The Hobbit Series

The Hobbit series assembled a large makeup team, consisting of the hair and makeup designer, Peter King, a prosthetic supervisor, Tami Lane, senior prosthetic makeup artists, prosthetic lab technicians, sculptors, SFX artists, assistant and many other members.

The films use a mixture of well established prosthetic techniques, but unlike the previously explored films, a heavy amount of computer generated effects were included. The majority of prosthetic work was done on main characters. In the first of the series, the Orcs all had prosthetic work, which was replaced in the later films my computer graphics. 

To build the prosthetic, the casting technique was implemented; The actors faces were cast, then plaster of paris was filled inside to make a positive cast. Afterwards, the desired look was achieved with clay, and a second cast would be made to create a negative. Once dried, the cast would be filled with foam rubber and baked. 

For the production, each main character had a stunt double; the characters face would be duplicated, such that the actors would have separate prosthetic pieces, whereas the doubles would have a complete full mask face to match their actor counterparts. It is not specified what the appliances were coloured with. The most likely paint used would be alcohol-activated paint, instead of greasepaint. Although greasepaints have been used to create characters in the passed and have been relied on in the pass to bring characters to life, alcohol-activated paints are being used more and more due to the staying power of the product, along with other qualities such as the waterproof factor; and it being used for a wide spectrun of applications that range from aged makeup to creating new creatures.

Because the final film was filmed in 3D, more red had to be applied onto the appliances to prevent the appliances appearing yellow on the 3D camera. (Making Of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" Full | All of Production Blogs 1-9, Youtube, 2012)

As for other characters (and indeed settings), the majority of them were computer generated to hyper realistic degrees.

.Prosthetics are still being used, but the film industry has come up with cost and time efficient methods using CGI as well as prosthetics. both have several advantages, for example, mass production  of non human like characters can be done without using any make-up/prosthetic but purely CGI. It is required for the main characters to have make up because they were always in shot and have distinctive features.