The start of the big project! - Helms Deep

Well look at this.. two posts in one week!!
hmmm... I wonder how long I'll keep this up for.
:-)

Anyway, I mentioned in my last post that I had started a big new project- exciting stuff huh?!


And so here it is..

Yep, thats right..
Helms deep (i realise you could probably guess from the posts title, but meh).
The basic plan is to make a helms deep gaming board large enough to play War of the ring, lotr sbg and possibly even Warhammer on. This means that it has to be fairly big! After all, recreating the battle of helms deep would be rather underwhelming if it was only just about big enough to hold a few troops- wouldn't it!

In fact the size has to be quite specific, as in order to play war of the ring- a gaming system i've recently started playing alot- the walls, causeway and interior have to be big enough for the company movement trays to fit on/in.

The first thing to do was decide what i'm going to make it out of.
Years ago i actually made a helms deep board using polystyrene, but as i was very young at the time it was abit crap. But i did learn alot about working with polystyrene and its limitations. Although cheap and light it was also very fragile and didn't look very realistic.

So i started looking into alternative materials, such as foam board etc. That's when i stumbled across this stunning helms deep board -->

This beautiful piece of art was made By Onyx and i hope he doesn't mind me posting a picture of it on here without permission but it is so good i just had to upload it.
I will however give him a proper shout out by posting this link to his blog where he explains how he went about building it.
http://onyxworkshop.wordpress.com/about/helms-deep/

The great thing about his blog is that it details the entire build, from start to finish, and therefore practically gives me a step-by-step guild to try and build my own. Onyx's board was built from plaster, cast largely from Hirst arts molds (or is it moulds?). The good thing about Plaster is that its durable, widely available and easy to work with. And casting it using the Hirst Arts molds means that every section is identical, even if i'd have to build it Brick by boring brick. It was at this stage where i couldn't decide whether or not i should cast the bricks using resin or plaster.. resin is lighter and maybe stronger, i don't really know, but i have no experience using it.. whereas I've cast using plaster before- albeit years ago. So after a trip to the local hobby store i decided to sit on the fence and buy resin-plaster :-D (by gedeo if your interested)

Now then, i have no intention of building a carbon copy of onyx's board... As awesome it is, i'd like to put some of my own ideas into it and since i'd specifically like to play war of the ring on it, it'll have to be a bit different anyway.  Not only this, but i want to include my Resin Helms deep gatehouse that i bought from games workshop years and years ago.
 
This will save me all the hassel of having to build my own gatehouse, but does mean that my hornburg will be larger- as the walls curve much more gradually.

The next step was to buy all the molds i would need and the plaster..

Hirst Arts do a fantastic range of molds and although fairly expensive (particularly when considering shipping to the UK) are well worth the money and i highly recommend them. With the price in mind however, i wanted to keep my molds used down to a minimum and so after some careful consideration i chose the four which would be most useful and ordered them.

 


In the picture on the right you can see the molds :-)


They are:
Basic Block Mold #40   
Octagon Tower Mold #63 
8″ Round Tower Mold #64    
Wall Builder Mold #200     




Once i had everything i needed i started casting blocks over the course of the next couple of weeks, whilst experimenting with different ratio's of water vs plaster, to get the strongest cast.

  




Well, thats gonna be about it for now, as it's late, I'm tired and this post is already longer than i had intended anyway. 
 I shall post again either later this week or early next week- I've actually made quite abit of progress with this project already and would like to try and get the blog up to date- Stay tuned and all that jazz.

    

And we're back! - Goblin Shaman

Right..
so after an absolute age of no new posts (tbh i even forgot i had a blog)
i have decided to resurrect the old thing and hopefully get into the habit of posting on a regular basis- i know, i know.. we've all heard that one before, right? 

But anyway, now that my friends and fellow gamers/modelers/painters are spread out around the country, at uni and other things, it makes sense that i start posting pics of what I'm getting up to these days, so that they can have a gander at them and feel comforted in the fact that i haven't given up on the hobby altogether.

So to kick off.. we have my Goblin Shaman for my planned Orcs and Goblins army..

Goblin Shaman.

I actually bought this guy ages ago, when the new models came out..
(I also bought the big boss, cos both models looks very cool in my opinion) 
 However i have literally only just got around to painting either of them as i took a break from painting and instead pretty much just started collecting every army i could possibly think of. 


The interesting thing about this particular model is that i tried out a new technique (well for me anyway) and painted him using pretty much only washes and glazes.

Now, I've used washes before.. in fact they're one of my favorite painting techniques..
but I've always used them in moderation, whereas for this guy i wanted to see if i could make a model look decent using them almost exclusively.  

A close-up on the cloak (or is it a cape? hmm..)

Fortunately Games Workshop do an excellent range of washes and glazes, which i have only recently had the pleasure of trying.
(Up to now I've always made my own but that requires more effort and produces a far inferior effect).

One thing i found with using washes to paint an entire model is that the model has to be primed using white (or a similarly light colour). This means that when the wash flows into the recesses, it leaves the raised edges much lighter but still stains them the colour your using.

This is most pronounced on the cloak and skin. 

Fortunately for me, I always prime using white anyway.


The Cloak was painted using progressively heavier layers of Druchii Violet and Carroburg Crimson (love these two colours). These were applied directly over the white primer, without any base coats. The Druchii Violet was painted directly into the deepest recesses and allowed to pool towards the base of the cloak. 

The cloak is personally my favorite part of the model, and i was very happy with the end result.. plus it was crazy quick to do and took almost no effort, a definite win :-)

The other noteworthy part of the model is probably the skin. Unfortunately, i can't remember exactly how i did this, as i paint pretty much every green-skin model differently, however, i believe it was just a number of washes of Biel-Tan green.. although it is entirely possible that there was a base coat 'wash' of watered down goblin green first.

The picture to the right demonstrates how the washes leave the uppermost raised edges much lighter, almost white, and therefore if done correctly can completely negate the need to use time consuming highlighting techniques.

Apart from those parts already mentioned, there wasn't really much to this model..

The hair was painted the same way as the cloak (this will likely be the colour i use to tie my whole army together),
the vest thing was painted using Guilliman Blue
the rocks were simply painted codex grey
and the bones/ropes etc.
were just left white.

The entire model was then finished in my usual way- with Army painter quick shade, strong tone- this added further definition to the recesses and darkened the overly bright nature of the washes straight over the white primer.

Finally the base was painted with watered down Abaddon Black and the model was given a couple of coats with the army painter anti-shine matt vanish.

Altogether i am very pleased with the look of the lil guy and he only took me a couple of hours to paint, if that!!

Like i said at the start of the post, i will try and get into the habbit of uploading more regularly as i have some extra hobby time now, which i'm using to get some old models painted as well as starting a few new exciting projects (well really, one BIG one).. but i'll go into that in the next post :-)

As before feel free to comment, I'd love to know what you all think.