What did Tolkein think Hobbits looked like?
How about Orcs?
Goblins?
Elves?
Dwarves?
Can anybody provide a link to images that are well-rooted in Tolkein’s notions of his world?
Tolkein himself didn’t draw many of the types of peoples, as far as I am aware. He did do some drawings in THE HOBBIT, with a wonderful Smaug resting on a pile of gold, and an invisible Bilbo (silhouetted in a cloud) in the corner.
So, based on the silhouette, hobbits look mostly like small-sized people, except for bare hairy feet.
Elves are described pretty well in the text, as are dwarves. Orcs and goblins are mostly described by implication – they bare their fangs, they have claws, etc. And, of course, there are a variety of types.
Tolkien was not especially keen on describing character appearances; he reserved his skill for describing landscapes instead. But he does give us some clue as to to appearance. He states in The Hobbit that hobbits are short, stout people, standing about 3 feet tall. They have large, hair-covered feet. There are three main branches of hobbits, the Stoors, the Harfoots, and the Fallohides, and these all differ somewhat in appearance. Most hobbits have smooth, rosy complexions and usually brown hair, often curly. The males cannot grow facial hair as a rule, though some do have what we call “peach fuzz” on their faces. Blond hair is unusual among them as Tolkien mentions re: the birth of Sam’s daughter Elanor at the end of Return of the King.
Elves are a bit more complicated. They are universally tall and slender, with pale skin, and Tolkien does tell us most of them have dark hair and grey eyes. However, they are many different types of elves. The Vanyar, the first elves to undertake the great journey west, have blonde hair. Red hair is mentioned only once in one of volumes of The History of Middle-Earth in which Feanor’s twin sons are said to have red hair. Silver hair is also apparently found among them- Celeborn, Cirdan, and Earwen all have silver hair. As to their height, Tolkien says they are taller than humans, but how much taller is never specifically said. Tolkien also never says they have pointy ears; he refers to them as “leaf-shaped”, although precisely what he may have meant by that in unclear.
Dwarves: they’re short, though taller than hobbits, I’m guessing around 4 to 4 1/2 feet. All male dwarves have beards. We never meet a female dwarf, and only one is even named, but Tolkien says that it is nearly impossible for non-dwarves to distinguish male from female dwarves. So while never specifically stated, we have to consider that female dwarves may have beards.
The various types of orcs are pretty confused, but they’re most often described as shorter than men, maybe in the 5-foot range, and somehow deformed. They are described as stooping, so Tolkien may have meant they were hunchbacked. He also makes a comparison to apes, and says they have very long arms and short legs. Their faces are described as “hideous”, “ugly”, and they have sharp yellow teeth and claws. In various places they are said to have rough black skin with coarse hair. A goblin is presumably the same as an orc, although ‘orc’ only appears once in The Hobbit and ‘goblin’ only appears in the term ‘goblin-men’ in The Lord of the Rings. We’re never told just what these “goblin-men” may be or where they came from, but they are said to be sallow-complexioned. The orc/goblin question is usually answered by saying that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit mainly for children, never thinking he would eventually turn his places and characters into a larger work, and so used the common English word “goblin”. He may have later decided to use ‘orc’ in LotR, which is a word of Anglo-Saxon origin and means something like “demon”.
‘Uruk’ is the word for ‘orc’ in the Black Speech of Mordor, but it is often used in the text to refer to the somewhat larger, stronger orcs working for Sauron in Mordor itself. The Uruk-hai are servants of Saruman, created by him in some unknown fashion. They are the same size as men, they are not deformed, and they can walk in sunlight, which most other orcs cannot do. (Sunlight seems to make regular orcs hot, dizzy, and weak.)
I have taken this information from my own memory; some of it may be inaccurate, but doubtless someone will come along to correct any mistakes I’ve made. In all, the movies seem to do justice to what we know of Tolkien’s own descriptions and thoughts of what his characters looked like. Though Tolkien occasionally sketched some of his works, I am not aware of any illustrations he made have made of the people of Middle-Earth, though there are some drawings of his on various buildings and landscapes.
There was a book published full of pictures by Tolkien himself;
http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/bosse/books/coverart/pictures.gif
shows the front cover; Bilbo can just be seen riding a barrel. Of all his characters, he drew Bilbo most often.
Most of his other pictures are non figurative and do not give much clue to the appearance of his characters.
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
I’m getting the impression that Dwarves are incredibly massive in build.
I don’t think that all Elves are taller than all humans. I think rather that Tolkein’s Elves average as tall as tall humans. Legolas is not said to be taller than Aragorn or Boromir, for instance.
As for the movies I think all the races were pretty well conceptualized, except for the Uruk-hai. I think Peter Jackson went a little over the top with them…his love of the Horror genre is evident with them.
Yeah, I always got the impression that Elves, being basically a race showing what Men could aspire to, were just a few inches taller, on average, then Men. Just enough to confer that extra air of nobility. And there are a couple cases in Tolkien’s history of elf-human relationships, so the size difference between the two races can’t be that significant. I can’t imagine an elf-maiden would have fallen for a mortal Man if she, and all the male elves she knew, were eight feet tall 
And, nerd-alert-time:
Lagomorph, you clearly can’t use Aragorn as a comparison. The blood of Elves and Men runs mixed through his veins. (Admittedly, the mix was so far in the past it would make him about a billionth Elven and 999,999,999/1,000,000,000 Man, but this is heroic fiction, not a genetics course).
Well, I think you CAN use Aragorn as a comparison. He might have Elvish blood, but he is a Man, period. There is still Boromir, and also Eomer, who like most Rohirrim is tall for a man (actually, Legolas himself describes Eomer as “very tall”, not “very tall, for a shrimpy Man”). I don’t think Legolas towered over those guys, or many of the men of Gondor, or the Rangers of the North in the Grey Company.
Actually, you bring up an interesting point. I have always wondered what the differences and similarities are between Elves and Men at the molecular/cellular/genetic level. I have decided that Elves and Men must have the same number of chromosomes, and that the the chromosomes must be homologous, but that Elvish DNA must be chemically different from Human, yet still similar enough structurally to be able to create fertile offspring. Also, Elvish DNA must either be very resistant to mutation, or else they have extremely powerful repair mechanisms to fix genetic and cellular damage.
Another thing I just remembered re the height of Elves: Legolas was able to find a suit of mail that fit him from the armory of Rohan. This also would argue against his being much taller than the average man of Rohan.
The Uruk-hai in the movies were my favorite renditions of orcs I’ve ever seen. Inth epast, they tended to look just ugly and stupid. The Uruk-hai this time actually looked scary. they moved like something that could fight and actually be a threat.