I'm OK with most of it. I'm fine with the fact that it uses Photoshop elements (and pleased that it mostly matches the style and tone of LOTR). I understand the need for the floating heads (though I certainly don't love them at all). I would have liked a bit more keyline art like LOTR has (for example the arrow key line art on LOTR that pass through several inserts pointing at the main shots).

In the spirit of constructive criticism, here are a few things that bother me, and some suggestions.

Each of the dwarf names have 'The Dwarf' tacked on to the end in small font with varying font tracking applied to stretch or compress it. That they are dwarves seems redundant, is this text really needed? I hope the license isn't forcing that there. Thankfully with Bilbo it doesn't say 'The Hobbit' or Gandalf 'The Wizard'. That the 'The Dwarf' text varies in tracking (spacing) is not pleasing from a visual perspective. It looks bad. The names would be much more striking/clean without the extra text.

I find the 'L' 'O' 'C' 'K' coin text to be an unneeded cluttering element. As already stated it screws up the art of the dragon's wings. The LCD screen would a much more natural place to explain the significance of these rollovers with a graphic that periodically shows the rollovers and explains they are for qualifying a lock. Sometimes it's OK to let an element explain itself, I don't think people will be confused enough NOT to play the game if these aren't labeled.

I don't understand the what looks like chunks of ice up in the barrel chase area. Maybe it could be changed for something a little more visually appealing and relevant?

Certainly it would be nice to have variability in the cut/paste elements like the trap door frames as has been mentioned already.

Not sure I'm in love with having the dragon pictured at small scale in the center of the field. As stated the dragon is already going to be prominently featured as an animatronic in the upper left. It seems a more powerful statement would have just to have gone with the lonely mountain in the middle, but maybe that would be too plain an area then.

-Jim

Those shirts look more or less fine one at a time with 'The Dwarf' text spaced out in random ways. Put all those 'direct from the style guide' renderings next to each other on a playfield and the text spacing becomes a disaster. That is clearly a place where the style guide should have been challenged. Present both renderings to the studio, with the text all messed up, but exact to the style guide and with the text spacing fixed (or even missing) and beg them to approve the latter. Only a moron on the studio side would say "stick to the guide even though it looks stupid".

It's all about the execution in what you put up for consideration. Do double work and put up a risky but better design and a safe one and lobby hard for the better one, but I guess that ship has sailed.

Bottom line. I'm a customer, I have a Hobbit on order, so I feel a bit entitled to a little armchair quarterbacking and critiquing. Sorry if it comes off harsh.

Great catch to MapleSyrup (well his 14 year old son) on Ori and Nori being switched!!!! That at least MUST be fixed. So if they have to regain approval, might as well try to fix a few more things while they are at it.

Remove the lock coin images altogether they are just visual clutter and certainly not required by the style guide. Instead have an informative graphic on the LCD to indicate their function (maybe as rotating status if you hold in a flipper button, a standard pinball convention). It's fine to have stuff like this to help newbies but put it all on the LCD and make an option to suppress it so in home use we don't need it in our faces or cluttering up the art.

There's a diverter down there. The drawing I saw at the factory last fall had a solenoid down there with a plunger that extended into the subway to block the path to the right and divert the ball to the left VUK. There's a strong possibility the diverter will be under player control (at least at certain times).

The real solution is keep the rollovers (even though I'm not a huge fan of rollovers) and ditch the coin graphics in favor of calling out the lock function on the LCD. One visual every so often showing the configuration of four rollovers and 'LOCK' in graphics on the LCD will tell any player their function.

It's not like it's a big mystery anyway as I'm sure they will light up when collected (maybe even green, the traditional lock color). Super casual players will be hitting them without even knowing it anyway and so won't need to know they are lock rollovers as they will qualify the lock without even trying hard.