What has been happening in the world of Tolkien fandom

More award nominations have been announced for The Desolation of Smaug, fans have shown their love of Tolkien be creating epic works of art, and even a new edition of one of J.R.R. Tolkien's books has been scheduled for release later this year. Find out about all this and more beyond the break!

Here are eleven amazing new posters and two awesome new stills from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!

See Legolas, Tauriel, Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin, and Bard in high-pixel glory and action-packed stances. Thanks to those fine French folk at Tolkiendrim.com and Entertainment Weekly. 

Tons of new posters, stills, and more!

Instead of publishing five or more posts about these images and forcing you to give my blog four or five extra pageviews, I will collect all the most recent posters, stills, artwork, and other pictures in one place, where you can view them at your leisure. Included are five photoshoots, seven stills, seven posters, and the new artwork for the soundtrack of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. 

Here are five posters for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, adapted from the banner that was released a few weeks ago

These are international posters, and the text is in Spanish, but it is the images we are interested in. The posters feature, Bilbo, Gandalf, Bard the Bowman, Fili, Kili, Thorin Oakenshield, Tauriel, Thranduil, and Legolas. Check them out beyond the break!

Four entirely new stills from the 2014 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Calendar!

Unlike the previous calendar, which seemed to introduce all the important characters by devoting entire pages to individuals, next year's calendar has a little more depth. Now that everyone has been introduced, we can go beyond the basic smiley pose that we see so often and get some action and emotion. See for yourself in the four new images beyond the break. 

Thorin, Bilbo, and the interior of Erebor!

Here is some awesome new key artwork that apparently will be the cover art of a new puzzle game. However, all copies of this images have been removed from the merchant sites. ??? That is a question for another day. For now, you can just go beyond the break and see the full image for yourself. 

Dwarves, wargs, and orcs - drawn in amazing detail

Nick Keller recently posted concept art he did for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It is fantastic. No expense was spared in designing the costumes, makeup, scenes, and just about everything else that appeared in An Unexpected Journey. You can head over to his website to see the artwork, or simply proceed beyond the break. 

One of the many concept drawing of Radagast the Brown,

and one of the many concept drawings of Paul Tobin. One of Weta Workshop's concept artists, Paul Tobin has recently posted samples of his amazing artwork on his blog. The detail is stunning, and one could spend hours staring at the colorful portraits, pencil sketches, and diagrams of the various weapons. It is well worth a look!

(and a Ringwraith) Jerry Vanderstelt's Facebook highlight!

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold.

-The Hobbit

Another info-graphic for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey!

Find out more about the wide variety of weapons carried by Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves! If you thought the weapons were cool in the movie, here is your chance to see them up close!

A video about the larger-than-hobbits smaller-than-men people!
Focusing on Thorin Oakenshield, son of the Thrain, son the Thror, and his two nephews, Fili and Kili! Commentary by Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner, and Dean O'Gorman. 

Poster by David Chalmer

Here is the second part to A (Guessed) Preview Into The Desolation of Smaug! Once again, I will give you summaries of the chapters in The Hobbit that I think will be covered in the movie, and then discuss various picturess. I tried to divide the posts equally (so there will be four chapters covered in this one also), but this one may be shorter as there are not very many photos left. However, do not let that discourage you from reading the rest of this post!

Here is another TV promo, focusing on Thorin. We also get a glimpse Azog, and a few frames of new scenes. Enjoy!

Here is TV Spot #10! It adds a whole new twist to the plot by showing a few more scenes with Thorin Oakenshield. It seems that he especially needs aid in reclaiming the Lonely Mountain. Maybe its a matter of honor or avenging past wrongs, but it will be interesting to see the story play out in the movie. Enjoy!

Beyond the break are five new images of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), courtesy of ThorinOakenshield.net.

Here are yet a few more stills from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. This first one is of Fili, Kili, and Bilbo, and it comes from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The Movie Storybook. The second is of Fili and Thorin Oakenshield.

Comicbookmovie.com scanned a few behind the scenes photos of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from Brian Sibley's tie-in book The Official Movie Guide. They include Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, a group of goblins, Nori and Bofur, Andy Serkis in his motion-capture attire, Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield, and a group photo of all the dwarves draped in spider-webs, obviously from their entanglement in Mirkwood. I fully acknowledge that these are scans of a book that were on another website, but I will post them nonetheless, but beware, they contain spoilers.

There are actually seventeen new posters for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. For some odd reason, the web browser was only showing fourteen posters, so I only posted fourteen. This post now will show the right amount, but they will still be beyond the break, on account of their size and number.

The fourth The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Lego set was revealed just today. It is a recreation of last part of the first Hobbit movie. (Ok, this was just a major spoiler. If you didn't want to know that, then just forget it.) #79002 is called Attack of the Wargs, and includes Thorin Oakenshield (the first minifigure of him, by the way), Bifur, and Yazneg (also a first).

Just yesterday Empire Magazine's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey issue hit the shelves. The edition comes in five different 3D lenticular covers, featuring Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Gollum (Andy Serkis), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), and Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), which you can see below. Along with this came an approximation of the running length of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which is about two hours and forty minutes, surprisingly the shortest Tolkien film yet.