Helm Deep- FINISHED.

At last, i am finally finished. At least, the main structure is finished... there are still some final details that i need to get around to (a couple of doors/stairs etc.) but i'll get around to that in a couple of months time, for now i'm done :)

Bored of creating cliffs and itching to build something i started work on the causeway.

The causeway was built from scraps of polystyrene and then covered in polyfilla
(this time i chose to carve the brick work whilst it was drying which save ALOT of time!)

As i had predicted, creating a gradual slope whilst bending to one side was very challenging.

Once the filla was dry i undercoated it all with black paint.

Followed by a heavy drybrush with slate grey.

Back to the detailing, i textured the edges inside the keep with sand.

This looks abit odd now but once painted just adds texture.

Using woodland scenics liquid earth pigments (Burnt umber and slate grey) i began to paint the rocks.

This is an incredibly quick method of painting cast rocks and looks very realistic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SfP4RpcDYw  They have lots of videos
on youtube explaining how to use their products.

The one issue i encountered was that the pigments did not colour the polyfilla
i had used to fill the gaps between rocks. This was fixed later using watered down black paint.

Whilst fixing the rocks i undercoated the entire base black.

The inner walls were painted to match the deeping wall.

And the seams between the rocks and walls were tidied using watered down black paint.

The bridge was sanded to fit between the wall sections and then undercoated.

I drilled three small holes into the inner wall for the bridge to pin into place.

On the bridge, i drilled holes to match and glued in place pins made from paperclips.
This way the bridge could be removed for storage.

The bridge was a detail i almost left out, but i decided it would make an interesting gaming
element and i wanted to remain true to the weta original.

Supports were added to the inside of the keep to add some structural integrity.

The steps were cast and glued into place, later the polystyrene was polyfillered and the brickwork
carved (again whilst drying)

As a continued to raise the tower height, i began making a framework for the connecting rock face.

I remove the piece and began casting/shaping to rocks to fit. The rocks were attached with No more nails.

I tried to use up my spare rocks, including the originals i used when i was first experimenting
with colours. As a result this one ends up looking slightly different, but simply added to the realism. 

The rocks covered 3 sides of the framework and were fitted around the wall sections, tower and keep

Due to the weight of the section (all the sections end up very heavy) i had to add some supports inside.

Polyfilla was again used to fill in any gaps.

I added an old Eaglemoss figure to represent the statue of Helm Hammerhand.
I spray painted it at a later date.

Almost finished!!!!!
The Tower was primed and painted- the roof is even removable :)

I painted the rocks to match the others. (Notice the one which is slightly different)
I blended the two types with i few washes, to make it look more natural.

And with that, the fortress was finished!

It took me about 10 months, from start to finish.
(Although i did stop working on it for a few months in the middle)

At some point in the future i will probably redo the cliffs to the right of the fortress,
replacing them with cast rocks like the others.

I added three gargoyles/lions-head things to the keep for extra detail.

In the next couple of weeks i shall be inviting several friends around for the day to play a huge War Of The Ring battle on it, using adapted rules for sieges and special senario objectives etc. My younger brother and I did a play test of the game yesterday, which took about 7 hours- The basic rules work but some things did need slight altering to make the game more exciting/balanced.

I hope you enjoyed watching the build as it progressed and i think i've got the bug as i plan to host a couple of large scenario games throughout the year. Currently deciding between Orthanc/Isengard (including dam and orc mining scaffolds) or the Black Gate as my next big project.. Hmmmmm.. both have their merits but the idea of a dozen ents running around the board just makes me giggle like a little girl.

I shall try to take some pictures of the Big Game so you can all see it when its covered in painted troops and being attacked by approximately 400 orcs/uruks (still painting most of them though!)

Please feel free to comment/share or ask me question if want..

Until next time :)

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.

Empire Witch-Hunter

I wonder if you can guess what this post will be about... ? .... 

any ideas? .. ogres perhaps? .. more maneaters maybe?.. 

AHA!.. you have fallen foul to my masterfully conceived trap!!! Mwhahahaha...

yeah.. i agree, lets cut the melodrama.. 

so to business...

today we have, the 'new' empire witch hunter!

i've had this model since it came out a few months ago.. i actually pre-ordered it.. not that i intended to use one in my army, i just liked the model (although he does currently act as my general of the empire)..  

I also painted this model more or less as soon as i got it.. which means this is hardly an up-to-date post, i just didn't have any photos of it until now...
I chose to stray from the GW paint scheme slightly as i didn't want him to be overbearingly red.. i was aiming for a slightly more 'Van helsing' type look.. although i still wanted to hint my armies colours.

This model was actually the first finecast model i ever bought and i have to say that sadly it lives up to its rather unfortunate internet nickname 'crapcast' (and all the other variations). The model needed a fair bit of green stuffing to repair it.. such as fixing the cloak (which had a big hole in it), the hat (which was broken) and rightside of his face and nose (which was just a mess) and countless air bubbles across the model. Although this was fairly easily solved with some greenstuff and abit of patience, its still not the sort of thing you want to be required to do to a new model. It did however give me a chance to try out the liquid greenstuff for the first time and i have to say i liked it alot, makes filling in gaps alot easier and quicker!
This model was also the first time i tried out the army painter quick-shade system, which i've already spoken about in another post... although as it was the first time i tried it, i did nearly completely ruin the model...
let me explain..
I spent ages painting up the model, applying my own highlights and shading as normal, with the intention of using quick-shade to add further definition. After dipping the model and letting it dry i realised that i'd forgotten it would come out shiny.. so i bought some army painter matt varnish spray and coated the model the same way i would with games workshop primers.. and watched in horror as the heavy coat wrinkled and deformed. As a result i had to carefully scratch of the wrinkly bits, reapply some of the paint, brush on the quick-shade in those places and then lightly 'dust' with matt varnish. I should note that i don't blame the products (which are excellent) it was simply me being a ponce!

