Sculpting Thranduil on stag/moose/elk

I think I am excused for not trying to sculpt the elk/moose/stag from scratch - as a few of you might remember, I did sculpt a stag a while back ago. That was before Games Workshop released their Sisters of Thorn, which was an awesome kit. Awesome like a hundred million hotdogs. A box of said sisters were purchased by me and myself, and while the stags were waaay to large for LotR (possibly even too large for Warhammer Fantasy Battles AKA WHFB), I have reached a conclusion which says that in this case, the giant stag works not only fine, but indeed very well.

Please read, mr FoB
But why do I post these very early pictures of Thranduil on a moose (please disregard the antlers, they will be changed in due time)? Because I had originally planned Thranduil to stand in his stirrups/things that riders put their feet in (stigbyglar?) - the problem is obvious when looking at the weird filler I made under him to make the model easier to sculpt: The gambezon of Thranduil - from what I can gather from the movie - is open from below his navel and splits fully open and is divided against each of his thighs... it looks weird, and I would like to hide the weird filler-saddle I made for him.
     The saddle is there to stay, sorry to say it, because the basic skeleton-model is way to brittle to change anymore, it is in fact a Mahdist Ansar Holy Warrior and his legs have been sawed off and repositioned with only some plastic glue (not plastic cement)!

Some people may say he looks a bit stiff, but I say he looks stiff because he is majestic! The weird, slightly tilted angle is there for a reason: He is supposed to swing the big sword in a weird mix of attack and leading-my-troops kind of way.

An enjoyable problem will be to sculpt the tracks on the armour, the ornamentations - which I do believe are called "flutings", after reading on mr FoB:s homepage! It is time for me to step up my game and learn how to sculpt such difficult things - it is not the actual sculpting nor is it the effort to design some suiting patterns, no, it is actually the issue of getting the epoxy putty to stick to the oily base of hardened putty!
Below we can see my second phase of painting the homemade Thranduil model. You may notice he lacks his crown of thorns and twigs. I have yet to dare sculpt it, and may even make another model... a new model of Thranduil with the cloak and the crown...

As stated before, the sword is huge, but still smaller than GW's version, I think... Notice the elk-sketch in the background, yep, that's all me, I can draw!
 


I had managed to forget sculpting the rings! Notice the difference between basecoated Thranduil to the right and the washed Thranduil to the left? Super small blobs of GS, but I think I managed to get something done - it's not that I could ever paint super nice detail anyways...

He's got racoon makeup because my hands are trembling with boredom.

Bits and Pieces - and an alpacka or two

Minor update, a bit of this and that...


















  
Mr FoB and I met a few weeks back in my new place and had planned to get a game of War of the Ring going. However, as the cirumstances evolved - as they say in "important" banking-and-business-meetings - we never got to play the game. But the two sides looked nice. No points were counted and the Stone Brutes/Rhûn Automatons were there for the picture only.

Just thought it was time for some other stuff: It has been cold, so very cold that the above rarely happens. Too much clothes this winter!

My friend lives along the blue line in Stockholm. New tides in Sweden when the Swedes can't understand the commercials. Not that I care too much about commericals anyway, but it was a funny find - and an usurpringsing one.

... and on the commuter train, totally unrelated to the above story about the blue line, I could read that "Camera surveillance - for your personal safety". Ooooh please, go to fuck-offety land, please, will you! For my safety?!
    "You are being watched - for your own safety... " said in an omnious voice. I went ahead and took me the time to get a meeting with the security chief of this company, but they didn't want to speak about "security policies". I did get a another number to call though - it lead to the PBX (as I have been told it is called) of the company.  Of course. I couldn't even get a name of the person signing off on this. Cameras have been installed everywhere... we are nearing London in camera density. And they say that we aren't being listened to, but I have actually a little piece of experience that shows the opposite.
   But we all knew 1984 was 31 years ago. Much has happened since.

"Sometimes, when something is Mario, it isn't really Mario, it is in fact Lickey the Louse", I tried to tell my friends at a party later that day. But the women all thought camera surveillance was a good idea - of course, if you still think you're being looked at because you are a pretty girl... I did not have the heart to tell them that female beauty is like milk: It expires in a week. Men, however (which I "identify" as), we are like wine, we get better for each year, which of course is a sad misconception about bottled wine, but still...
    Hehe, could not resist that last piece. "Uppgång går före fall", which I hope not - I try to be humble, but even the sun has it's spots.

Made some fillers, really simple ones, but when painted they happened to look fine, which is always a nice surprise.

Here are the llamas - or rather, alpackas - I petted before Christmas. This happened to be in the same place as the bank I was typing about in last update, same city. Seems like that's where it happens. 

A bunch of models that I need to do something about. Since this picture was taken I have settled with how the Rivendell Waterspawn turned out (AKA "Lantiroch" in Sindarin, if you happen to be that nerdy). The bear turned out fine... I need to do something about the bases of the 13 dwarves as well as start to work on my Arnor army since I want to make a new faction for my version of War of the Ring - Arnor, that is, if you happen to be mentally impaired and did not understand that...

