Mordor Corpse Ship

The Raider is propelled by a form of dark magic, chanelled through an unsound rock that makes anyone not aligned with the Dark Forces feel tainted and dirty, like he is covered in grime. The rock was found and twisted into it's current form at roughly the same time as the Scara-hai made their Andraug, the Walking Wolf. This one's bigger though. Construction of the ship was led by the same sect of orcs, on orders of a high lieutenant of Sauron. 

When on sea it reanimates the deep sea creature's fins and tail-fin and the disgusting, smelling corpse raider can reach a formidable 8-9 knots depending on currents and winds. The orcs serving aboard do it very, very reluctantly but have been chosen for their ability to actually withstand the open seas without being too incapacitated. The Mordor Corpse Raider strikes at dawn and at dusk, with her crew avoiding the plague of the sun as much as possible. With the keen night-sight of the orcs they can easily spot the human vessels before being spotted.

The Mordor Raider's purpose is basically raiding and sea-brigadeering (pirating?).

Before going into the Work In Progress-pictures (WIP:s), these are some of the details still left to add. It's insides are basically empty, and I am not sure how much I want to detail it... If at all necessary...

This project have generated heaps of trash. Handfuls of balsa, paper and polymer clay pieces are now littering my apartment.

After building the basic shape in artist's card and sculpting it's head and the cut-off rib-cage bones I promptly added the sagging skin and flesh that we could see in the update before this one. After that I added walls between the large bones of the deep-sea mega fish that was trapped and ritualistically killed by one of Sauron's most feared servants: Mag'ul of the East. A dangerous acolyte of the dark magic. Perhaps he was once a human, or even one of those very few magically inclined half-orcs...

Ma'gul and his apprentices were the ones that constructed the unsound tower, which is why it looks radically different from the rickety construction of the beast-ship's hull, which was built by snagas and orcs.

My reasoning for using lasercut masonite for the tower was I wanted it to really stand out, like it was something special. Additionally, it serves to straighten up the design slightly: The ship might look like a hodge-podge and I have consciously tried to tone down most high fantasy aspects and restrain myself with the weirdness and disgusting details: You will find no entrails etc in this project, because I want to find a nice balance between the pragmatic militarism of the orcs and the weirdness of the sick ship itself.

After detailing the ship further with two plastic pieces from the Warhammer Light-Planet Empire-wagon-thingie (which was added for a gothic, Mordorian touch as well as to give the "ship" a more civilized look) I started with the "metal" defenses that crown it's outer hull of wood and bone and thick skin.

Made ten of those...
 

... and mounted them...

... and added further details, such as 3D-printed chains (I am very proud of designing those myself in Sketchup and then printing them, very satisfying even though they are super simple - but I am very new to this, soooo...).

Made the head detachable during construction, might attach it later. You can notice that the orcs have chained the ugly deepwater beast's jaws together, and on the inside they have reinforced it with wood and leather and tar.


My question to you, dear reader: Where should the dark tower be placed - front, end or somewhere in the middle, and if so, where in the middle, more to the aft or the other direction?

Please leave a comment with regards to the placement of the unsound tower... or if you have anything else to add.

Next up: Painting the Mordor Corpse Ship/Mordor Raider/Mordor Corpse Raider.

Mordor Raider!

Some WIPs... made the bones separately, glued them with plastic glue against the really nice and durable artist's card that I prefer to use... Super sculpey is comparatively cheap and I generally use aluminium foil to get a basic shape and then sculpt the polymer clay around it and harden it with a heat gun.

Added a brand: A red eye of Sauron.
 

Just thought this old gem would be suitable in these times of all the racist attacks that are happening in Sweden and Europe in general against the native populations.

After getting all the basic pieces done I added skin fold between the saw-off bones.
 

It is a hassle to keep them from getting loose from one another. Really annoying. Added a little height-helper to keep track of where the next level of the ship should be...

... and then I added the artificial walls that snagas raised and hammered into the fish-beast's old bones and skin and rotting flesh.
 

This part is what made me go blogpost... not really looking forward to integrate the soft, melting GW-plastic to the curing temperatory of 133 C for sculpey. The polystyrene that GeeDubb uses melts at around 140 C I think, and starts to warp at 105-115 C, IIRC. The sculpey just melts and burns at roughly 200 C, and it needs to be at least 133 C to cure, so you can see the problems here.

