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 weetyskemian44 wrote:
Aha so this is why you've taken so long on the tank! You've been busy. Nice cultists! Always wanted to paint those.

Yes, this is my little bit of paid modelling on the side.
Thanks Weety. Yes, the cultists are quite fun to paint and would work well with your painting style.

So as a change of pace and now that the tank is finished, it's time for the next set of models to paint and sell and these are Hobbits!

And they are the hobbits as well.
Judging from what they are wearing, that they have swords and Frodo appears to be clinging on to the ring, I have reasoned that they are at Weathertop and Frodo is a couple of minutes away from being stabbed.

I'm therefore going to make their bases to match the ground in Weathertop, which is mostly square slabs with a bit of gravel, some rocks and the occasional dead-looking plant.

At first I was lost for how to do the bases as they are slot-type bases and the models are metal. Not having worked in metal before I didn't want to mess about trying to remove the tabs and trying to get pieces of card (my first idea for doing the slabs with) to fit about the feet and not look like pieces of card was going to be difficult. So instead I covered the bases in milliput and I'm going to be carving the details into that.

This is where they are at the moment. I've only cut the edges of the slabs, there is more to do yet. Hopefully you agree that they look like they are standing on the bases.


Progress as and when it is done.

Also; both the cultists and Kranon are still available and there is still plenty of boxes and bathroom items available. Thanks.

Progress on the Hobbits.
I've finished making the bases for them by adding a sprinkling of dried paint, a few larger chunks, and some small lumps of sponge and paintbrush bristles for plant life (of which there isn't much on Weathertop).


I've now started to colour them in.
I'm going to work on them one at a time to give them the proper attention required to take them up to Gold level.

In other news; the Cultists have sold.
But poor Ol' Kranon is still looking for a loving home.

Painting progress on Merry. Still more to do and a few things to touch up before the end.


Thanks

Nice work. Again great colour scheme goin on.

I hope you got good pennies for the cultists, they where brilliant.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Nice work. Again great colour scheme goin on.

Thanks. I'm going very official with these. I'm using screenshots and official photos for reference.

I hope you got good pennies for the cultists, they where brilliant.

Not quite as much as we were originally asking, but the highest of the offers we received. Thanks.

Nice progress on the Halfling, will be following and taking notes!

Cheers on the sale, too.

 Littletower wrote:
Nice progress on the Halfling, will be following and taking notes!

Cheers on the sale, too.

Thanks LT.

Here's Merry finished with... for now (I may touch up a few things once they are all done, the back of his hair for one).
He's been a tricky little wossname to photograph. He was either out of focus or his face was just WHITE.


The bases will all be done together so they all match.

I will now start on Pippin.

Ah! He iss doing them sneasky hobtsses! they will steal me preshusssss!

Indeed I am, Shas... and I hope they do (or at least lead to me receiving something of value).

Here's progress on Pippin.

There's a great deal more detail on Pippin then there was on Merry. He also appears to be wearing two cloaks for some reason... Can't see it in any photos/screenshots I've found, so will assume the sculptor got carried away.

Also, here's an example of something you can do with one of my boxes.

That's a single box kit, together with it's textured sprue. The possibilities are endless... almost.

And Pippin is (mostly) done.


Next up will be Samwise the brave...

Wow, they really went out to make Sam as background/normal a character as they could for the films. He's basically various shades of browny-grey.
Merry has his Yellow waistcoat, Pippin has a red cloak, both have green jackets, and Frodo is practically technicoloured in comparison to them... and Sam is just browny-grey.

Anyway, progress on Norm Sam;

I even made some the (many) things he's carrying more brown and less grey to give him some colour...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And done(ish).


I'll start on Frodo tomorrow.

Feel free to comment at any time.
Thanks.

Here's progress on Frodo.


Thanks.

Remember, GW used pre-production casting photos for the sculptors. Pippin was probably wearing the coat in one of those, then they scrapped it mid-filming for some camera reason. If you have the extended DVD, there are hours and hours of filming footage and behind the scenes stuff on there.

Also, in post-production, they colorize and filter the film, so a lot of the colors get washed and muted at that point.

edit:
Here he wears his coat

Yeah, I've been using many different pictures to get an average for the colours on each of them. That's actually a larger version of one of the pictures I have, thanks.

Not coat, cloak. Look down by his ankles on the model and you see it stops twice. It's more obvious from the side as well.

Ahh yeah...hmmm....maybe it was for mold-making purposes? I dunno
Maybe that is his Took-tex layer

Those sure are some hobbits. That box is resin, then?

dsteingass wrote:Ahh yeah...hmmm....maybe it was for mold-making purposes? I dunno
Maybe that is his Took-tex layer

Yeah, I just thought it was strange. Lol, yep maybe it's that.

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:Those sure are some hobbits. That box is resin, then?

They are indeed.
Yes, the boxes and all my other things are all resin.

And now Frodo.
I'm going to have to re-visit his face before the end as he currently looks like "evil Frodo"... Although he is clutching the ring... nah, it's not quite right yet.
What's more annoying, is that he looks ok from the sides, it's just front-on...


And a shot with them all together again, and a SM to show how small these little buggers are.


They will now progress together with the bases and final touch-ups.

So, in scale then? Nice to know that the sculptors can do that sort of thing.

Good progress.

Never liked Frodo. Such a weenie.

 Red Harvest wrote:
So, in scale then? Nice to know that the sculptors can do that sort of thing.

Indeed they are and they're not bad likenesses considering how small they are. Won't stop me complaining about how blooming tiny they are to paint.

Good progress.

Never liked Frodo. Such a weenie.