Found this little clip from a video-game called GTA V or GTA VI or GTA IV, with the little comment on women's driving... It is not the player that drives. Super funny. It just goes on...

To remind myself that progress is being made, I post this image. Though, admittedly, not much has been done with any of the models and it has been nearly 8 months since this picture was taken!
    Now, I am off to sillier things, adieu!

Updated Armies: Gondor, Mordor, Isengard and Rivendell.

New pictures of varying qualities. After I had setup the whole table with my new daylight bulb and everything, I managed to get one (1) picture before the old Ixus died and I had to use the cell phone for taking pictures, didn't even get angry. Either it is maturity or it is just resignation of life - ah, yes, life, the female dog that keeps barking until you die...
     Regardless, or "irregardless" that a bigger idiot than I would say, here they are, the updated pictures:

Gondor. My homemade units in this army are the Golden Company, the Cart of Everliving Flame (with the coffin and the huge banners - it ties in with the royal Westrons' fear of death) and the ever-blue Pelargir Beast that has lost its handlers and troopers to mr FoB; the Pelargir Veterans were painted by me a long time ago, bought by mr FoB from the excellent - dare I say superior - sculptor Tom Meier, and now the models are in mr FoB's surpringsly-not-so-greedy-hands...
    Also, we can find the command base, a 64 mm base with a lieutenant, a banner bearer and mapper. I haven't made any good rules for these guys, so they are there for cosmetic purposes.

Harad. As you may have read on this blog, I have split up Fallen Realms into Rhûn and Harad. Harad gets the Corsairs (Umbar) and the half-trolls as well as the Mahûds. In this army, I have used Perry Miniatures' Somali Holy Warriors (Ansar) instead of official GW-models due to idiotic pricing from GW's side. In all honesty, fuck you Games Workshop.
     Again, due to camera-battery-malfunctions, the pictures with the kind of nice Mûmak was lost - it is in fact crewed with GW Mahûds! There are an unassembled Mûmak in my plastic-crack-container which I now and then look at but still holding out on.

Isengard. In this army we can find a few of my absolute favourite models/sculpts: The Uruk-hai Crossbow-men and the Uruk-hai Berserkers - absolutely wonderful models. Probably sculpted by the Perry brothers.

Mordor, Mordor on the wall, who is the biggest fairy of them all... this army, I'd say. It is unbeatable with it's cheaty formations and models.

Still a lot of work to be done with banners in Mordor. We'll see when I take the time to fix them. A couple of the trays were unpainted also, as it were, so that is something that I need to address.
    Too bad the picture quality is so bad, because I have made like 30-40 conversions in this army, not to mention the homemade trolls, the homemade Great Beast of Gorgoroth and the whole formation of ringwraiths, called (IIRC) The Nine are Abroad.

Rivendell. A smaller army with a bunch of conversions and some half-decent sculpting. I never got to implement the chariot and the white-water spawn in this list, but I am still considering to add it in my revised WotR-rules that will be released within the end of 2015, as promised.

A bunch of models are still unassembled for this army (and all the others) but I have now made ALL my armies playable (rules-wise) and painted all the bases, which turned out to be around 1900 models. Hence the somewhat lacking quality on some of the models.
   Have a nice weekend peeps.

The Hobbit pre-orders: Vanquishers of Mumbo-Jumbo.

New models from our old friend Games Workshop. God, I hate the corporate mood that emanates from this company... Nevertheless, here they are, Saruman the Wild, mr Flatnose and Galadriel Partyhardy-ripped-cloak.

For 430 SEK these three (3!) models are yours to put in your pocket and then forget about them, sit down and crush them.

Radagast looks fine though. Good for me as well, since I have planned to sculpt me a Radagast on eagle, so now I got me some blueprints.

Please, do scroll a bit further down and read the real post for this Friday, which of course is called "Thranduil and a whole lot of other stuff".

Thranduil and a whole lot of other stuff!

Major update here, folks. Let us start with the things that actually matter(-s?):

I've started converting and sculpting Thranduil on his big moose/stag. It looks more like a moose, based on the antlers - seeing as I am a Swede, I am expected to know my mooses, it is not always that simple; not yet a fully fledged hunter... Not even close, but I like to fire guns! Who doesn't!?

Kept at it with this little ducker -Thranduil, the sexy blonde guy, that is... Fixed his orchish forehead and also dabbled a bit with the fabric. I actually hanged/hung* my new curtains over a chair to see how the thin and Elvish fabric would fold itself. It helped very little - basically made my poor brain hurt a bit - and I am back at my old ways, which of course is winging it and "do it as it sort of kinda looks like".

*) When you put a rope on a person to kill him, he is getting hanged, but the same man could also be pretty well hung - a little remmber-rule for us non-native English speakers.