To solve it, I will mount temporary sticks to act as walls and sculpt rotting skin towards said sticks and then remount the plastic walls (which I want for a number of reasons, but most importa=ntly for the way they juxtaposition themselves designwise (not sure if I used "juxtaposition" correctly here).
 

Let's end with funnies:
 

Sculpting a Corpse Ship

The Haradrim Slaver is basically done, I'll give it a few layers of paint later. Today I am sculpting a bit on the Corpse Ship. The design comes from a mixture of old fantasy tropes, the Warhammer game with ships (you know, the Skaven ship) and most of all from the Kickstarter with the ships, whatever the name is... 

Not sure which faction this one will be aligned to, but it has given me some very slight enjoyment to sculpt. At least I did not want to claw my eyes out of boredom when doing it. Some super annoying small birds are constantly chirping outside of my window, and everytime I go out to chase them away some fucking annoying lady is watching me. The other neighbours (unemployed fucks) are also watching me. I want to live in a cabin in the woods. Obviously there would be no birds around me then.

Some WIP:s in no special order. Above, some sculpey teeth are being fitted.
 

With "skin" rather than scales for various reasons. Used the soft version of sculpey to easier see where the cured sculpey were and which parts were soft during sculpturation.
 

The head fits well. Going to work on the tail part or maybe the walls of the ship, the "hull".

Some more progress pictures, to show how a big head like this can be quite easy to do as long as you do it in little pieces.
 

An ugly version when I tried to get a general view on how tall the head should be. Haradrim slaver-crew depicted for size comparison.

Bye.

Harad Slave Ship

Wihoo! Just wanted to add this lady to the front of the post to get better views on m'blog m'lady. It is really been falling apart, the page views, after g00gle decided to fuck me over for talking pol-stuff.

Slaver ship being pulled by dolphins or something. I do not like to make ships with sails because they take up too much space...

... and hence these convoluted solutions to the ships' locomotion.

 As a comment on the racist terrorist attacks in Europe these last few years... with an Ardian spin on it...

Observe the nice heavy duty chains that goes into the water, these chains keep the animal in control and allows for the Harad beastmaster to decide where to go.

Funny thing with the picture above is that Sweden was fuuuuucked already in 2005. Look at the stats below - it was a hassle indeed to get that data from the greedy hands of the official statistical bureau of Swedistan.

In 1955 there were 7,5 million Swedes, and the health-system was rudimentary - despite the basic trauma-care that existed, we still had super low levels of "deadly violence". Today, the amount of people within Sweden's borders are around 10 million but the deadly violence is just soaring. I wonder what happened... no, I don't wonder, I know what happened.

Slaver of Harad

As J ordered me to do crew, I have went through my streamlined collection of plastic and metal (lots still in original boxes, which gives me pleasure for some reason) and found some Haradrim warriors. Bosuns are from the Corsair list, Umbar perhaps, so we shall settle for something more simple and rough since Harad isn't well known for it's mighty fleets. Basic crew with light weaponry, some form of captain and a whoooole lot of over-theming. That's one of the few reasons I enjoy doing these boats, the overtheming.

Just woke up however, feeling like above... but it's getting better.

Just going to prepare my best brushes for the upcoming painting of the Haradrim crew (not depicted in this post since I have just literally put them on my desk). These brushes came yesterday in the Swedish shit-mail and are made out of tiger-hair, highest quality 10/10 would paint again.
 

Why is it so silly, and where are the masts? Well ask again Einstein because those questions are defective. This ship will be pulled by trained water-beasts-of-burden. OBVIOUSLY! Super high fantasy but totally fine in Middle-Earth - remember that the elves' had their ships pulled by swans!

Hence the weird bigly platforms: That is where the beast controllers will stand with rods and ropes to prod the fasto-dolphonons (like dolphins but bigger) in case they don't stop and ram the pier instead of slowly pulling in.
 

 Just some random memes. OMG im so random lolz

 Which is what I did this weekend...

I am off, just like the old rocket V2 lady...

... but not before unrevealing the big project that no one have waited for: Tah daaaah! It is the rotting fish corpse boat! At least the beginning of it. But who shall crew it? Half-orcs?