Beautiful!

Still don't see the point of the upper flipper.

JJP's gotta keep up with Stern's epic announcements

June 12, 2014 will go down as "Epic Thursday"

EDIT TO ADD: Artwork? Looks more like matte paintings with photographs superimposed.

JJP Legacy

I don;t like all the faces everywhere, looks kind of tacky from this one picture. Other parts look pretty cool though.

Is that the Matterhorn at Disneyland smack dab in the middle?

Well that's pretty disappointing. About what I expected when I saw the cabinet art though I suppose. Will look right at home next to LOTR I guess, two photoshopped up games, but the print quality will probably look better than Stern's at least.

The dwarves are the most disappointing part. Their floating heads look ridiculously bad, and the typography is cluttered and near illegible. The scale of the dragon is awkward too, I suppose if there's already a Smaug toy that it's not that important. See how double dragons look.

So much for Jack bringing back hand drawn art.

The need (want) factor just red-lined here. Can't wait until they reveal the Smaug toy.

hobbit2.jpg

Meh

Yeah I agree on all these points. Might look better when all the pieces are on but it doesn't excite me much.

I agree with this. I personally think it looks great except for those heads. Not a deal breaker for me though. Bring on Smaug!

Ugh, the more I look at this the more I don't like it.

So many awkward combinations of styles and scales and perspectives, it's really just not well executed I'm sorry to say. I'm sure the final product will look cool, and I'm still very curious to see it all, but this is just not a particularly well done playfield.

Luckily the worst part of it will be hopefully pretty hidden by the pops.

You mean the barrel ride pic?

You gotta admit, though... if they were trying to make this pin feel like a logical sibling to LOTR... they did it. The photoshopped characters on top of matte paintings looks like it was done by the same person as who did LOTR--very similar "style".

Yeah that's why it's a letdown. Not the best art on LOTR so no reason to chase that.

I diagree... I like it. Premier proved hand-drawn art can look like crap, so I'm not opposed to something different, as long as it looks good. I like the scenes this playfield shows, and the un-clutter in the middle is nice for tracking ball movement more easily.

No! It's the Paramount logo.

wow there are some just terrible things going on here from a design standpoint.. 1 horrible example is that they seriously just cut and past those 4 wood frames without making any changes that would have taken 2 seconds.. It shows they have someone who absolutely should not be making the art on the job. Sad.

nothing here was professionally done.

I guess my point is this isn't something different, it's the same old PR collage, and it doesn't look good. IMHO of course, everyone is going to have a different feeling about it, and that's fine!

A few of the above comments are proof that you simply can't please them all. For me, this is the best-looking playfield artwork I've seen since the mid-'90s. Love it! I also love the variety of the 4 bash toys (spider, orc, goblin, and warg). I was expecting all orc, or all goblin. I can't wait to see how they look, and how Smaug looks.

no, its garbage. All they had to do was take the cost of 2 or 3 or the games and pay an artist to actually create something special.. instead its a POS collage of crap. This is not how you raise the pinball bar.

You see the part up on the left and right sides where is shows the hand drawn map? That would have been cool if all the artwork on the playfield had been done in that style.

Upper left flipper is deleted.

With over 20 heads it feels like they are just trying to fill space.

I had the same feeling at first. It has grown on me. I think JP did a great job.

Yeah, I see that - I didn't say "flippers" plural. What is there on the layout that you can't hit from the lower flippers?

The left upper flipper is gone the right is sill there.

What pinball playfield ISN'T a collage of some sort??

It's just too...too....'obvious.'

"OK, we're going to fit every character in their own little space and each one will have there own little target. Then the ones that don't have targets, we'll put their face over the inlanes."

It's kind of budget.

Well there's collage that can look great, then there's collage you make in high school killing an hour of art class.

It is easy to sit back and criticize when you are not involved in the project. With a company like Warner Brothers, ALL artwork must be approved by them. They are not going to approve artwork that they did not supply.

I like the pictures, i think it will look better once the rest of the parts are in place and a full size playfield is in the machine in my house. If you are looking at this on your phone, tablet, computer screen everything is going to look small. I have a 30" monitor and can read things, but it is still on a screen. I will agree that things are a little cluttered, but it is what it is.

if you don't like it, don't buy it.

