Case Study on World Building: Tolkien

Tolkien's story world has depth and detail that is arguably unparalleled by any other fantasy series; to the extent that in 1997, "The Lord of the Ring's" was chosen as "the greatest book of the century by British Readers".(Pu, 2012) Because there is no better example of world building than Tolkien's Middle-earth, it's important to analyse why Middle Earth proved so successful if the narrative technique that Tolkien applied in making a successful fantasy world, is to be re-applied to world building in Concept Design. Catherine Butler notes that "Tolkien makes repeated use of English place names in his work, with a substantial number deriving from the countryside near Birmingham (where he grew up) and Oxford (where he lived as an adult)".(Butler, 2014) The grounding of Tolkien's fantasy in reality, is arguably the reason why Middle Earth is such a believable world. Tolkien himself mentions in his essay "On Fairy Stories" that imagination is often regarded more highly than image making, and so there is an attempt made to restrict aspects of reality within fantasy.(Tolkien, 1983) However, it is a sense of the mundane in Tolkien's work that gives Middle Earth such engaging realism. In "The Lord of the Rings" he writes:

"The trees do not like strangers. They watch you. They are usually content merely to watch you, as long as daylight lasts".

His personification of the trees alone creates an uncanny atmosphere, however, once the reader becomes aware that the real-world Moseley Bog was used as inspiration for the scene(Middleton, 2007) the imagery becomes that much more powerful. The readers ability to visit the bog, or an area similar, and experience the atmosphere first hand only makes Tolkien's "Middle Earth" more immersive.

While Tolkien believed that a sense of the mundane could aid world-building, he also believed that drama was naturally hostile to Fantasy.(Tolkien, 1983) In the modern day, Tolkien's definition of drama, as something that is visibly and audibly acted, could easily be applied to films and games within the entertainment industry. His opinion was that, in drama, the viewer was "likely to prefer characters, even the basest and dullest, to things. Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play." (Tolkien, 1983) This is a valuable insight into the design of media, and it highlights the need for a heightened awareness when world-building. Modern technology allows designers to create immersive environments like never before, so a strong sense of environment design could help develop a unique world that isn't hostile to audience engagement with the landscape.

To utilize the technique of incorporating everyday surroundings into fantastical environments, I went out and took some images of my normal everyday surroundings. I labeled the images with their relevant features that could be used in a fantasy world. For example, religious buildings could be incorporated in an invented narrative in a different/invented form.