I initially moved to Switzerland for work on an animated feature film, and have been here ever since.

All in all, Tolkien fans are as varied, remarkable and marvelous as the books and the worlds that they share. They make me feel a little like a Hobbit who glimpses colourful strangers passing but has never left the Shire.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

My initial plan was to spend a year in France, go to some kind of school and learn a bit of French. I went a year in an American college in the outskirts of Strasbourg, but got a glimpse of a real art school, L'Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, and enrolled the following year.

Dragons and bridges are very much something out of fairy tales and fantasy.

Daydreaming with pencil and paper is a respectable form of meditation.

I have been illustrating Tolkien's books ever since I first read them, long before illustration became my profession.