deagol in the Lord of the Rings. A fan asked him for a copy to share with LoTR fans on messageboards she frequented and he shared an autographed copy!

From the www.theonering.net homepage:

Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Thomas Robins Fan Poem - Xoanon @ 21:52 PSTBonnie writes:

At The Fellowship Feast on Sunday evening during this past weekend's Fellowship Festival 2005 in Wembley, UK, Thomas Robins recited the following poem he wrote for the fans. My friends, "Indis and Elentari", and I asked if we could have a copy of it to post at the Decipher LOTR fan club and The LOTR Fan Messageboards. The next day we were thrilled to receive autographed copies of the poem that Mr. Robins had written out from his notes for us. I thought you might like to post it here as well so more people could read it.

MY WEEKEND OF MADNESS
by Thomas Robins
Let me tell you a story, I swear that is true
of my weekend of madness, and my face turning blue
no, not from the wine or the scotch or the beer
or from bad singing kiwis on the stage right up here
no, the face turning blue was from a film I was in.
I was dragged under water with a ridiculous grin
I came over here thanks to my role of young Deagol
and my tragic death by that bastard called Smeagol.
I was flown on a plane to the bright lights of London
To party with Rings Fans, they're like crazy or something!
And their costumes I tell you they will just blow your mind
Such a great bunch of people you'll just never find
Anywhere on earth, except at this lovely show,
That's the Fellowship Festival, in case you don't know.
On Tuesday I'll be off, back to my home and to sleep
Back to my little hobbits and where our dollar is cheap!
So on behalf of your guests, I think I can say
That we all had such a wonderful magnificent stay
Because we all know that without you mad lot
We'd never have it as good as we've got.
So thanks for the weekend, we all had such fun
Ring fans are crazy, and we love you all, each one!

Wood Spirit

I visited out local County Fair and purchased a wood carving from a local artisan. This is carver Joseph Gleeson's "wood spirit" carving in basswood. I think it will look oddly familiar to Treebeard fans.


























p.s. Sorry for the lack of posts lately...family issues here are keeping me busy!

Best of Both Worlds

Daniel is scheduled to appear at the "Best of Both Worlds" con in Canberra, Australia, August 4-7th. For more info, jump over to their site. Elves, fiends and Weta? What more could you want?!

An article from the Sideshow site by Daniel

Came across this article written by Daniel about sculptor Gary Hunt's "King of the Dead" statue. He tells Hunt's tale from college to working in London, to his leap of faith trip to New Zealand and his eventual work at Three Foot Six, Ltd and then Weta Workshop. It seems that Gary was another LoTR fan and was eager to work on the project.

Daniel's bio is also listed:

"About the Writer: A trained illustrator, Daniel Falconer is a Conceptual Designer at Weta Workshop, one of a team of five full time design specialists based in the facility. Daniel has been with Weta since late 1996. Over that time he has been involved in design work for a variety of different projects including creatures for television shows like William Tell, Hercules, Xena and Young Hercules, films including Kong and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and most notably, designing creatures, armor, weaponry, props and costuming for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. A long time fan of J.R.R. Tolkien's writing, the opportunity to be so intimately involved in bringing Middle-earth to the screen was the fulfillment of a childhood dream for Daniel and helping visualize new worlds at Weta continues to be his 'dream-job'. "


Not so interesting sidenote: Turns out that Gary Hunt went to college in my Grandmother's hometown of Bournemouth, England! I visited there when I lived in London in '91-'92. A lovely seaside town with beautiful gardens, kind of like our coastal NJ shore towns, but without the neon. ;-)

Sensational Sand

Again, not a Daniel-related post, but interesting nonetheless.

SandSation is scheduled for this weekend in Berlin, Germany. Giant, and I mean GIANT, sand sculptures will be crafted right in Berlin. I saw photos from this event last year and they absolutely blew me away. I am, as I noted previously in this blog, 100% inept in the art deparment. My sand castles come from pre-formed, castle shaped, $1-store sand buckets. There's not a bucket in site with these masterpieces. If you can't go, check out the site for photos. Very cool stuff.

From their site:

"The best artists from all around the world will be allowing themselves to be inspired to create new marvels by the theme Modern Fairy-Tales. The festival area will be increased once again by a good 500 square metres between Lehrter railway station and the Federal Chancellery for SANDSATION 2005. The charming, wildly romantic landscape-park at Lehrter Straße Central Station, which is at the heart of the new centre of Berlin directly next to the Federal Chancellery, thus offering even more space to our artists from more than 10 countries for their gigantic, sandy works of art. Ten sand wizards who have received the highest international acclaim will be competing with individual sculptures within the framework of the 3rd German Sand Sculpture Prize in a friendly competition. Furthermore, the artists will create a huge Great Sculpture Complex of up to 12 metres in height."

