Why Richard uses conceptual artists, not illustrators

Lucy:
And remember the thing was that you were looking at making something from words into something real and why you chose to have certain features.

Student:
OK. Well, we created sort of a spider-like, um, drawing. We thought that the idea of the creature being so evil that it was part of the darkness itself, like you could never see the outline of the actual creature.

Student:
That's why it's all smudgy and ridiculous looking. That's its head there and then that's part of its back where you can see sort of welts on its back, from like past battles or whatever, but um, really like the main idea of it is that it is so evil and such a core part of the cave that it's in, that it does fade into the background.

Richard:
Yeah, that's a wonderful idea.

We don't hire illustrators, ah, which sounds unusual. People think we must hire illustrators to do our designs. I insist that they're conceptual artists. We're actually after good ideas before we're after good drawings because at the end of the day if you don't have a good idea it doesn't matter how beautiful the drawing is.

That's a great creature design.

If you look at the Balrog in the first film, Tolkein wrote that it was a creature of shadow and darkness, that he was darker than the deepest shadow, that his evil was so extreme that even his wings were made up of a smoky shadow. So the feeling of a creature that almost has a presence only by his lack of presence, by the fact that he cuts a hole in the dark, cuts a hole in the night is a really neat idea.

The Balrog had welts where his skin was cracking as if the lava, you know when lava dries and then breaks you can see the magma coming up from underneath, the idea with the Balrog was that as he moved his muscles and his skin, the skin would welt and crack, similar to your drawing there.