I wanna start of with explaining where I am at right now in terms of the hobby and converting and painting my own models.

While I knew about the LotR SBG since about 2007 or 08 (really hard to say in retrospect) I never really got into it until earlier this year. Back then my cousins (and their friend) introduced me and my other cousins to this hobby. They owned wood elves, dwarves and Uruk-Hai plus a lot of kinda random stuff. Numenorians, Rohan and the like.

This topic wasn't really touched upon until maybe two years ago when two more joined in (I believe this partially had to do with the Hobbit movies dragging attention back to LotR and Middle-Earth again). They picked up Moria and Easterlings. I was the last one to join in partially for money reasons. The question was what to pick up and I remembered something else, I already did own 12 Minas Tirith soldiers which I got as a freebie. This fitted well into what the others already had (nothing doubled I mean) and I got 24 more on ebay to start of my army.

Since then my army has grown some more and includes something around 70 models. I actually started early to think about converting units. I needed captains and had noticed that the older captains barely looked any different than the soldiers. Also I owned a Fellowship Boromir made out of plastic and I thought about taking of his head and put it on a soldiers body to get a Boromir of the white tower. This I did not do eventually but I did and arm swap with two soldiers to make them different and they got promoted to captains.

Fast-forward until August when I made a grab on ebay. A lot of metal heroes, soldiers (mostly damaged and badly painted) and a trebuchet team but sadly still no captains. But I wanted to use the trebuchet team to make my own captains now and so I informed myself on Greenstuff and the like and so I began tinkering and converting.

I started with converting my own horn blower, sadly Boromir (a metal version) had to suffer for this.

The other two guys from the trebuchet would go on to become captains, but needed something more than just different poses to be visible in the mass of soldiers. I oriented myself on the new Minas Tirith captain who has a cape to differentiate him further from the crowd and not only through his - admittedly quite heroic - pose (and stars on his armor but that was way too fiddly for me). I made the cape in the middle first and got lucky with it, very dynamic. Actually this came out like that because I almost dropped him... The second one had no such luck and his static pose got a static cape. I added in the bow and a quiver because I wanted to have someone lead my archers, even so I became aware that a bow does not benefit a Minas Tirith captain much, also his pose was just ideal for that.

Here they are painted up, ofc in the same colour scheme as the rest of my army and the left captain got shield pretty much just tagged on to his arm. Later on I realized I had forgotten to shade the right arm and boots of my horn blower...

That's it for today. Next coming are my own conversions of veterans and the spectre who I'm working on right now.

P.S.: I developed the bad habit of overshading stuff, as you can see with the capes... Boromir lost his second arm because he was/is meant to be a King of Men. I also wanted to remove his shield from the back because it's too typical for Boromir but it turns out to be a pain in the butt...

Very nice command group you got there! The conversion ideas are very nice, and the sculpting of the cloak is very good, especially considering you've only recently started. I'll tell you, my first cloaks were nowhere near as good as yours!

Keep up the good work!

I never considered to convert a trebuchet crewmember into a captain with bow. But you are absolutely right, the pose fits very well!

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Fear the Duck!
My WIP: Baardeend's Big Book

Have to agree that the sculpting of the cloaks is excellent. Have only ever tried that once before, and it was a total disaster!

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WIP thread: viewtopic.php?f=50&t=25860

Sadly I cannot take all the credit for the capes. I got my clues from a YouTube video which suggested to make a general form, then put toothpicks or something similar under these to create folds and let it dry for I think 1 1/2 hours (not 100% sure anymore, maybe little more). This way you have a relatively stable general form of your cape and can work from that.

Also I planned on updating this more regularly but real life came barging in. Had to stop my smartphone from exploding (not an S7, but a Samsung, seems to be a more general problem they have...).

I don’t think they’re over shaded. They look good, and unless there is contrast with the shaded portion of the model the shading won’t really be noticeable on the tabletop.

Here are the veterans I talked about in the last post.

They were obviously made from normal Minas Tirith soldiers I've got but only the first one was a swordsman to begin with. I damaged their swords and shields to make them look used and added beards, as I imagined shaving was no top priority in Osgiliath. If you were to look at the original GW minis you would see that I oriented myself on them with the sash, the beards, the dagger, pouches and so on. Especially small details like shortening the leg armor I really liked about this little project. Looking back the pouches stand out a bit too much, they probably needed to be flatter.
This guy was a spearman originally but I took his spear and gave it to a ranger because I wanted to have twelve of them with spear and bow. In exchange he got a rangers hand with a sword and I really came to like this thrusting position. It sets him apart from the other swordsmen. He's also the only one who got a small holey cape.
The last of the three was a bowman with a broken bow (All the pictures of him have come out a bit blurry - apologies for that.). He got a new metal hand from the hornblower in the first post and I removed most of his quiver. I left some of it because I thought it was a decent little bag. The shield is more or less just tagged on to his back, sadly his dagger seems a little bit tagged on as well and I'm not a 100% happy with the little sack either. What I really like about him is the neckcloth I gave him.

All in one shot with a normal soldier for reference. They might have come out a little bit too dirty and dark but overall I like them. I only did swordsmen for a few reasons: 1. I don't see any advantage in taking veteran bowmen, the fight value, which is the big thing with them, is simply wasted and you would take rangers or Citadel Guard anyway. 2. I made them out of spare modells I got on ebay, most who originally had spears had them broken off and the ones left I wanted for my rangers, so yeah...

Well that's that. I'll post the spectre I made in a few days.

Bought myself a Pippin recently. I just really like his modell and he surely will be fun to use, even if he's not that good.He's nothing too special compared to most other stuff here but I still think he might be my best result yet.

I had some spare warriors of Numenor without shields left over and just wanted to have a try at converting some more minis. I started with cutting off the arm and pointing it downwards because the upwards position seemed way too active for a zombie-like creature. Also I tried to cover up the hole of the shield and repositioned the arm sligthly and damaged his cape and surcoat.

Next I sculpted some chainmail over the arm and some seaweed to make it look like he just stepped out of a swamp.

And here he is already painted up, I experimented with the base a bit and tried to do a water effect with PVA glue but it didn't really work out as I wanted.

That's actually it for a while now I guess. The next project will be an Isengard army I got for peanuts on ebay which will be a lot of work of repairing and conveting.

Cool convertion! Consider of buying some sculpting tools to improve your results, they are super cheap in ebay.

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Conversation/Ideas over painting etc, can check here:
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=29455