Avenger's WIP - Galadriel 30/6

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:20 pm

edge67 wrote:

Fantastic sculpt and painting. Really nice job all round. I am going to try my own ent based on this!

Hey, glad I inspired you. Sculpting an ent really is easy, as long as you start off with your wire base in decent proportion, you can just go. Any odd lumps just add character....

I look forward to some progress pics. (btw freddy's article helped me, take a look at it, and as many tree's/ent sculpts as possible. Oh, and don't feel you have to design it after a certain type of tree, I just went, and didn't worry about making it an oak, or beech etc. Of course you may want it a certain tree and that is great as well...

)

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Tue Nov 08, 2011 12:50 am

Well, I'm back with more. This time a terrain project. By the way, you can expect me to go in spurts, I'll do lots of work, then nothing for month or so, and then get back into it. I don't like forcing myself to get stuff done, as I want to keep it a hobby and not make it work!!

Anyway, onto the pictures.
The initial sketch of what I want to get. The circles are bases, I wanted to figure out how many guys could attack at the same time. The numbers are height, 1 being a defendeble barrier, and 2 being jumpable. I didn't follow it exactly, but this's how it started....

The first couple of layers of wall are now up:

Model's eye view:

The wooden platform that will be in one corner:

Where I am now, with the wood in place on the ground to give you an idea of the size of it.

PowerofWill · **Posted:** Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:09 am

Nice little fort you've got there! I've been wanting to make something with sprues for a while, but I never got around to it. I like it so far, hope it goes well for you

-Pow

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:01 pm

Did some more work.

Some pictures of the progress.

The wooden platform for my pesky wood elf archers to use.

The base.

I traced the outside of the ruin after I placed it where I wanted it. I'm pinning it into the base to make sure it'll stay, and I needed to know where to drill the pin holes.

It's done. The sand is on the base, and painting is next. As you (can't) see, there is a small leftover of wall to stop the models from falling off the platform, as well as give them an 'itw' cover roll. :twisted:

I hope to get some painting done on it yet, so maybe an update later today with the basecoats.

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:08 pm

And here it is basecoated....

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:08 pm

Drybrushed all the greys onto the walls, though I didn't take a picture. I started on the platform though.

Dead Marsh Spectre · **Posted:** Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:15 pm

The wooden boards are excellent. Perfectly realistic!!! :yay:

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Mon Nov 14, 2011 10:16 pm

Thanks. I just finished it off. Here's the pics.
The finished wood. I did a couple of drybrushes. One light brown, then a light grey one on the edges of the wood, then a very light ivory one.

And the whole thing with grass added, from the four angles.....

I hope you like it. Next up, who knows! Hopefully some wood elves, we'll see how motivated I feel. :oops:

Ukfreddybear · **Posted:** Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:23 pm

Neat! I have plenty of old sprue lying around. Might have to try this someday. I like how you painted the wood to look like, er, wood.

Dead Marsh Spectre · **Posted:** Tue Nov 15, 2011 12:17 pm

The sprue bricks are really effective.. well done

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:18 pm

@ freddy and DMS, Thanks! I too like how I painted the wood. It is indeed very wooden looking. :lol:

I would encourage anyone to try out making a sprue ruin. It's quite fast (3-4 hours for this one from skething the idea, to sanding and cutting the base, actually making the ruin, painting it, etc....) and really enjoyable. I used probably about 4 or 5 sprues to make this one, though you can easilly make one with shorter walls with only a couple of sprues. The actual building part is super easy, just grab your snips and snip off bits from the sprue that are all roughly the same size, that being whatever size you want your bricks to be. Once you've got a sizable pile, start building. I white glued that first layer onto my plan, then one stream of plastic glue all the way around, lay the bricks, and repeat until the walls are high enough. The great part being that you can always shave a brick to fit, but it doesn't have to be perfect. This is a ruin, not Minas Tirith!

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Wed Nov 23, 2011 10:52 pm

And I'm back. I painted up a wraith, though I didn't get any wip pics. (sorry, some of the pics are dark.)

And I also started on a uruk crossbowman. Most of the armour is done, the skin/leather only have the basecoats on. They will get a good dousing of badab black at some point.

IM A ENT!!! · **Posted:** Thu Nov 24, 2011 1:10 pm

love the sprue wall, HAHA, very creative, and inspiring.

king elessar 2615 · **Posted:** Sat Dec 03, 2011 6:21 pm

i really like your sprue ruins might have to borrow that idea and make some of my own ruins

Dorthonion · **Posted:** Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:04 pm

Using sprues as terrain components goes back a long way - I remember seeing an Apollo rocket pad made largely from pieces of sprues and that was waaaay back in the 1970's (showing my age again). I would try to be a bit more variation in there - 'distress' some pieces, go for a mix of sprue sizes, and have some rubble to make parts of the wall blend more with the surrounding landscape plus it provides a bit more defensive / obstacle type cover.
I see a lot of old ruined buildings in the wilder parts of Ireland - Famine villages and the like, so I am very familiar with tumbledown stone buildings.

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Sun Dec 04, 2011 3:09 am

Indeed, the sprue ruin is no where near my own idea. Many others have done the same thing before me.
Dorth, I decided to not have rubble on the ground for playability sake, I don't like having my figures all tilted and unsteady. But yes, if I was going for realism I would have put in some rubble, those building stones don't just disappear! Also, yeah, I guess I could have done some more distressing on the tops of the blocks, oh well. Oh, and I thought that I had a fairly good variation in block sizes....but you might not be able to tell from the pictures. Thanks for the feedback though, this one's done, but if I make another one I will implement them. (other than the rubble for the aformentioned playability reason)

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:18 pm

Well, I'm back. I have found out that I enjoy painting figures one at a time much more than batch painting. Normally when I try to batch paint I get halfway through and then quit. :oops:

So, I figured it would be better to (slowly) go through my figures one at a time and enjoy it rather than not do any painting at all becuase I don't feel like batch painting. Anyways, enough talk, on to the pictures. I started on an old ranger that I had lying around (along with 47 others....). As you can see there's was a (thin) white undercoat on it, and then some mold lines were removed, but I didn't bother to re-undercoat it. I figure it's a plastic figure so I shouldn't have problems with paint chipping.

The dark green tabard(?) is from a former attempt (partway through batchpainting... :lol: