My third stop this week was couple hours drive south to New Jersey where I sat down with Toy Vault artist Daniel Horne. Daniel invited me to his home and art studio to talk LOTR toys, and what he's been up to. This post will just be a quick summary of my time with the artist. I"ll go into more detail about my experience later. I was so excited to meet the guy that I forgot to get a picture with him (I know I'm an idiot)...
Ok, so what are these toys, and who is Toy Vault? Middle Earth Toys or Toy Vault was a company that made action figures for Lord of the rings prior to Peter Jackson movies (1998-2000). These were solely based on the books, and released over the course of a few years. Daniel and the Middle Earth Toys team dove deep into the book and what we received was the result of their love of Tolkien, and their creative interpretations.
I've shown the 2UP WAX prototype of Gollum in a previous post. Now, I reveal the ORIGINAL pencil and ink CONCEPT art for the Gandalf figure. These are early sketches that not only show detailed features that they wanted Gandalf to have, but also the proposed articulation. This can be seen in the larger see-through sketch paper above. His notes are scattered about the pages, painting a picture of his vision for the figure.
Ok, back to the the artist. Daniel and I found out that we have a lot in common. Sitting in a diner just across the water from Philly, we had a coffee and a bite to eat as we got to know each other. Both of us are Pennsylvania boys and spent a lot of time in the same areas. So, we had plenty of small talk to get out of the way. We also both share a bond in that we immersed ourselves in Tolkien. Hours went by as he told me how these toys were actually his first sculpting job, way back in 1996! Daniel was asked to not only be the sculptor, but have full creative freedom. He drew the concept art, sculpted and chose the color schemes for most of the figures. His work was used for near everything except for the background card art , which was created by the great JOHN HOWE! What a team!
I'll go into more detail about the unreleased figures and some really fun stories about his time working on them, at a later date. I will share that the Gimli figure prototype was sculpted LIVE at SDCC! Daniel said Toy Vault wanted to show the process and vision, while creating a buzz. It worked! Daniel is best known for his work on D&D, his magazine and book cover art (over 400 published covers). He's done tons of horror painting, and even life-size busts.
Please check out Daniel Horne on Facebook and via his website danielhornestudios.com
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