Look it! It’s Bilbo Baggins in the flesh! Actor Martin Freeman has donned the elfish ears, shaggy hair and clothes to fully transform into The Hobbit’s protagonist. Says director Peter Jackson of his Bilbo: “He fits the ears, and he’s got some very nice feet. I think he’s got the biggest hobbit feet we’ve had so far. They’re a little bit hard to walk in, but he’s managed to figure out the perfect hobbit gait.”

EW also managed to scoop up two additional images that I’ve pasted after the break. The second is of veteran actor Ian McKellan as Gandolf the Grey. Jackson again: “He’s in fantastic form. ‘In a way, his role in The Hobbit has more technical difficulties than Lord of the Rings did, because he has scenes with 14 smaller characters — obviously the dwarves and the hobbit are shorter… I remember saying to him [laughs], ”Look, this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”

The third and final image is a rather candid photo of Jackson directing Freeman inside the hobbit’s small hut. Jackson once more: “There’s no way you can pace yourself for shoots like these. When we were going through the schedule for The Hobbit, I felt a terrible drop in my stomach when I saw that we’d be shooting for 254 days. We’re only 12 days short of The Lord of the Rings even though we’re only doing two movies. When I saw that, I had to sort of pick myself up off the floor and carry on.”

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey releases December 14, 2012 and this will be followed by part two subtitled There and Back Again exactly one year later. The Hobbit follows the journey of Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

[Via EW]