Watch Smaug leap off the pages of The Hobbit

The animators at Weta Workshop, along with the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch, brought J.R.R. Tolkien's serpent menace to life on screen in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. But it takes the Danish-American artist Far Too Many Ideas (known in reality as Victoria) to bring the dragon to life on paper. 

We don't just mean drawings. We mean leap-off-the-pages-of-the-book craftsmanship that obviously required a sharp knife, a sense of whimsy and a talent that matches the imagination.

We usually consider taking a knife to a book to be an act of sacrilege. Here it may be the one and only time we'd consider it an improvement. 

DeviantArt via Kotaku.