Fantasy artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt ride the J.R.R. Tolkien wave to West Windsor Dec. 7.
By: Susan Van Dongen
Saruman, Smaug and Shelob. Theoden, Eowyn and Tom Bombadil. Gollum, Galadriel and, of course, Gandalf.
To a certain generation, these names are as familiar as Harry Potter.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy Lord of the Rings is back, with a live-action feature film coming in December and the re-release of the books themselves. The story about a hobbit, a little creature with hairy feet who saved his land from destruction, captivated readers in the ’60s and ’70s. One anonymous fan even scribbled "Frodo Lives!" on a New York City subway platform.
Many have imagined the hobbits, elves, orcs, ents, dwarves and wizards, but it took two self-taught commercial artists from Detroit to fully realize the characters visually Tim and Greg Hildebrandt.
From 1976 to 1978 they illustrated calendars based on Tolkien’s fantasy classic. The last one still holds the record as the largest selling calendar ever, with more than a million copies sold.
Riding the whirlwind of fantasy and magic swirled up by Harry Potter, the new book, Greg and Tim Hildebrandt: The Tolkien Years (Watson-Guptill), combines an expanded biography of the Hildebrandts with an anthology of their Tolkien illustrations. The Brothers Hildebrandt will be at Barnes & Noble in West Windsor Dec. 6 to sign the book, written by Greg’s son, Gregory Hildebrandt Jr., who posed as the hobbit Bilbo for the 1976 calendar.
Many people may remember those Hildebrandt calendars fondly, perhaps hanging in their childhood and teen-age rooms, college dormitories, lofts or studies. There was something enchanting about the use of light in the landscapes, the incredibly detailed costumes and architecture and the thoughtful faces of the characters that fascinated Tolkien aficionados. "People are still saying ‘What you did defined the look of the "Lord of the Rings" for me,’ " says Greg Hildebrandt, 62 and identical twin to Tim.
The brothers completely immersed themselves in the story before they began to paint.
"I first read ‘The Hobbit’ in 1963 and I was immediately hooked," Tim says. "Each time we did a calendar, I read the whole thing all over again just to refresh myself with the characters."
Ironically, their big break came in 1975, when Tim got a Tolkien calendar for Christmas by an artist named Tim Kirk. There was an advertisement on the back inviting Tolkien fans to submit artwork to Ballantine Books. Little did the publishers know that two master illustrators would pounce on this opportunity.
When art director Ian Summers saw the quality and body of work the brothers had produced, he offered them an on-the-spot contract for three calendars.
Judy-Lynne and Lester del Ray, Ballantine’s science fiction and fantasy editors, dubbed them "The Brothers Hildebrandt," conjuring up an image of mystical little fellows tucked away in the forest in a treetop workshop. The reality couldn’t be farther from the invention, though.
"We’re two guys from Detroit who moved to New Jersey," says Greg with a gravelly laugh.
The contract challenged the brothers to create on deadline, a task they had performed many times before in their commercial and documentary film, illustration and animation work for Jam Handy Films in Detroit and for Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in New York.
The calendars would be a particularly daunting task, requiring 14 paintings each year. With their usual zest and imagination, the brothers recruited their friends and family to pose for the paintings, dressed their models in hand-crafted costumes and props, and filled the workshop with a flurry of activity a combination of an ongoing Halloween party and intensified seminar in commercial art.
Characteristically, the brothers pushed and supported each other.
"That’s what makes it possible," Greg says. "We’ve always pushed each other. When we were kids we’d go to the movies to see ‘Pinocchio’ or something, and we’d come home and want to draw it. When we couldn’t make it work, one of us would throw his pencils at the wall and say, ‘I’m never going to draw anymore’ and the other one would throw his pencils and say, ‘If you’re not gonna draw, then neither am I.’"
The unusual brothers had an equally unusual set of parents. Their father "borrowed" duct tape, paper and pencils for them from the supply room at General Motors, where he worked, and their mother read science fiction and adventure novels and let them stay knee deep in paper.
"Our parents weren’t artists, but they were totally behind us," Tim says. "Detroit was a blue-collar town and people, especially back then, didn’t think art was a very practical career choice. But our parents constantly encouraged us."
The brothers agree there was something magical about growing up in the ’40s and ’50s, before action figures, video games and 24-hour television.
"I’m not one to live in the past, but there was something about being a kid and making something yourself," Greg says. "For example, we would go to science-fiction movies and come home and make the monsters and dinosaurs out of cardboard. And we were totally hung up on puppets. We made the whole ‘Kukla, Fran and Ollie’ crew."
The twins devoured the great comic books and strips of the era, especially Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates, Batman and Superman. The attention to detail in works by such illustrators as Milton Caniff impressed the youngsters. Later, they would be greatly influenced by American artists Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth.
"We were influenced by Wyeth to start painting large and also to start loosening up," Tim says. "If you’ve been to the Brandywine Museum (in Chadd’s Ford, Pa.), you can see (Wyeth’s) layers of paint, almost an inch thick, like he’s fighting the canvas. It’s very hard to do, to make these huge, sweeping, emotional paintings. We like the N.C. Wyeth approach to live each of the characters."
In 1979, at the height of their fame as illustrators, the brothers decided to take their talents in another direction and pitched the idea for a live-action film, based on their best-selling fantasy novel Urshurak. Esteemed producer Joseph Levine applauded the concept, but told them it would take a budget of about $145 million to bring it to the screen.
"Remember, this was before (Spielberg’s) Industrial Light and Magic, before computer graphics," Tim says. "It was good to get away from the calendars, though. We would have just become known as ‘Tolkien artists.’ "
They haven’t strayed too far from fantasy, however, and are actively involved in creating images for computer games like "Magic: The Gathering," as well as trading cards for "Wizards of the Coast."
"We’ve been doing a lot of painting for both, including hundreds of pictures of Harry Potter (trading cards)," says Greg, who admits that the wizard Gandalf was his favorite Tolkien character to draw.
New Line Cinema is scheduled to release the much-anticipated first of three Tolkien-based films, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on Dec. 19, but the brothers are low key about it, and don’t seem to mind that they weren’t consulted.
"The film producers wanted a fresh start," Tim says.
"We’ve got our own fans from all over the world," Greg says. "People still tell us it was our Tolkien paintings that brought the characters to life for them."
The Brothers Hildebrandt will sign Greg and Tim Hildebrandt: The Tolkien Years, with text by Gregory Hildebrandt Jr., at Barnes & Noble, MarketFair, 3535 Route 1, West Windsor, Dec. 6, 7 p.m. For information, call (609) 716-1570. The Hildebrandts on the Web: www.spiderwebart.com