#whenever i see it i refer to it as “the dick-shaped throne”

[lokiinmediasideblog]

MCU!Odin's throne is a phallic symbol. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Notes and Quotes from ‘Art of Trollhunters’ book

Jim’s nose was almost SUPER beaky.

Confirmation putting Gunmar’s eye in the Amulet was indeed what gave Jim a helmet.

One of the concepts for Jim’s helmet looks like the helmet Claire got.

Messy-haired Claire without hair clips.

Claire was almost a redhead.

Toby was almost wearing a puffy-sleeved blue winter coat all the time - in California, poor kid! The setting might be why the design was cut.

I like the crystal-y design for Toby’s armour where a plate on the back pops off (don’t worry, there’s more armour underneath it!) and becomes a shield.

Draal’s design started out as concept art for Changeling!Steve. THAT explains the parallels between Steve and Draal, both visual (blue palette, yellow hair/yellowish horns, top-heavy ‘buff’ silhouette) and narrative (introduced as a bully character, sees Jim as a rival after the opening episodes, later becomes ally to brunet kid a third of his size, has a thing for super-tall girls who can kick his ass). Considering what happened to Draal I’m honestly a little worried about Steve’s chances to survive the TOA trilogy.

Useful references for how Draal’s prosthetic arm is put together!

Some of the concept art for Gunmar’s horn design looks like the design they ultimately went with for Usurna’s horns.

Ron Perlman, voice of Bular, says Gunmar has “been imprisoned for four hundred years”.

The temple where Angor Rot was imprisoned was in Ranthambore, India.

Guillermo del Toro was clear from early days that Blinky’s “dark, evil brother” should be named ‘Dick’ - ‘Dictatious’ came from the writers’ room.

Usurna’s purple crest is actually a crown, not part of her horns? Which “mimics her natural, glowing carvings.”

Rodrigo Blaas, executive producer and voice of the gnomes: “I always thought that the Gnome voice came from mixing two very weird things: a flamenco singer and baby talk.”

Eli in a striped shirt actually resembles some of the concept art for Jim.

I’m going to keep calling the Nyalagroth a Nyarlagroth, because that’s what it sounds like when the characters SAY it, and I’ve already got the tag, and it’s previously been written as Nyarlagroth in other books (and I know I complain about the novels a lot but they ARE a useful source for “how to spell this character’s name” when your TV keeps dimming or changing the screen when you try to pause the credits).

The book mentions Nana ‘protecting her Toby-Pie and his Trollhunting secret’, which makes me wonder [a] if she secretly knew for longer than we thought she did, and [b] if this foreshadows another scene of that, besides the one of her bludgeoning Detective Scott unconscious.

Vendel describes Stalklings as “one of the only species of troll impervious to the effects on sunlight” (emphasis mine), but the book describes them as “the only trolls that can venture into sunlight” (again, emphasis mine), so I guess this one is up to fanfic writers to decide for themselves.

Morgana’s palette deliberately invokes the sun, on the artists’ part, probably to emphasize how dangerous she is to the trolls.

I kind of like the designs where Merlin has a ponytail but that might be more because I like cloaks and capes. His armour is “rooted in technology”? The Amulet implies that he’s an inventor ...

I was initially surprised at the quote describing Morgana as “the series’ first female villain”, but then I remembered she was introduced (via flashback to when Angor got his soul) before Usurna was, and a whole season before Usurna was revealed to be a villain.

Those little tray-carrying bar trolls do not, now that I can get a good look at one, look as much like Not Enrique as I’d previously assumed. The bar trolls have longer fingers and differently structured legs and feet. I had noticed the horn and eye differences but thought that could be ‘age’ or ‘side effect of Not Enrique being made into a Changeling’.

Not only did Nomura used to have four arms, but Bagdwella did too?!

Concept art for Jim’s house looks like it’s from when they were still working with the original novel, where he lived with his paranoid dad and his mom was the one to walk out.

There’s a horn sharpening stall somewhere in Trollmarket! Or at least a concept design for one.

I like the two-headed troll with the linked nose rings.

In the Troll Pub concept pages there’s a troll dressed like Elvis and carrying a guitar.

Art director Alfonso Blaas is married to a geologist and she found a ton of useful reference images whenever they needed new minerals for characters or locations.

Okay, the Quagawump swamps supposedly are underground, which does not explain the trees. I’m probably going to stick with my theory that they go underwater and burrow into the mud during the daytime.

Neat concept sketches for Gunmar’s fight with Orlagk as portrayed on Killahead Bridge.

Interesting lore about how the Darklands fit into troll history.

There’s a bigger version of that picture of Bular sitting on Gunmar’s throne in the Darklands but no information provided. I’m guessing it’s from an early concept stage. Maybe Bular was going to have a fantasy sequence about becoming the next Gumm-Gumm king, or a bad dream of being trapped in the Darklands with the rest of them and unable to orchestrate their escape.

Very useful reference images for Jim’s shield and glaives!

Note to self, dig up trollish alphabet an look up what it says on the handle of the Shadow Staff. (If it’s trollish.)

The Staff of Avalon - and, by extension, Merlin’s tomb - are in the Ardennes Mountains. The emerald mounted at the top of the staff is supposed to spin.

Good refs for everybody’s weapons, really. Angor’s knife’s hilt is yet another thing shaped like a face. Nomura’s khopesh are referred to as ‘scythe swords’, perhaps because the person writing that blurb doesn’t know the word ‘khopesh’.

It finally occurs to me to wonder, how and why was that crank key that operates a mechanism in the Darklands lying around Blinky’s library for Kanjigar to give to Claire? Are those cranks part of common-but-outdated troll tech, like skeleton keys?

A Fetch is supposedly “the size of an average dinner plate” - I believe that’s about a foot in diameter.

Ah, good, there’s a key to trollish runes on page 186. The Shadow Staff inscription reads “skath”, probably connecting to it being called the “Skathe-Hrun” or however that’s spelled, I’m pretty sure I missed an umlaut. The runes on the little flaps that open on the back of the Amulet of Daylight to let the Trollhunter put in different power stones, however, still don’t seem to match up with trollish runes, no matter what angle I look at them from - at first I’d thought Merlin just wrote his name in a circle there because one of them kind of looks like an ‘M’ and his name is six letters long.

The Gyre is described as “part rollercoaster and part hamster wheel.”

The little doodle of Dictatious over the title for the ‘Afterword by Mark Hamill’ is precious.

It amuses Mark Hamill that he gets typecast as villains when he does voice acting - “How do you get typecast in animation?” - and he has a lot of fun with those parts.

I was supposed to be asleep twenty minutes ago so I’m going to go do that now.