Refreshing old LoTR

Hello World, it’s bee a while, but I have been continuing to work on my LoTR collection slowly, as time allows. This session I wanted to broach the subject of “hobby fear”.  So I have been wanting to add Shelob to my collection for a while now and GW do a nice metal mini, but I am not a big fan of the default pose and wanted to do something more in line with the movie scenes.

This is where the fear comes in. I’m pretty happy with the usual process; buy model, assemble model, paint model. What I wanted to do was something outside of this and my normal comfort zone. To that end I began by cleaning up all the pieces and trying to figure out what went where:

I spent a couple of evening trying out different posing and basing options. This took quite some time, I cut and re-positioned numerous legs and spent a good couple of hours trying out different options. I wanted to elevate her, but doing a full on cave whilst keeping the model on a playable sized base was a comprimise. I learned from my Witch King that really big bases in LoTR are not your friend. All the while, I felt “the fear”, a little voice in the back of my head kept saying => do the default pose, you’ll only ruin it. I stuck with it however, and after a few nights had a base and a pose that I was happy with.

I’m not going to lie, the models sat like this for probably nearly a year just collecting dust. I kepy putting off starting on them because I was increasingly concerned about messing the models up. I made excuses, like “I need to work on this or that”, or I didn’t really have a plan and every colour scheme that I came up with didn’t seem to work out to look like what I really wanted. So I decided to watch the film scenes a few times. After 3 or 4 watchings of Sam’s heroic fight, I finally worked up the courage to paint the model and did so in the space of one evening.

Once I started I forgot about all the psychological stuff and just reverted to type, slowly painting through the model that I love. I know that there are going to be better paint jobs out there than mine, but she has turned out just the way that I wanted and hopefully next time I won’t be quite so daunted by approaching big, centre piece models.

If you’ve ever had a similar issue with a model then let me know, if you have any top tips, they are always apprecaited.

Cheers,

HMD.

Happy Christmas fellow beasts. It has been a while, but I have been working on my LoTR collection this year, just been a bit lax updating this hobby blog, so wanted to add a couple of pictures of the latest additions to my collection. I hope that you are all safe and well and that Santa brought you whatever Tiny Fighting Men bring you happiness.

My son loves Bill, he is his favourite character, so painting him was particularly enjoyable for me. I’ve been working on a couple of my other favourite models and hoping that the rest of the holidays will give me some time to finally finish them off too.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Happy Easter Beasts!!!! I hope that your Easter is healthy, safe and filled with relaxing Hobby. Although mine has been somewhat busier that I might have liked, I have managed to work on my “Pile-O-Shame” a bit. With some free time I wanted to try and build a centrepiece for my new Mordor army and re-create one of my favourite scenes from TTT with the Witch King and Frodo (You know the scene). I am not a confident conversion specialist and marvel at the skills of people like Tomas Mennes who seem to be able to form models into amazing positions and make bases out of junk like a Blue Peter Wizard. But needs must, so I grabbed a bunch of very old Hirtarts plaster casted blocks and created something that looks a little bit like a section of Osgiliath.

This lead me to the Fellbeast conversion. I’m not going to lie, this was a total B*#^&rd. It took me a very long time and I’m still not happy with it however, it involved the removal of both legs and the re-positioning of both feet, one of which had to be rebuilt entirely from scratch. I also had to sculpt, which is something that I am woeful at, I suck at just filling in gaps – basic tutorial would be apprecaited here @avernos. However after much swearing and cursing and recutting and repositioning I ended up with a position that wasn’t overly awful and that got painted using Pete the Wargamers tutorial verbatim. I also used @civilcourage advice and purchased a static grass applicator especially for basing this model.  If you haven’t tried one out then I would recommend checking out his 5th Edition project where he goes into some detail on how he achieves massively impressive results with his bases. Would stronglt recommend checking this out. Finally a good friend of mine said the base looked a little empty, so he gave me an old Frodo model of his, which I stripped using the technique described earlier and added to the base.

Even though I am still not 100% on the posing of the model, it really is the best job that I could do with my limited conversion and modelling skills. I think that I am going to have a break from conversion now and go back to painting some regular Orcs, this guy was just too stressful for me.

Anyway, I hope that you like what I’ve done to the regular plastic Witch King and as always, thanks for reading!

HMD

Thanks to the OTT team, I was really chuffed to get a Golden Button for this project. It’s great to see that the Middle Earth community is so active and the games appeal continues amongst players old and new alike. To keep @Dignity happy, here are some sequence pictures of some old metal ringwraiths that have been refreshed. First up the old models:

These were then stripped using BioStrip as the previous character elves. A simple process of dipping them in a small bowl and leaving for a couple of hours, followed by a wash in some luke warm water and a bit of a scrub with a toothbrush worked nicely. I then rebased them on new 25mm bases and used some magnetic basing material on the bottom of the base, for ease of storage.

