Azog - The pale orc of 'The Hobbit'

During one of the life casting sessions Charlie had mentioned his interest in a character from 'The Hobbit' that he described as 'the pale orc'. He made a comment that this was one of his influences when he pictured John as the character of The Hunter Orc, and therefore I felt that it required some further investigation.

The character of Azog is mentioned briefly in 'The Hobbit' by Gandalf;

"Your grandfather Thrór was killed, you remember, in the Mines of Moria by Azog the Goblin."

Azog is described as a Goblin as there was never any mention of Orcs in 'The Hobbit', however, research has indicated that they are essentially the same thing. There appears to be a lot of controversy surrounding Peter Jackson's portraying of the character of Azog in 'The Hobbit' and the ways in which it deviates from the original text. The film depicts Azog as the Orc chieftain of Moria, known as 'The Defiler' or 'The Pale Orc' and is described as leading a band of 'Hunter Orcs' which may be the inspiration for Charlie's character. Unlike in 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, Azog and his band do not speak in English, but rather in the dark Orcish language. This may indicate that he is of an older generation of Orc that the ones seen in the trilogy, or that he is more wild and has not been exposed to the language of men. 

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In appearance, Azog is similar to an Orc in some ways, and very different in others. Although his facial features hold a lot of similarities to the classic Orcs that we are shown in 'The Lord of the Rings' he is very large; much larger than an Uruk-hai and has bone white skin and piercing blue eyes in contrast to the dark, muddy tones of the more traditional Orcs. 

The character of Azog was one of the last to receive design approval during the creation of 'The Hobbit' as he was originally cast as an actor in prosthetic make-up, much like the process used to create Lurtz for 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. However, as Peter Jackson had requested that the character stand out and was intended to be over 7 foot tall, the decision was made to create him entirely using CGI. They cast Manu Bennett for his muscular build and range of key facial expressions and used him for the performance capture necessary to base Azog's movement upon, which was refined using a muscle simulation system. The creators of Azog also relied heavily on a complex facial system that was created for the making of 'Avatar' and has been refined with each CGI based film ever since. This created a surprisingly usable range of facial movements from the very early stages, which usually would take months to refine, meaning that Azog began appearing on screen almost fully formed. 

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Following my research in Azog I was slightly concerned with how Charlie wanted the overall look of the Hunter Orc to be as previously I had been basing the character more around Lurtz in my head. Azog, however, was much paler, larger and without hair in stark contrast to Lurtz so it was difficult to know which area to focus on. After speaking with Charlie, however, he assured me that the reference to Azog was more as a focus on size than appearance as he had requested that John bulk up quite significantly in the months leading up to filming. He agreed that remaining with the darker skin tones of the more traditional Orcs and Uruk-hai was the right choice as he didn't want to the character to appear to be too much of a copy of Azog.