So yeah.. thats it for this post!
i've got some more models ready to blog but need to grab the camera first..
so i'll try and upload something next week!
   

   

 

Maneater conversions- Boxing ogre

Well, as promised i have another maneater... the boxer!

If your anything like me.. which to be fair, your probably not..
you would have picked up the ogre bulls box, examining the ironfists on the sprues.. and gone straight for the one that looks like a solid iron boxing glove (probably whilst mouthing the lyrics to the final verse of a certain Simon and Garfunkel song.. i'm sure you can figure out which one)

well this gave me an idea.. how about an ogre, that is so confident/violent/psychotic that instead of dispatching his enemies with a sword, or even perhaps an axe.. he would much rather bludgeon them to death with his own, allbeit metal encased, hands..

naturally, he would have to be a maneater..

this 'conversion' was very easy.. really more of a kit bashing than anything else.. it uses the body and ironfists from the ogre bulls set and the head and arms from the mournfang box.. as i found the arms were generally more dramatically posed than in the bulls box..

A very small amount of greenstuff was needed to fill in the gaps between the arms and the body.. clearly games workshop didn't consider interchangeable parts when they made this set.. but it was easy enough to sort out so can't really complain..

more greenstuff was needed to cover up the right hand... as all the ironfists where made to be left handed.. apparently there aren't many ambidextrous ogres wondering around the place.. so a small blob which i flattened out and voila problem solved. 

Alot of the character of this maneater however will have to come out in the painting and basing... i plan to paint him splattered with blood (although trying to figure out how to make it look right, as alot of blood effects on models look terrible) and i'm thinking maybe a rather battered looking body lying on the floor in front of him..
 

i don't know when i'll post something next, as i'm away all weekend.. but i'll try and get something up on monday.. I just finished 3 ironguts today, so they will be added to the mounting list of models i've yet to blog..  on the brightside, it gives you all something to look forward to.. in theory

let me know what you think of the maneaters so far.. i've just figured out an outline for the last 2 and am also considering converting my own tyrant as i'm not overly keen on the gamesworkshop one..

stay tuned.

Maneater conversions- Tribal ogre

Well, with this unemployment comes more modeling madness, specifically more ogre maneaters. Being a crafty whatsit however i'm going to blog them individually- so that i don't have one HUGE post and then nothing for a few months- you'll just have to deal with the installments.

unlike the last conversion, this one is actually completely my own creation (from ideas to modeling), although i have no doubt that someone somewhere has probably done this already.

The idea was for a tribal, almost native American ogre.. hence the headdress and the tomahawk. The advantage of this particular conversion is that he can also be used as the musician for my Maneater unit...

This ogre was actually very easy to make... and only involved a minor amount of greenstuff work. It was simply a case of modeling a headband and some feathers (although as this was the first time i've tried this.. i'm be interested to see how they will look painted).. and creating a tomahawk out of and ogre sword and a banner pole from the ogre bulls kit.

Despite its simpleness, i like it.. and plan to paint him covered in tribal tattoos to really complete the look!

Things to look forward to.. i have finished two more maneaters and painted my empire witch hunter!.. so expect another post next week sometime..  

In the meantime, let me know what you think.. comments and criticisms are always welcome!

Maneater conversions- 1st of many.. The Shaman

As i mentioned before i've been working on converting my ogre bulls, from the battalion set, into Maneaters!
The finished unit will include 6 and i want them to be as diverse and characterful as possible ... i want them to look like they have traveled and fought in many different lands.

The design for the first one i cannot take credit for.. the original was made by 'Lew_b81' over at warseer... http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?250907-Ogre-Maneaters/page11  .. I've found that although i am capable of doing the conversions i struggle to come up with good ideas to make cool looking miniatures.. so for now I'm stealing them..

I thought Lew_b81's truth-sayer/shaman ogre was awesome, in fact i thought all of his ogres were awesome.. so i'd definitely recommend checking them out! 

As you can see it basically involved reshaping his right arm, using greenstuff to sculpt a new shoulder and the muscles in the arm... so that he had his staff (a tomb kings banner with the skull from the ogre bulls standard .. minus the horns.. and a gorgons earings).. resting on his neck. and a big ass rock on his back held on by a greenstuff belt-type-thing.

Getting the rock right was actually alot harder than i was expecting.. and in the end i decided the best way was to not be a perfectionist and to just attack it with a pair of clippers and see what happens.. also it very easy to forget how small these models are ..(even ogres).. and so it took a while to get it looking proportioned.

Rather annoyingly.. i spent a long time sculpting the muscles on his right am only to have them covered later by the straps.. but nevermind.. overall i'm very happy with it and will come up with some ideas of my own.. i've already started a native red Indian ogre which i came up with the concept for, so hopefully i'll get that uploaded soon..

in the meantime, feel free to comment...
if you have any ideas for cool maneaters let me know.. I'm thinking pirate, cowboy, boxer, maybe a skyrim related one... who knows..