The models were primed with black and then drybrused with GW dark reaper, which is a grey/green colour. The metals were done with GW leadbelcher, a wash of Nuln Oil and then a highlight with Vallejo Platinum. Finally the whole model got a thinned down wash of Nuln Oil to tie all the colours back together. Really simple to paint and I have been meaning to get these done for years. I’m going to try and run a Weathertop scenario with them, from the 1st edition LoTR rulebook!

There we have it, just for Justin a quick breakdown of the first Mordor elements to get Spring Cleaned from my slowly diminishing backlog. Would really appreciate any comments and suggestions of what Middle Earth models that you would like to see next. Am thinking of trying my hand on the Witch King, to lead his fellow wraiths on the field of battle.

Stay safe.

HMD

Good morning Beasts. To round off my work on old Rivendell models for a bit, here is the previously stripped Lord Elrond. I love this model, it is straight out of the opening scene of the Fellowship of the Ring film, one of my favoutires, so as such was a real pleasure to work on. I added a bit of detail on the cloak, but otherwise done in the same scheme as the rest of the force.

To continue in the family theme. Next I present Lord Elrond’s twin sons, Elladan and Elrohir. Elrond married Celebrian who was the daughter of Lady Galadriel, so as it turns out the elf royal houses were all very friendly. Anyhow, I hope these two will feature in the new TV series as I bleieve they hung our with Aragorn’s Mum after the death of Arathorn.

That brings my work on my Rivendell force to a close for a bit. I do intend to add some cavalry to the force, but I fancy a break from gold and I have got some more treats in the retro LoTR model set for you to come!

Thanks for reading.

Next up, two models that I absolutely adore. If I am brutally honest with you I am not overly familiar with these chaps from the lore, so appreciate you Middle Earth loremasters educating me in the comments. All I know is that those daggers ended up in the hands of two familiar hobbits from the shire. Hope you like!

Following my succesful strip, Galadriel and Celborn got a fresh coat of paint. Not much to say here really, although they don’t form part of the armies of Rivendell, they do look cool and are great character models. I have to say I’m not 100% sold on the Galadriel pose, but the models do have a certain nostalgic charm.

As part of my “refresh old LoTR model” plan, I have a number that require removal of years of old paint. The first 3 models up are:

This is not something that I have attempted before, so I was a tad apprehensive however, after some great advice from @civilcourage I purchased some bioStrip which is a water based paint stripper, so no need to worry about fumes, handling substances or any of that. I simply trimmed off the old bases, removed any excess sand or basing material from the model and dunked them.

I gave them an hour and then took them out and gave them a scrub with an old toothbrush (that I shall not be using for oral hygiene again). After a few minutes of re-dunking and scrubbing I ended up with these, rebased and ready for priming!

I have to express my thanks to @civilcourage the BioStrip is brilliant stuff and even doesn’t smell too bad. Would recommend to anyone stripping acrylic paint off old models. I’m going to try it on some old plastic elves next and see if I get as good results. Many thanks!

A few other people in my local area have been playing more of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game and this has reinvigorated my love of the game. As such I felt it was a good opportunity to go back to my old forces. Some of these were started and never finished, others are still sat in their boxes nearly 20 years later.

First up were the Rivendell elves. The scene at the start of the Fellowship of the Ring film made me fall in love with these models and they are in much need of some attention. I wanted a light, natural feel for them, so went for light coloured robes (GW Ulthuan Grey) with a slightly lighter cloak than the movies (GW Thousand Sons Blue). I had a very old Gil-Galad model who I thought would be perfect to lead the spearmen, he was painted in exactly the same style, but with a bit of freehand work

I also had some bowmen, who got a Rivendell Captain added to their ranks for a bit of comabt power. Painted the same way as the others.

I also had a couple of old character elves who I painted up. Two Legolas varients, I’m not quite sure where they came from, I think one if from the original metal Fellowship of the Ring box and a very old Haldir model. These guys were so much fun to do as I got to try out some colours and techniques that I would not normally use, specifically the various green tones on Leggy and the red cloak on Haldir, which I was really pleased with.

That is it for my first batch of retro LoTR models. I have some elf swordsmen that I am wanting to add next and also a couple of the newer Elf characters. I hope that you like these models. I have a bunch more old elves that need stripping and also some evil stuff I want to revisit, so I will post again soon. Please leave a comment as all feedback and questions are much appreciate, thanks for reading!

HMD