What would Frodo look like as a Sailor Moon character? What would Gandalf’s Pokémon be? and what would Aragorn eat for dessert in today’s world? The answers to all of these questions –and many, many more– are to be found in @lotraiart, a profile made by an AI scientist and engineer who’s having fun re-imagining J. R. R. Tolkien’s characters in wildly different contexts.
The rise of AI artists is polarising, but so has been every technical advancement that allowed for artistic expression to move forward. And if you pair this new way of creating with Tolkien’s universe, the result is a spellbinding fantasy. The anonymous artist behind the Instagram account is making the fan art we didn’t know we needed: what Pippin eats in a day, Lord of the Rings characters as cats, puppies, or Balkan folk, and a speculative Middle-earth cocktail book. The possibilities are endless!
Hello, thank you for speaking to us! I don’t know anything about you personally, so if you’re up for it, who’s behind @lotraiart?
Hello, and thank you for interviewing me! I still want to hide behind the lotraiart tag for a while :) But I can tell you that I’m actually an AI scientist and engineer and hold a PhD in the field. I have dozens of papers and patents in the field, as well as big tech experience, and I have helped develop some of this amazing technology.
I use AI practically everywhere in my life: coding, writing AI agents, and so many other things. This @lotraiart page is one of my many endeavors and was purely for fun. It all started when I was having a beer and thought, hmm, what would Gimli drink? Then I said, why not bring it to life? And I made a page around the entire ‘what would LOTR characters do’ idea. Honestly, it exceeded my expectations and grew to 15k followers in less than two months!
I use AI practically everywhere in my life: coding, writing AI agents, and so many other things. This @lotraiart page is one of my many endeavors and was purely for fun. It all started when I was having a beer and thought, hmm, what would Gimli drink? Then I said, why not bring it to life? And I made a page around the entire ‘what would LOTR characters do’ idea. Honestly, it exceeded my expectations and grew to 15k followers in less than two months!
“If AI can create quality work that satisfies a majority of the audience, then there is no reason to undermine or devalue it.”
When and how did you first become familiar with J. R. R. Tolkien’s work? Did you become a fan instantly?
First I started with The Hobbit; to this day, it stands as the book that I’ve read the most times! I think I lost count somewhere around eleven. Then I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But I was in elementary school back then, and honestly, I have to say I didn’t appreciate the depth of the books at that age — it was more like my first encounter with fantasy fiction, and I fell in love with the genre. I was in high school when the movies came out, and we were amazed by them instantly. Only later, when I re-read the books again and again, did I start appreciating the depth of the story.
Tell us more about your creative process: what software(s) do you use, and how do you ensure that a series (characters in Sailor Moon-style or as puppies) is coherent and cohesive visually?
It all started when I was having a beer and about to choose the next one, and I thought to myself, what would Gimli drink? Then I simply asked ChatGPT, and then I wondered about the rest of the characters. Then I turned them into images, and then videos. I had so much fun with it that I wanted to share it with everyone. That’s how I opened the @lotraiart page. Then the questions in my head simply followed one after another: what if they were born into today’s world, who would they vote for, what Pokémon would they have, etc.
I use a variety of software: ChatGPT and Gemini for the thought process; Sora, Midjourney, and Kling for image generation, and mostly Kling for video generation. I tried Veo3 too, and although it’s amazing, it didn’t match the style of my content. But maybe I can pick it up later.
It’s all about prompting. I have now developed a few-pages-long system prompt that ensures the quality and style of my content, which I feed to ChatGPT or Gemini every time I call them. The system prompt naturally developed through a trial and error process, where I kept the parts of prompts that generated images or videos I liked.
I use a variety of software: ChatGPT and Gemini for the thought process; Sora, Midjourney, and Kling for image generation, and mostly Kling for video generation. I tried Veo3 too, and although it’s amazing, it didn’t match the style of my content. But maybe I can pick it up later.
It’s all about prompting. I have now developed a few-pages-long system prompt that ensures the quality and style of my content, which I feed to ChatGPT or Gemini every time I call them. The system prompt naturally developed through a trial and error process, where I kept the parts of prompts that generated images or videos I liked.
You’ve expanded the LoTR universe to unimaginable limits: you’ve turned them into Wes Anderson characters, you’ve made them anime within the Pokémon, Dragon Ball, and Sailor Moon worlds, and brought them to ‘reality’ as Balkan folk. It’s so great! How do you come up with all of these Ideas?
I come up with a lot of them very naturally. But if there is a system, it’s probably mixing my hobbies and interests with the LoTR universe. Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon, Harry Potter, Avengers, Wes Anderson movies — all stuff that I have watched and know very well. Same goes for my other hobbies: I’m an avid art enthusiast. I have visited many famous museums like the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Vatican Museums in Rome, the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and it’s amazing to think what my favourite artists could paint if they painted LoTR. Similarly, I have a deep interest in history, especially ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian civilizations, as well as ancient Greece and Rome. I have also tried to incorporate those into @lotraiart content.
What’s your favourite character in the LoTR universe and why?
Oh, that’s a super hard question. Well, I think if I have to give an answer, it has to be Bilbo for me. I just love how real he is. He has so many complexities to his character. Maybe I also draw some parallels between him and myself too. He has an academic side, loves history, loves good food and finer pleasures in life, he appreciates his alone-time, and gets anxious in noisy company. He is a bit greedy and jealous, and has some ego too. But, he has a good heart after all and does the right thing, like sparing Gollum, using the arkenstone as a negotiation tactic, and giving away his 1/13 share of dragon’s treasure, giving the ring to Frodo, etc.
I see you’re chronically online: you’ve made a ‘what I eat in a day’ type of video with Legolas. Do you think it’s important to stay up-to-date with trends in order to stay relevant online?
This also happened very naturally, as I’m an Instagram addict. I’m really not doing it as part of a job, I simply scroll for an hour or two for fun and naturally note the concepts that resonate with me.
You take influences from cinema and TV series (like when you bridged LoTR with Matrix, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter or the aforementioned Wes Anderson), visual art (placing Tolkien’s characters in famous paintings – my favourite has to be Galadriel in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus), or music. Are there other avenues/worlds you’d like to explore that haven’t yet?
There are a few, but maybe the most exciting one would be a drink and cookbook from Middle-earth! I’ve done some earlier work on bringing some Middle-earth drinks to life with modern ingredients, but I want to try out these recipes for real and capture the process. I’m thinking of opening a YouTube channel just for that. Cooking is one of my favourite hobbies, so it will be so fun!
As you know, AI ruffles some feathers and opens up the debate about authorship and originality. As an AI artist, what’s your take on this?
Now, this is a very important question. Due to my background I’m an AI-first person, but it should always come with responsibility too. One argument I like here is this: imagine the exact same content was made by a person without using AI and by a person using AI. Now, the content itself should, in my opinion, be treated the same under the law (copyright issues, etc.). It shouldn’t matter whether the person or the machine has read, observed, learned the content, and recreated it. So I don’t think one has a clear winning argument here saying if a human did it, it is okay, but if AI did it, it is not. It doesn’t make sense to me. A few court rulings in the recent past have also been mostly in line with this thinking.
On the other hand, when it comes to appreciating the artist, it is of course a lot harder for the human to do it, so the artist creating without using AI should be appreciated a lot more. Now, an immediate question that follows is: does it matter for the end-user, though? And here comes into the picture the quality of the work and the audience who can appreciate it. This actually holds true for every profession, not just art. If AI can create quality work that satisfies a majority of the audience, then there is no reason to undermine or devalue it. But the very top artists –those who create extraordinary work, new styles, truly original content that AI struggles to replicate– are still more than relevant.
So, in one sentence: legally, AI vs. human art should be evaluated the same; for everything else, the quality of the final product and its audience matters.
On the other hand, when it comes to appreciating the artist, it is of course a lot harder for the human to do it, so the artist creating without using AI should be appreciated a lot more. Now, an immediate question that follows is: does it matter for the end-user, though? And here comes into the picture the quality of the work and the audience who can appreciate it. This actually holds true for every profession, not just art. If AI can create quality work that satisfies a majority of the audience, then there is no reason to undermine or devalue it. But the very top artists –those who create extraordinary work, new styles, truly original content that AI struggles to replicate– are still more than relevant.
So, in one sentence: legally, AI vs. human art should be evaluated the same; for everything else, the quality of the final product and its audience matters.
“Reading Tolkien reminds you that adventure and kindness matter, that small people can make a huge difference, and that sometimes a walk in the woods or a shared meal is as important as saving the world.”
I’m curious: do you plan on ever selling these works as NFTs, for example, or is it just fan art that you make with no other purpose than express yourself and make people enjoy?
At some point, I want to monetise this effort. But selling Middle-earth content is something I need to investigate — whether it is legal or not, and to what extent. For example, there is a lot of interest from my followers in buying an actual copy of the Middle-earth cocktail book, but I should investigate whether it is legal to sell it with that name. There are other options, like setting up Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee accounts. But I think the best monetisation option for me would be the longer and higher-quality content of the YouTube channel I mentioned above, and monetising by pay-per-view.
I’m sure people reading this are fans of The Lord of the Rings, but in case they aren’t yet, could you share your favourite things about Tolkien’s work and why they should immediately get into it?
Tolkien’s world is so rich in content. It’s not just epic battles; it has its own history, languages, cultures, even songs. For the ones who can appreciate, there is also a literary depth in the unique storytelling of Tolkien. What’s more is that there’s a warmth and a longing in the stories; you feel both the comfort of the Shire and the weight of the wider world. His characters are never perfect — they struggle, make mistakes, doubt themselves, and that’s why you end up loving them. Reading Tolkien reminds you that adventure and kindness matter, that small people can make a huge difference, and that sometimes a walk in the woods or a shared meal is as important as saving the world. It is like therapy in a sense.
