The Making of Barad-dûr
Here it is: the first part of my WIP-thread about the Making of Sauron's Dark Tower. As Natarn already stated it takes a lot of time to write an article for even “a simple project” (do they exist?) but I’m really looking forward to give you the full story. You’ll have to be patient though – it might take a couple of months to write it all down.
The story will come in chapters. To be honest, every chapter is a shortened version of a more elaborated story that can be found at the lotrscenerybuilder.org site – so if you want to read more, you’re welcome there. However, pasting the integral article into this forum would take a lot more space. Besides, you might not be interested in all this irrelevant lotrscenerybuilder twaddle…
I. ‘The iron crown of the topmost tower’
During the preparation-stage I scanned the world wide web for usable pictures of Barad-dûr. Apart from the odd movie still I found a few pictures of the Sideshow polystone cast of the Dark Tower; they came up with a lot of details. Besides, I consulted the usual LOTR-hobbyist’s Bibles: the Appendices of the LOTR Extended DVD-set, Brian Sibley’s “The Making of the Movie Trilogy” and Gary Russell’s “The Art of the Return of the King”.
For my first version of Barad-dûr I had used a cardboard tube with a diameter of 4inches/10,4cm. This time, I wanted to build on a slightly smaller scale; therefore I chose a tube with a diameter of 3inches/7,4cm for the central core. First thing I did was to mark out the different levels on the tube. For this I compared the width of the cylinder to the width of the tower in a picture of Barad-dûr (in: Sibley, page 55). This ratio became the standard for all further conversions. Next, I scaled up all distances proportionally.
For the first version I had simply cut out the shape of the horns from a piece of fibreboard to create the topmost pinnacle. Nailing the correct silhouette took quite a few efforts though; the gap between the horns isn’t a randomly chosen crescent but has approximately a parabolic form. This time, I wanted to make a 3-D set of horns, true to the Weta model. The picture shows my first attempt to create a spatial framework that answered to the distinctive silhouette from all directions.
When I was happy with the framework, I created a mantle by using small strips of cardboard.
The picture shows the finished crown, with all the metal plating and spikes on top. The vertical 2mm cardboard strips against the outside were only added in the final stage.
Gradually I worked my way downward. A section of the cardboard cylinder was removed and replaced by a panel with windows and arches (in retrospect, I would’ve liked to have even more difference in layers and depth on this particular level of the tower).
Despite its scale and its wide diversity in details the Barad-dûr has only two major ‘key-problems’: the twin horns at the top and the ‘lop-ears’ on both sides of the pinnacle. I started with cardboard with a thickness of 2mm to model these ears. Likewise parabolic in form, I glued these four ‘pendants’ on top of each other against the tube. Small strips of cardboard filled up the space in between.
However, the 2mm cardboard turned out to be the wrong choice: with the last ‘pendants’ glued in place, the tower seemed to have a set of antlers. Therefore I tore down the whole affair and had another try with flaps of 1mm cardboard.
The balcony and the secondary pinnacles were made from MDF and jazzed up with cocktail-prickers and small bits of cardboard.
I made little ‘noses’ of cardboard which were glued onto a cardboard ring; a cocktail-stick acted as a ‘spine’ for each nose. To give each spike a curve, the sticks were carefully broken in the middle and slightly bent apart. Filler was used to perfect their shape.
There’s a lot that these pictures don’t show. For example, I had to remove an earlier version of this ring – already firmly glued to the tube – after concluding by hindsight that the position of the spikes differed from the movie pictures. I was however wrong-footed by a picture of Barad-dûr on page 60 in Sibley’s “Making of the Trilogy”, which shows these spikes in a more upright position and slightly further away from the tower (as far as I know there were at least two ‘bigatures’ or scale models built of the Dark Tower, apart from Mary MacLachlan’s earlier sculpture(s?); the one on page 60 figured in the Two Towers film poster, the (bigger) one on page 55 was used for the panning scenes in the first two movies).
I used small strips of MDF – with different widths and lengths – for the receding buttresses against the tower-tube. After that, it became a matter of dressing up both these columns and the empty spaces between them.
Windows, archways, cornices, pilasters and balconies were cut from cardboard: most of them many-layered, none alike. At this level the modelling was still clearly structured. Downwards, the fortress would expand ever more, with a proportional increase of details.
Small details such as horns, spikes, strips and ribs were added to create the impression of intricate architecture. Later on, a layer of structure paint would hopefully deepen this illusion even more.
It took a couple of days to decorate these columns all the way round. I didn’t have the patience to postpone the final painting until the moment the whole fortress would be completed. Instead, I decided to finish each stage separately; in the end I would apply a superficial, overall finish to integrate all parts into a single miniature.
The most demanding part of every building project is taking the ceremonial photographs. There’s always more about a miniature than meets the lens! The first pictures of the ‘topmost tower’, however, showed some black looks… which raised my hopes.
(to be continued)
I do not think anything other than saying that the tower is actually an image from the movie could wreck the "Brilliance". 
