Lord of the Falas, Keeper of the Grey Havens,
Second Bearer of Narya
I guess my Muse has decided that she'd had enough of Noldorin Elves and dark-haired Maiar for a bit, and wanted to work on the Teleri. Since there weren't a whole lot of them that played a major role in either LotR or The Silmarillion, Círdan was of course a logical choice to come after Thingol. There is some debate as to whether or not Círdan was one of the Elves who first wakened at Cuivíenen, but he nonetheless is one of the oldest Elves in existence, and certainly the oldest Elf in Middle-earth at the time of LotR. Círdan, though he had silver hair, like Elwe, and was doubtless a very strong and capable leader (having fought in many wars and being a seaman and all), but he also has a singular incongruity about him: he's the only Elf Tolkien describes as having a beard and looking old. I tried doing that with him, but though I had the meshes and skins all worked out, something said, "No." Part of it was the fact that making his beard longer made it very easy to confuse him with Gandalf the White in the game, and when I tried to do a stay-put mesh for the beard, it simply did not work. Unless I wanted to make the beard as full as Gandalf the Grey's (which I didn't), it looked positively ridiculous to see the thing stick to his chest as if glued there every time he turned his head. That problem isn't quite so disconcerting when it's the hair falling down the Sim's back, so I decided to skip that and use only the hair drawn onto the face in the skin rather than make the beard a separate part of the mesh.
And since Gil-galad is one of his neighbors in my Middle-earth neighborhood,. I decided to make this a First Age/Second Age version of the character, during the years when he was first the guardian of Gil-galad, and later his comrade in arms. Though there's no evidence to support the theory, I figure it was after the battle of the Last Alliance, seeing so many of his friends and allies killed by Sauron, that Círdan started to visibly age -- possibly consciously, or perhaps a reflection of how he was finally growing weary of the world. So in this incarnation, he's just starting the beard to see if he likes it. And since Círdan remained in Middle-earth and didn't go with the rest of his people in the Great Journey to Valinor (at the request of Ulmo, as I recall), I decided to put him here in the Ages of the Sun rather than the Elder Days (which are getting a little crowded, anyway). His hair is again "stay-put," and again doesn't obscure his face in the thumbnail distortion (still wish I could find a way to fix that, though...).
