Wow! nice tree armature, Is it a juniper or some kind of root?

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"the same as a duck you must be made of wood"

It was a root I found while gardening, I just trimmed away some of the finer root ends.

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mallysminiatures.blogspot.co.uk

Happy Birthday Dom!

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'Though my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior'
-John Newton

Woo Hoo! Thanks Sid, now off to Games Workshop to spend some birthday money on a full army! This thread is going to get busy soon!

A full army? You must have got a lot of birthday money! Have a great day Dom.

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You don't have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.

Wow Dom, Just went through your thread. Incredible stuff you have going on here! Looking forward to seeing more

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Check out my WIP at http://paintingmiddleearth.blogspot.com/

Thanks UKFB! Well it was part birthday money and part university essentials money, most of it went on the army though! Thanks Bill!

And so it begins...



Any advice on converting RoR to Sons of Eorl bearing in mind I'm a real sculpting newbie?

make greenstuff mantles on the horses and with a needle´s head make small holes like chainmail on the greenstuff (dont really actually make holes, just the mail feeling texture like this:

http://trollsforge.proboards.com/thread/188
scroll down and check the daemon leg´s chainmail

Then replace all spears ad swords they might have for axes, some of the rohirrim have axes already so its good, if you want to make more axes.
1. ask people who can have spare plastic axes and take off their weapons and glue the axes
2. http://blog.brushthralls.com/?page_id=3806 just remember to see original sons of eorl axe size and do that tecnique on your models
3. if you want it simpler take off 2/3 of a spear (cut it) create greenstuff axe heads like the other axes you might have on that box then stick on the point of the shaft.

Then paint them according to what son´s of eorl are (they got helmet but ohh well :P)

You can carefully file/scrape away the helmets and sculpt hair onto the bald heads. I did that a little while ago. Its not that tricky.

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You don't have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.

If you suck at sculpting, you don't have to bother converting them if you don't want. Or if you can only manage very small basic conversions then a different and unique paint job could do the trick and make a nice difference. Paint their clothes in real nice colours, not brown and grey. Think rich and royal. Also you could give them red/blue/purple/white cloaks to make them stand out as different and paint their shields another colour. Gold perhaps, with the insignia a nice bright green?

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My old WIP thread - http://www.one-ring.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16246&start=0

I think I could manage the chainmail maybe on the horses. I'm still struggling to get the hang of working with green stuff but I suppose I've got to learn at some point. I'm really struggling with the Warriors of Minas Tirith's faces too, I've read all the tutorials but I just can't seem to get them right! They're just so small!

i didn't bother with the eyes on my warriors of minas tirith. base coat, wash, highlight, NEXT!

Quicker and easier. You can always come back to them later when you've had more practice

I spent more time on the captains so they stand out as they should.

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I think a drug habbit would be cheaper...

All of the plastic infantry are now assembled! Any advice on putting horses together to avoid awful gaps would be greatly appreciated!

I was slightly disheartened when I saw this but most of the models look fine!


I've also finished a banner conversion, my second attempt at using greenstuff and I'm pretty happy:

I'm still trying to work out how to make the guy to his right (our left) stand out as a captain of Arnor...

And here are the lowly soldiers all together:

The ones in the polystyrene are test subjects, I can't decide whether to make subtle colour differences between warbands (ie. different coloured belts) or keep them all uniform. I'm leaning towards the later with Kantor Blue belts and Fletching?

hey your tiles look great on the banner bearer, they came out real nice. The banner isn't bad at all. Talk to UKFreddyBear about sculpting, but from studying what he has done for me, I would (have him, haha) role out some thin tubes of putty and lay them onto the parts of the banner that stick out. Then just smooth and blend the edges into the main banner. That will give it some more dimension. Again, damn good work for a second attempt. Light years ahead of my skill.

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Check out my WIP at http://paintingmiddleearth.blogspot.com/

oor simply paint each company clothing diferently (ex. you make 3 king´s bloodlines, grey, green and a red) grey for border/frontier patrols, green for elite/king´s guard, red for citie´s garrison.

What would make diferent in easy company inside a garrison? Person paint the tree of the shields diferently according to each company (in case of warriors of minas tirith)
Like this



paint the shield with same scheme cause with it you can make a bigger diference bettewn them.
Or paint them blue :)

Garrison company 1: blue clothing orange tree symbol (captain get helmet plating edges (2nd layer) around his face with orange to show a bit more elaborated pattern)
Garrison company 2: blue clothing yellow tree symbol (captain get helmet plating edges (2nd layer) around his face with yellow to show a bit more elaborated pattern)
Garrison company 3: blue clothing yellow/orange tree symbol , 50/50 (captain get helmet plating edges (2nd layer) around his face half side yellow half side orange to show a bit more elaborated pattern)
´
Like this :P

as for rangers.... you could paint his chest clothing and around his mouth with diferent colour (something more royal looking but wear down with dust and time) like a regal blue with a bit of black to show a more darker and used blue from a companie´s veteran ranger)
Or paint the cloak diferently, a more expensive bow type by feathering the bow with more brown colours like if it´s made of a more expensive wood.

Can anyone figure out which season the battle of Fornost was in? I fancy doing some snowy bases.

Hi Dom,

First of all I really like your work. Your slate base tutorial has helped me out a lot.

As you asked I looked up the season of the battle of Fornost, in the Appendixes it doesn't exactly say wich season but it says that Fornost fell in winter, and I would expect the Battle of Fornost (or the big war in the north) was an almost immediate response. Since it says the War went over the Shire but the Hobbits didn't mind.

I can't say it for sure but from what I've seen, the battle seems to have been in winter (or spring, but in the north spring comes later) so you can try some snowy bases! A little advice may be to make some half-melted snow bases with a few flowers to represent spring.. But I've never done such thing and can't say it's easy, hard or almost impossible to do...

-Fariagorn

Thanks Fariagorn, that means a lot. I knew Fornost fell in winter but I thought it took something like two years for reinforcements to come? Although I suppose if it was exactly two years then that would be winter too. Maybe I'll just assume it was winter, makes the whole thing seem more eerie.

Finally I've made some progress! Pretty slow progress but I'm getting there. Here are some pics, CC welcome!

Still struggling with faces.