A burrahobbit?

Here's the final piece in my latest "Hobbit" project. These have been waiting for painting pretty much since the day GW released them in stores. Somehow I've kept on leaving them for later.

These big ugly guys are actually pretty well sculpted. Weird proportions, with long arms and shorter legs plus the ugly faces make them look like... trolls. The one with a fork in his hand looks a bit like a larger version of plastic troll from the Mines of Moria set.

While working on them I had the scene from the book in mind. The trolls are roasting meat over fire. having an argument and suddenly they hear a noise made by a burglar. I tried to capture the moment just before Bilbo is caught. I placed an empty base behind the tree as I don't have a proper miniature right now. I think any of the new finecast versions, either the one with Sting or the other one that comes in pair with Gandalf, should fit well here. But that's just an option for the future.

White Council. And Rabbits

It's been a while since I posted pictures of new painted minis so here's a bigger update on two projects I've recently completed. First, the White Council. These were some of the best finecast models I've worked on (with the exception of Radagast - he was a bonus in the Hobbit starter box filled with plastic goodies).

Faces and hair are elements that can be cast exceptionally well with GW's resin. In case of these they actually do look very nice. The details are well defined and they even resemble the actors from the movie.

I've prepared a small display base that is supposed to resemble Rivendell. I didn't have too many suitable elements and my skills with terrain making are very limited so I had to make do with what was available.

Painting this one was a huge challenge. On many levels. I've written that Finecast can work really well for faces and I stand by it. However, it doesn't tend to work well with small, thin elements. Such as 12 little rabbits from Radagast's rabbit-drawn cart. Putting these together and working over all the miscast bits with GS/LGS was a pain. Painting the whole thing was another challenge. I assembled all the contents of the box and glued them to the base (the trees were added in the final stage), which may seem like a stupid idea as some elements were hard to get to. I realized that but decided to put it together anyway as the prospect of gluing painted bits of finecast together filled me with a feeling of hopelessness. Some elements simply didn't fit together and needed to be put in hot water and bent to proper shape.

Overall, I think that the only part in which I failed was taking decent pictures. It's either the sheer number of detail that makes it hard for my camera to focus or my lack of skill with it.

The White Council #1

I was asked to try to add a Rivendell feel to the White Council so I had a look into my "bits and random stuff" box. Not too much there but after some thought I came up with a quick mock-up of how it might look like.

Next I prepped the minis, used some GS and LGS on the recesses, glued the plastic card with cobblestone texture in and added some sand. As you can see, Radagast is left out behind but I saw no way in which the dynamic miniature would fit in with the rest. That's why he's going to be placed outside of the gate with different basing (since his base is already part of the model and it's forest-themed).

After that I basecoated the whole thing. Since it's a White council I used light grey spray and brown for Elrond and Radagast.

I've already started painting the whole thing and plan to finish it within more or less a week - highlighting all those whites and browns is time-consuming after all.

Where Eagles dare

I didn't really expect to enjoy painting these. All those surfaces thickly covered with feathers put me off and made me think that working on these two will be a chore. As it turned out, it was much more enjoyable than I had expected.

The models are nicely cast but putting them together wasn't that easy. The first Great Eagle (pics above) was straightforward as all the pieces fit together well. It was the other one with its wings outstretched that I had trouble with. It seemed like the wings were meant for a different model as I wasn't really able to fit them well. I ended up using a lot of GS to hide nasty gaps left after putting this one together.

 I started painting them with covering all the main areas with a solid basecoat using two different shades of brown and black. I started building the highlights focusing on these three areas and ended with some drybrushing to pick up the details.
Photographing them was a bit tricky as I didn't glue them to their bases (it would make shipping them too risky). I used some blu-tack to hold them in place (you can see some of the putty in one of the pics).
The White Council is next on the to-do list so expect some WIP shots soon. I'll leave you with a classic that seems suitable to this post.

Grim Hammers

Here are a couple more minis I've painted from the Hobbit range. Grim Hammers are an elite dwarven unit and they look... grim. Their expressionless masks and heavy armor with only beards visible create this mean look. The miniatures are really well cast and putting them together was fairly easy, the only small problem being that each of the sets of arms that are available in the box is matched to a particular miniature so it took some time to figure out which goes where.

The dwarf heroes were, as always, a pure joy to paint. However, putting them together was a bit problematic. They're both finecast models so some problems were bound to occur. The main issue I had with Thrain (the one in red armor) was that there was simply no way in which his cape would fit the body. I needed to cut away large part of it and than work a lot with GS to make up for that after it was successfully glued. Thror was pretty much OK except for the sword. When I unpacked the mini the sword was wrapped around his wrist like a snake. It took a lot of time to bend it back to a shape that resembled a sword and even then I was unable to fix it to a perfectly straight position. I gave up after some time as bending it back and forth would result in damage beyond repair.

The main challenge in painting Thrain was that red is a dominant color there. The clothes were easy to work with but painting a red armor was a new experience for me. I followed the codex paintjob, only used slightly darker shades. Also, I managed to paint eyes on him, which are not there in the picture in GW's online store.