These models are not finished, especially not the bases.

Mr FoB was very kind and gave me a box of Mirkwood Palace Guard which I wished for my big B-day! My B-day was highly enjoyable affair, by the way - not to brag or anything, just letting you know something about my personal llama-life.
    This box of Mirkwood Elves made me take a good and long and presumably hard look at the Palace Guard captain I sculpted nearly from scratch a while back, before this whole mess with no-job-and-no-place-to-live-in-except-a-so-called-office-which-it-turns-out-was-really-a-storage-unit-but-let's-not-dwell-on-that-matter-anymore. I must say that the size isn't as big of a problem as I had thought, but his big head is!

The sprues of the Mirkwood Palace Guard shown above. Horrendously expensive, just 10 models, but really nice models. I got them for free, which was the only way I'd ever allow them inside my home. Now, I want to expand them into two trays: With just these 10 + 1 homemade captain (that is scheduled for head-replacement surgery within the end of this winter) and a maximum of 2 fillers**, I still lack one model... I'll have to either make some serious converting or sculpt my own. Now, when I have the original models in front of me, it should be easier...

**) My own, very personal rules for fillers.

I intend to expand and change my Wood Elf Edheldu themed army into a modular army that can work as either Mirkwood or Lorien, and the whole Edheldu idea will be scrapped. I'll keep the good parts, though.

My Arnor-project is not forgotten. Here is a command that I got for 45 SEK (good price!) that one day will be integrated in the now very slim "army". Also, I would very much appreciate if someone could help me crowbar Dale into an Arnor army list. Geographically, it is not an intuitive thing. Culturally, either... Hm... The reasoning behind this is that I'd like to have the Dalings and Arnor as an army, but I do not want micro-armies, with just four or five entries. Perhaps some sort of "Kingdoms of Old United" or some hay-straw argument.

 It would be fun to make a model based on golden Elrond... But not today or even this year.

Some personal stuff. When visiting a friend and also acting as a super-secret dealer, I stumbled upon this when we visited his friend. A Burberry cap! Devvo! We aren't allowed to have chavs in Sweden, for some reason... But apparently, we do have Burberry stuff.

When working in a small town far north of our sad capital Stockholm, I found this close to the bank I was going to pay a visit to (and give them a piece of my mind): Clit and Colour. It seems as not only Brazilian waxings are in fashion in northern Sweden, but also dying and other stuff - it is strange times to live in.

This Warhammer-dwarf was found in The Hobbit 3/III: The Battle of the Five Armies. If you know anyone that has made a sculpt out of this, please let me know - I'd like to make one myself. But his mount is sort of a deterrent, I much prefer the goat-things, rather than this WHFB-dwarf's boar...

This troll looks like an elderly man from Russia or rather Belorussia (White Russia, as we say here in Scandinavia). A sculpt based on these could work as a nice addition to the dark forces in Lord of the Rings as the fabled ogres (mentioned in the book!) or as a separate species, a mixture perhaps.

All these trolls couldn't be cave- or stone trolls now, could they? The sun is shining! I believe these are other types of trolls. Trolls that, to me, seems very friendly to DIY-sculpts! The only problem being their design is OtT and a bit childish. I did like them in the movie, but they still are mind-childs of Peter "OtT" Jackson. He just does that: Goes over the top, shouting: Tora - tora - tora!

Speaking of the movies, this one was unacceptable. I am tired of these bizzare torture-creatures, with their limbs removed and replaced with weapons. I know, the Angband-guys are a bad bunch of flutter-shutters, but still - why do the bad guys always have to be ugly and semi-stupid an treacherous and all that. I mean, of all the humans I have met, only the beautiful people have been really bad!

Couldn't stop me from getting this before it dissappears from the shelves. The price was discouraging, but not enough - also, the store owner has puppy eyes. But compared to what you could get...

Sprues for Galadhrim Knights for Lord of the Rings, in case someone wants to see them and googles it. They are also here to remind me to incorporate them somehow in this new, super big Woodland Elf-project... The problem is the paint scheme. I love gold, but the base of this combined and modular army is boring woodland browns and greens and black and a bit of blue...

The Haradrim boss will be assembled within end of summer 2015. Expect pictures of ALL the finished armies. I have managed to get a lot done when it comes to coherency of the different armies.

All said and told, this stupid troll with his super stupid Master Blaster-guys on top, could still be a viable DIY-project, since GW seems indifferent to the Hobbit/LotR-line. Not unexpected, but still a bit boring - but on the other hand, with the prices... I mean, come on, two Thai hookers for five nights AND all you can eat at Pradong Prawn Palace Bungalow!?

Lastly, I can happily inform that I have finished the base of my Dwarf army, and the only one not in the gang yet is the Loremaster.
    That is all for this Friday, now it is time for a hamburger or two. One down, one to go (sculpting, that is):