Photoshop collage VS hand drawn/painted cohesive design (like Metallica, for example)

These days all movie-based pins contain Photoshopped images from the movie. I doubt we'll ever see all hand-drawn art again on a movie-based pin. With that said, I'm really digging what they did with it. I especially like the color scheme, and the center area with the mountain and Smaug.

Looks like we're getting barrels on the pop caps.

WE get it, doesn't mean we can't talk discuss it...on a web forum.

I'm curious as to why they call it "artwork" though. Photography superimposed on matte paintings isn't really artwork.

It should not be a collage.. that being said if your going to take the easy route.. at least hire someone with a tiny bit of artistic knowledge to avoid breaking every rule of composition there is.

I know to many this is fine, and hopefully the gameplay is great. but the whole package would be so much better if the art was done tastefully.

Point being, even with the assets they were given this could have been pulled off way better.

Not sure what to think about this. some areas look ok but the dragon is way to little in comparison to the rest of the artwork, suprised the dragon is depicted anyway as there is also the smaug ""toy"

So much negativity. I like it, as someone said, complements the LOTR playfield well. I wonder if they needed the pics of the dwarfs and their names, or could have just got away with one or the other? On LOTR, just names. Once the playfield is populated, I'm sure it'll look even better.

If the game rules have those characters associated with the targets, and those creatures associated with the inlanes and pop-up assemblies, what is an artist to do? Remember, the game will be telling the player to shoot for certain things... it's kinda important to have the names next to the shots.

Remember, this is a pinball playfield, not a painting for the wall.

Metallica is nice, but also looks quite the mess from a distance. Hobbit is the opposite... featuring Smaug front and center, without a lot of fluff and frills around it. I like both styles.

You have to be true to the licence. Pats game will be different.

I actually think the imagery and art looks pretty cool. I am guessing it will look less sterile and more real when put to wood?

I hear what you're saying, I do, I just find it a little ham fisted IMO. You can use call outs, and the huge LCD to tell you information on things instead of having pictures everywhere.
I don't know if a bank of 3 dwarves rally helps me understand that's how I start "Man" and "Elf modes."

EDIT: By Obvious I think I mean, "literal." There isn't a picture of geoff bridges face over the Zen roll over, there doesn't need to be.

First reactions:

I'm a huge JJP fan but even I'm a little bummed right now looking at the artwork. I thought that the lower playfield artwork would contain more of the Shire and get "darker" (location wise) as you moved up the playfield or be split down the middle with good and evil like WOZ. Having the mountain artwork near the top of the playfield would have have been a better fit with Smaug in my opinion. The playfield artwork for WOZ just pops and is one of the best in pinball in my opinion but this leaves a lot to be desired after my first look.

The first Hobbit film can at times give off a relaxing vibe (idk how else to say it haha, think Fellowship of the Ring) with scenes of the Shire yet little of that is represented here. Charm is the word I'm looking for when I think about it.

Second look reactions:

The artwork is growing on me a bit and does look cool after I've looked at it for a while. I can see why some the design choices were made and the look fits well with the theme. To be fair we still need to see the game with all of its toys / features to judge it properly. WOZ's playfield artwork doesn't look nearly as impressive without its toys shown. Once I start thinking of TH with its character pop up toys, stainless steel ramps and metal rails I think the game is going to look amazing.

To someone like me (and most others here) who are not artists, can you be more specific? Despite your contemptuous assertion that it was not professionally done (I guess the WOZ video assets are not professional either? please advise), I happen to like it a lot. But, I also have a much different perspective than you because I know what assets there are and aren't and what we are allowed to do to said assets (ProTip: NOTHING). All you've given an example of is "something should've been done with wood."

I'm genuinely curious what you think of a playfield like ST, also.

It's a bit odd that one of Jack's mission statements was to do original, hand drawn playfield artwork since Stern only used Photoshopped licensor assets....and now they're using Photoshopped licensor assets while Stern is doing hand drawn games like Metallica.

Looking at this bare art, we can criticize it all day long - but I'm sure like Stern's Photoshopped playfields like AC/DC, Tron, etc - once they're "alive" with the game's lighting, shadows, toys and light shows - it'll look cool in person.

I assume the licensing rights are such a CF at this point that my dreams of the "nothing at all from the movies" Special Edition are for naught. I think it looks pretty good given the source material, although a different font for every character is a bit over the top.