ORC photos

Guess I never shared the photos I took at ORC on this blog...here's a few of Daniel. The rest can be seen here:

(click to enlarge)

The Swords of the LoTR

Weta Workshop's new site is totally cool...did I mention that already? Check out the page on Weapons. Gorgeous close-ups of the weaponry used in LoTR. I want Sting! What a beautifully crafted piece that is!




Daniel wasn't interviewed in this article (although it is mentioned that he was heavily involved with sword design), but I still find the info. incredibly interesting. I saw some of the LoTR swords at the LoTR Museum exhibit in Boston, MA last fall. They are amazing in their detail and workmanship. I got to hold one of the real swords, avec white protective gloves, and it was really heavy, and long, as I recall. No sword wielding was allowed (understandable, but still a bummer) but it was fun to hang onto it for a few moments. I don't know how Viggo worked with the real swords for so many hours during takes. He must've be packin' some huge sword-wielding guns under all that Ranger garb.
;-)

I like how they talk about the swords as described by Tolkien...once again, a great attention paid to the books, which I appreciate. And where it wasn't described specifically, they filled in the blanks with their great imaginations...

B: How much did you rely on the descriptions in the books? Tolkien was rather vague, but there are several hints on the design and performance of the swords.

P: The swords are all based on Tolkien's descriptions, but these are usually so brief, and sometimes so vague when looked at critically (for example, "great-hilted") that it left the designs very open. It was more about fitting the designs to the characters, and making each one distinctive and recognisable, but this is really a question that John can answer better than me.

J: Very little, I think the other motto being : "Well, it doesn't say it WASN'T like that in the books..."

***
B: How come the swords wielded by Arwen, Elrond and the other Elves are curved?

J: Why not? It fits well with their style of combat, and it's very Art Nouveau. Did Professor Tolkien say they are all straight? Damn, I must have missed that bit!

***

The entire article can be read at:

The Men Behind the Swords in “The Lord of the Rings”
An interview with Peter Lyon and John Howe
By Björn Hellqvist


Peter Lyon at work

Indy GenCon

All the gang's here from the swrpgnetwork.com! *waves hi* Hisham's partner in crime, Caleb ,writes that Daniel is scheduled to attend the Indy GenCon in August. Thanks, Caleb! = )

From their site:

"The Gen Con Art Show is the one of the industry's premiere showcase for fantasy, gaming and sci-fi art...Currently these artists had signed up for the Art Show - visit them in the Art Show and then check out their websites!"

Daniel, why doest thou not have a website listed? Get thee to a web-master-y. ;-)

More info on GenCon here.

From WetaWorkshop's site

Daniel's profile from the WetaWorkshop's very cool new site.

World Photo Day

Not anything to do with Daniel Falconer, but I thought I'd share a cool project that I participated in today.

It's called "World Photo Day" and here's the deal:

project date: june 01, 2005
subject: people, everyday life
time frame: just 24 hours
objective: to explore humanity through the art of photography
participation: open to all photographers
my hope is: that we all gain a greater, more positive insight into the circumstances that dictate our daily livesthe difficulties, the triumphs, the beauty, the pain, the good and the bad, all of it in just one 24-hour period.

My photo is listed under "carolynVB" and it's lame compared to a lot of the other photos on that site, but that's not the point, I guess. The shot I took of the people enjoying the day at the river could be taken anywhere...and was (with much better photographic results...lol) in Portugal, in upstate NY...a few other places. We're the same, is the point. We love our kids, we go to work, we suffer, we love beauty, we laugh. I'm here, you're there, but that's just about the only difference...geography.

Had fun getting out there capturing today. Here's a slideshow of today round here...

Go. Click their site. Enjoy seeing the World Today.

Ultimate Adversaries

From an SWRPGNetwork banner ad. Yes, ok, I read banner ads.
So what?!!!



Ultimate Adversaries

"Looking for a new villain or creature to throw at a party of heroes? Hunting for particular stats for a droid, creature, or character? The Ultimate Adversaries sourcebook is a great source for new challenges and combatants. Additionally, this book will feature the Star Wars RPG sourcebook debut of art by SWRPGNetwork Staff Artist Daniel "Reverend Strone" Falconer, adding just one more reason to pick this book up."

Daniel's Star Wars art

Thanks to Khairul Hisham for giving me this new link to Daniel's SWAG (Star Wars Artists Guild) art listings. His art for the Star Wars roleplaying game is listed here. Thanks, again, KH! ;-)

Just one more report from WellingMoot

Choice of Luthien's is here.

More from the WellingMoot

Thanks to Kimi for sharing her photos!

(click to enlarge)

Daniel and friend with Flat Frodo!

Estelwyn's report and pics are here and here.

Choice of Luthien's photos are here.