Rognarr's WIP - Last mini of the year (this time really!)

Dr Grant · **Joined:** Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:50 pm **Posts:** 1339

He is looking absolutely great Rognarr! Really good improvements since the last pic, the leaves were definitely worth the effort! Can't wait to see him painted!

BillFerny333 · **Posted:** Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:31 pm

Rognarr, the ents look amazing! I really like the one you are working on for the sculpting challenge and your paint job on the thin one is top notch. Excellent work!

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Mon Jul 22, 2013 6:54 pm

That's a wonderful sculpt, truly wonderful. Great stance and pose. It only needs the paint brush now.

LordElrond · **Posted:** Mon Jul 22, 2013 9:07 pm

Truly stunning, well done!

samoht · **Posted:** Tue Jul 23, 2013 3:17 am

Brilliant.

Rognarr · **Posted:** Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:18 pm

Thank you all so much, that was a bit unexpected! You are a wonderful bunch of ringers here and I can't thank you enough for your support and motivation!

Here's a little update with a few more details of the Ents face, a size comparison to other minis (partly from my (terrifying) backlog ) and his ent "brother".
I'm still not entirely sure what kind of tree kin he should come from... ideas are welcome.

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:25 pm

Silver birch or a larch ?

Rognarr · **Posted:** Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:12 pm

Silver birch might be interesting and quite a nice challenge to paint, as it differs quite a bit from "standard" trees.

samoht · **Posted:** Wed Jul 24, 2013 12:12 am

Hey Rognarr, have you heard about the different rules that can be given to ents depending on their species of tree? I don't know if GW have made these rules official in the past few years but they did publish them in a big lotr white dwarf magazine some years back.

Just to give a few examples, the Hawthorn tree ent has nasty thorns on it therefore making a strength 4 roll on any enemy who strikes it.
Another one is something about the willow ent and how it can thrash it's great long willow branches around and choose to have a single (weaker) strike on each of the people attacking it, including spear/pikemen, instead of just the three stronger attacks.

Rognarr · **Posted:** Wed Jul 24, 2013 6:46 pm

Thanks for the hint samoht! That's indeed something to consider.
Though I'm (unfortunatlely) not much of a gamer, so that the only impact of my choice will be how the tree looks. For a willow it's too late already anyway..
Maybe if I choose birch I can beat some orcs with allergic reaction to ent pollen?

Oldman Willow · **Posted:** Thu Jul 25, 2013 9:50 am

Gandlaf the Grey wrote:

Silver birch or a larch ?

The leaves are shaped more like birch.
How about yellow leaves?
http://www.english-country-garden.com/t ... -birch.htm

I like the beard

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu Jul 25, 2013 10:16 am

Hm.. that might work indeed! Maybe with a touch of green, but yeah, yellow sounds good, thanks! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Herbst.jpg

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Thu Jul 25, 2013 10:40 am

Are you aware of how the silver birch has its bark ?
It is split almost horizontally, you can see it in you photo. It's also bent at these edges which may mean a little extra attention to detail and some more modelling

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu Jul 25, 2013 10:54 am

Yeah I noticed that, and I'm not entirely sure if I manage to finish it then for the challenge but i will see what I can do. At the moment I am rather relieved that they have to be unpainted to enter the competition

Looking at my ent again I'd probably have to re-do most of it's surface for a birch look.. dont know if pure scraping and cutting would do the job alone..

Rognarr · **Posted:** Sun Jul 28, 2013 11:26 pm

Quick late-night update (where has the weekend gone already? oO)
Maybe you remember this angry fella from the first page of my thread:

As uch as I liked the painting, there was something about him, that didn't satify me... Long story short, it was the basing. SImple "cardboard tiles" and rough sand.. It just didnt really fit, so I decided to give him a new base and used my "Instant Mold" for the first time. (Yay!

) That stuff is awesome! But back to the base.. I made some molds of Moria terrain pieces and that's it pretty much.
In the garden I found lovely little "lichens" which I thought would look perfect for some kind of nasty cave-shrooms, so I had to add these as well! I think they give a nice extra detail to the whole mini. But enough talking, here are some pics for you! C & C welcome as always

Gandlaf the Grey · **Posted:** Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:43 am

A nice piece here. Well painted on a good base. I agree, the shrooms are a very nice addition.

Rognarr · **Posted:** Mon Jul 29, 2013 8:44 pm

Thank you Gandlaf

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:58 pm

Meh.. the base doesn't seem to delight as much as I hoped... ^^

anyways.. what can you do if you're studying in one place and have your minis and backlog in another place, where you are only once in a few weeks?
Well.. you could think about conversions..

Here's the victims:

And here's the plan:

Those are minor changes, but I think they definitely help giving the riders more character and an army without clones looks far better as well.
Apart from the quick changes on the photo I'd love to try giving some of them chainmail hoods, as they had in the film (ukfreddybears work also was very inspiring!).
The arches maybe could get a panache and other small additions to get an outrider-look.
Another idea is to scrape off some of the symbols on the shields and paint them in Norse style (4 quartes: 2 green, 2 wine-red, to fit my Rohan colour scheme).
Last but not least: The rider in the middle, with the upright spear would probably make a nice Grimbold.

Here are two snapshots from the film, which show Grimbold quite nice. He looks quite different from the GW version but I don't mind that. I only wonder.. why is his cloak so terribly long?? :roll:

Ukfreddybear · **Posted:** Thu Aug 01, 2013 2:10 pm

Wow I had to look closely then. I thought you'd uploaded the same pic twice! Even now I can only see 3 weapon swaps. Are the other 3 also slightly different? The chainmail hoods are a simple way to get a little variety. Shaving off the helmets and just sculpting hair also works

Rognarr · **Posted:** Thu Aug 01, 2013 3:45 pm

Well, in fact it's the same pic. Just a little photoshopping added, because, as mentioned above at the moment they are out of my reach. And there are only 3 changes in the pics yeah, but the main ideas are hidden in the text

Rognarr's WIP - Last mini of the year (this time really!)

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