I was so excited to slosh out into the cold, dreary, wet, windy, disgusting night to go see Alan Lee speak at the Friends Select School tonight. I got there early in hopes that I could get him to sign my Fellowship of the Rings DVD set and I got there just as the crowd was gathering. He was out in front of the auditorium sitting by a stack of books and I walked up to him with the DVD set and asked if he'd sign it. He said of course and fumbled around looking for something to sign it with [he only had a pen]. I came prepared and whipped out a nice silver Sharpie [it's what I use when I sign prints of my photos] and he signed it "To Albert, Best wishes, Alan Lee" SWEET!
I settled into the front row with my new ginormous 80-200 f/2.8 zoom. One of the organizers told me that he likes to face a certain way while speaking and doing his slideshow presentation and ushered me to the center of the front row where I plopped myself and my bag o' goodies. I mounted my flash and waited for Alan to start. I took a few shots of him before he started to speak and more during the Q&A session, none during the presentation, that would've been mucho rude.
He said that he had never touched a computer until working on the Lord of the Rings films. And not until three years into the production of it at that. I believe it was seven years of work altogether [yes, I've watched all of the extended DVD sets and the extra footage DVDs]. But once he started with the computer, he worked solely in Photoshop and loved it. He was saying how hand made drawings were great when talking to other artists, but when it came to the computer animators and CGI designers, he felt that PS was a much better communicative tool.
He mentioned that he was here last December giving a similar talk and that the presentation this time would be of completely different images. I didn't go to, nor did I know about, him being here last year, but I was psyched as I knew this would all be new stuff to me. He's just as soft-spoken as he is on the DVD extra footage when he discusses the set design and concept to film segments. Quite peaceful. At one point during the presentation, he remarked that "It was just like being a kid again" in regards to working on the films. He made 2000+ drawings plus tons of digital work throughout the course of the filming and production of the films.
He cited artists like Da Vinci and Raphael among his influences and a slew of illustrators I've never heard of before, but some of the people in the audience were obviously illustrators as they were nodding in agreement and some even commenting on how they were familiar with the artists' work.
I had a blast looking at his images and listening to him narrate the processes that went into the making of the films. I'm no über dork about it, but I'm pretty into LOTR so it was quite a treat for me. And to get him to sign my DVD set was icing on the cake.
I have six photos up in a flickr set, four more in addition to these two. Just a few more shots of Alan.
Oooh, I forgot to add that Alan took a photo of the crowd at the end to post on his book tour blog. So not only did I get to hear Alan speak, see never before seen footage, meet, shake hands with and get him to autograph a copy of my DVD, but I'll be immortalized on his tour blog. There were, however, nobody dressed up in a Middle Earthean outfit.
The locations and dates of the rest of his two-week long tour.
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