While working on Thror's armor, I wanted to try to achieve a result similar to one I got for Jamie Lannister. I used Andrea Gold set and I think it worked well. What I really like about it is the rich, saturated color. Yellow ink is essential to get it. I hardly ever use it but here it really nicely added depth and richness to the armor.

The big and the ugly

I'm finally done with all the orcs from Hobbit. "Finally" because I felt I was getting in a rut with painting the same type of model. I started with a box of 12 of them on foot, then painted the versions on wargs and finished off with the heroes. 

Azog is a miniature I haven't really made up my mind about yet. The version on warg is very dynamic and everything looks more or less OK on it. I only have to mention that the warg is cast in two halves with separate legs and... the halves didn't fit too well. I had to do the hot water-reshaping-cold water trick to fix that.

The version on foot is ridiculously large. Azog as an infantryman is much bigger than the version on warg and the details look much poorer on this one too, especially areas like legs or armor.

Painting him was tricky as you get white orc on a white warg and I wanted to make sure that the shades of white are distinct enough no to blend together. I started the warg with light brown/khaki basecoat and Azog with Tallarn Flesh and built over than with several layers of base color mixed with increasing amounts of white. Sounds easy but the trick was to avoid a pinkish look and remember about the scars on his chest, arms and back. Pictures don't show the final effect that well ( I really struggled here, for some reason my camera wasn't picking up the colors and highlights on this one) but I'm pretty happy with him nonetheless.

Yazneg has a unique look with his human-like skin and an impressive bone armor. If you look closely, the cloth he's wearing is also something made of a material that resembles human skin (?) and there are even shapes that look like faces in agony around his belt area. He has a really nasty and fierce look with excellent details on the face and clothes. Can't really complain about the miniature here as everything fit pretty well.

As I mentioned in the beginning, painting so many orcs was a bit tedious so I took some time off Hobbit and painted two minis for Malifaux - a master and her avatar version. Check back soon for pics :)

Some more orcs

Four more hunter orcs on wargs. I kept the colors in the same pattern that I had for those painted earlier. Now I need to add some more details to Yazneg and Azog...

Escape from Goblintown showcase #2

I forgot to put these up earlier so here they are now, Thorin's company in full glory and color ;)

WIP shots of orc heroes and (another) GW FAIL

I've put together the new Azog miniature along with Yazneg - a character that was respelled by GW shortly after the Hobbit started out as a tabletop game. I guess the designers thought that they need to release a few named orc leaders/heroes to make up for lack of them in the evil forces. Good idea, not only from the marketing perspective but also from a hobbyist one as it gives a chance to work on more nicely designed miniatures.

I didn't really like Yazneg when I saw the codex picture. He seemed way too static and his armor lookes pretty ridiculous to me. I changed my mind after putting him together and mounting him on a larger rocky base with a slightly altered pose. I used a few pieces of cork and plenty of GS to make it look like one big boulder. You can see in the pictures below that the Warg's legs are stretched further than the edge of base so I needed to take that into account while putting the rocky base together.

Azog is a different story. I liked the miniature the moment I saw it, at least the mounted version. I had mixed feelings about the one on foot and still don't feel good about it. You'll notice in the pictures that he's much larger than the version mounted on a Warg, his chest in particular is significantly bigger. I also had some problems putting the large Warg together. The beast is cast in two halves and they didn't fit together well. I needed to put it in hot water, bend it to the proper shape and then out it in cold water to save it in the desired shape. It wasn't too much trouble but it's disappointing that more than two years after the introduction of Finecast (despite an overall improvement in quality) the same problems still make putting these miniatures harder and less enjoyable.

The mounted version of Azog features a base that is larger than a regular cavalry one. It seemed empty when I put the model on it so I added a ruined column. I think it fits the base nicely and it also can also make one think of ruins among which we see Azog in the movie. The foot version is much more static and less interesting. It's also so tall that I decided not to use any additional material on the base as it would make Azog look too tall. 

More Orcs

Finished the second batch of Hunter orcs along with some heroes. I followed the same color scheme I used with the previous ones. The only thing I've changed is the addition of warpaint on their faces.

Narzug is one of the best miniatures from LotR/Hobbit I've ever painted. His pose is  not too dynamic but the quality of the sculpt is impressive. I particularly like his face and chest as these parts are different than what you'd see on a human. Especially his chest, saggy but still muscular. The color of skin makes him look like a cousin of Uruk-Hai but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out as it makes him look unique.

Bolg, the big one in the front row, was a bit of a challenge. He's so much different from other orcs. He's much larger and has completely different physique. To make matters worse, his armor and weapon are also significantly different. The main challenge while painting him was to keep him coherent with the rest and make him stand out at least a little at the same time. All of that using predominantly dark colors.

Fimbul was also a bit tricky. The codex paintjob is... awful. What's more, the mounted version is painted differently than the one on foot. So that wasn't helpful at all as reference.
I wanted to make him stand out as a character so I chose to paint the warg using very dark colors and kept his clothes and cloak black with the fur trimming matching warg's mane. His skin color is also different than that of the other orcs. The picture doesn't show it well but there are differences in shades of black on warg, clothes and coat.