Thanks.
Ha, you're with Vik there then. Not feeling the love for Frodo

Progress;
Bases are now painted and (you can't really tell from the photos) covered with gloss to make them look wet. You can just about see the reflection of Merry and Sam in their bases in the top picture.
I've also touched up the skin on them.

Still to do is finish off the plants on the bases and the final highlights on all of them. Then a quick check over and they'll be done.

Thanks.

I read somewhere that the movie studio was quite particular about scale and accuracy of the minis. Weren't these Perry sculpts? That would explain the quality.

I met the Perrys at the Baltimore Game's Day in 2002. Really decent blokes (?), chaps (?) --not sure which is the nicer description.

I like the earth tones for these guys. I would worry about them being overlooked on the tabletop though...

Yeah, I figured they would be ratling sized, after all, the IG ratlings are based on those guys, them sneaksy hobbitses!

Red Harvest wrote:I read somewhere that the movie studio was quite particular about scale and accuracy of the minis. Weren't these Perry sculpts? That would explain the quality.

I met the Perrys at the Baltimore Game's Day in 2002. Really decent blokes (?), chaps (?) --not sure which is the nicer description.

I like the earth tones for these guys. I would worry about them being overlooked on the tabletop though...

I don't know where they came from and I forgot to make a note of what it said on the tabs before gluing them in.

I use blokes and chaps interchangeably. *shrugs*

I decided to go for as original as possible with the colour scheme to appeal to gamers and collectors equally. Will have to see how it pays off.

shasolenzabi wrote:Yeah, I figured they would be ratling sized, after all, the IG ratlings are based on those guys, them sneaksy hobbitses!

Sometimes scale is important, even to GW.

They are done. I have to stop before I start making them worse. You can fiddle only so long.


These will be up on eBay soon.

C+C welcome.
Thanks.

Look really good. seem to be nice, true-looking sculpts, and the paintjob does justice to the "real" (as in close to reference) look.

Frodo still looks a slightly evilish IMHO (and that's a comment from some one with a very limited painting skill, so take it please with more than a pinch of salt), and i don't recall - from the book, mostly, over the movie - than at Weathertop the ring had already taken such a toll on him, but I might be wrong about that, too. And it might be due to the sculpt, and not the paint, too.

Overall great job, and there's hoping for a quick sale!

 Littletower wrote:
Look really good. seem to be nice, true-looking sculpts, and the paintjob does justice to the "real" (as in close to reference) look.

Frodo still looks a slightly evilish IMHO (and that's a comment from some one with a very limited painting skill, so take it please with more than a pinch of salt), and i don't recall - from the book, mostly, over the movie - than at Weathertop the ring had already taken such a toll on him, but I might be wrong about that, too. And it might be due to the sculpt, and not the paint, too.

Overall great job, and there's hoping for a quick sale!

Thanks LT.

Yeah, he does a bit and I've tried so many things to get him to look better. As good as the sculpting is, it is a little off on his face. It's probably a casting issue really.The most obvious thing is that his right nostril is 4 times the size of his left nostril and it's his right eye I've been having the most problem with also. Not to make excuses for my painting skill (or lack thereof). His face has gone through stages of looking like he's had a stroke, to being evil, to having black eyes (one or both), to what I have here.

The other challenge (rather than call it a problem) with Frodo's face was that his hair reaches right down to his eyes and to both corners, with only a couple of small breaks where you can see his eyebrows. So it's difficult to get a good contrast between his sockets and his brow without giving him black eyes and to soften the edges of his eyes, which would help to make him look less evil.

So yeah, it was a challenge to paint these up well, but I did my best.

You're right about the ring. Weathertop is early on (just after Bree) and the ring is only just starting to show it's influence. However, at this point, they are being attacked by the Nazgul and this brings out a strong effect in the ring and Frodo becomes protective of it and attempts to use it to hide from the Nazgul (and therefore see's their ethereal visages. He refuses to give up the ring and is stabbed as a consequence.

Fantastic Hobbitses! I ended up inadvertently filling in Bilbo's face details with paint!

 dsteingass wrote:
Fantastic Hobbitses! I ended up inadvertently filling in Bilbo's face details with paint!

Thanks Dave.
Yeah, that's always a danger with fine detail.

Lovely halflings Doc. Tiny little wee folk. The colours are a match and I love your weathertop bases

Frodo is a bit of a dweeb in the films, maybe they over emphasised his cuteness. I'm sure in the book he is supposed to be stronger, taller and more adventurous than the other hobbits because of his fallohide ancestry.

I heard that Elijah Wood didn't need a hobbit size body double as he is already only 3' tall. But I would never spread such scandalous lies, he must be at least 4'5"

 weetyskemian44 wrote:
Lovely halflings Doc. Tiny little wee folk. The colours are a match and I love your weathertop bases

Thanks Weety.

Frodo is a bit of a dweeb in the films, maybe they over emphasised his cuteness. I'm sure in the book he is supposed to be stronger, taller and more adventurous than the other hobbits because of his fallohide ancestry.

I heard that Elijah Wood didn't need a hobbit size body double as he is already only 3' tall. But I would never spread such scandalous lies, he must be at least 4'5"

lol
Frodo does start out as more adventurous than the average Hobbit, which he gets from Bilbo (who started off as reluctant to adventure, but got a taste for it).

I think they did exaggerate the change in him to a whiny, selfish, brat by the end to show the toll the ring had on him. He was early on the path towards becoming what Smeagol became. You can take more time with the subtleties in a book then you can in a film (or 3 as it happens) and you can read the thoughts of the characters (which doesn't always work in a film), which have to be acted out in a film.

In the same way, they exaggerated the plainness of Sam (poor ol' browny-grey sam), to downplay that he is the true hero of the story.
Saw this while looking for inspiration: