The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is just a touch over a week away from release. In a new article from Hero Complex, makeup and hair designer Peter King discusses the work that went into creating the distinctive looks for 13 dwarves, hobbits, elves and more. The full article here, segments below.

HC: Can you tell us about your process?
PK: I mean, it’s far more work than we had on “Lord of the Rings,” really, because first of all, we had these 13 dwarfs, these main characters who are on throughout the whole film. So Richard Taylor and WETA and Peter and Fran [Walsh] and everyone, it was a very collaborative thing. WETA brought a lot of conceptual work for the dwarfs, and then we whittled it down to the areas we liked for each dwarf, because we had to make sure they’re a band of people, so they all look like the same race. But within that, they had 13 different personalities, so we had to tell them apart and get to know them and understand them. So we went through the process first of all of designing the actual look, and then they were sculpted so we could see what they looked like in a three-dimensional idea. Then it was over to me to actually get all the hairwork done, and we decided on the colors of the hair and how we were going to do it. Then we designed all the prosthetics, and they were made by WETA for us, and then they came to us, and we applied them, myself and Tami Lane who was in charge of the prosthetic team. We started playing with it, really. And then we had this whole series of things we call show-and-tells, which is where we make the character up completely in makeup, hair costume, everything. That’s where the final designing happens, with myself, Peter, Fran, Philippa [Boyens] and heads of lots of departments, costume and so forth. Once we saw the whole thing in front of us, it’s then we started making final decisions about what we designed. Sometimes what we thought was going to look good maybe wasn’t working quite as well, so we had to change things.

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Hair and Makeup of The Hobbit: AEJ. There are any Hair and Makeup of The Hobbit: AEJ in here.