Designing - The Hunter Orc

I thought that I might struggle a little with creating designs for the Hunter Orc as I was finding it quite difficult to establish what it was that Charlie really wanted. On the one hand I knew that a lot of inspiration was going to be coming from Lurtz from Lord of the Rings and that slight influences had been thrown in from Azog of The Hobbit. In terms of context I knew that the Hunter Orc was an Uruk-hai and not actually an Orc, giving me an indication of the colouring and facial form, but that he was the beginning of the breed as the film would be set before the Lord of the Rings films picked up.

I decided that the easiest way to express the vast amount of ideas swimming around my head onto paper would be to use John's face as a template and alter his facial features one by one to follow the form of a more classic Uruk-hai. This technique seemed to work fairly well and I was very happy with the ideas that I had put down for the eyes, brow and cheekbones, the trouble came, however, when I got to the nose. It was very difficult to shade the nose area in in a way that made it look flat and wide in the way that I had envisaged it and ended up looking quite bulbous; not what I wanted at all. I also felt that the dreaded hair in my initial design was far too neat and would need to look more rough and matted.

I also wanted to draw out a design using the same base that incorporated all of the possible body modification elements as an extreme version to show Charlie and give him the option of picking and choosing the bits that he liked. These included facial scarification, piercings, ear stretching and metal bands added into the dreadlocks.

Charlie and John both expressed a dislike of any extreme modifications as they didn't want the Orc too appear, in their own words "too punk". They both agreed that a bone stretcher in the ear could work and also expressed an interest in having some sort of brand scar on the body, saying that they would send me a reference image at the first possible opportunity.