I'm on my spring reading week from college, and I have a creative project to do! I am doing a pseudo Weathertop diorama. It is not any particular scene from the movies, though I am using the movies imagery/Dagorlad's article as a guide for the architecture. I am really wanting to go for a dark and moody effect with this piece, and definitely want to do some torch-light osl. I have also thought about stretching myself further and trying some moonlighting/zenithial lighting type stuff, but we'll see how much time I have to paint once I am done the terrain and sculpting. (I'm sculpting a couple of wraiths, as well as converting Aragorn for this piece...)

Anyways, enough blather, and on to the pics of what I've done so far:







My main question right now is what to do with the front of the piece. I need to leave some of the terrain in front of the cd-bricks to balance the piece visually, but I'm not quite sure what should be there. One idea I'm playing with right now is to have it be jagged ricks like the outcrop that Weathertop sits on, possibly with a staircase winding down. I don't really want to add very much foliage or grass in that area as it doesn't fit the feel I'm going for, and I don't want to just extend the cobblestones as I like the circular feel of weathertop that the piece has right now (even though I only have a small section of the actual outside of it).

Any advice on how it looks so far in terms of composition / what to do with the open space in front would be much appreciated.

Nice start!

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

Update time! I decided to go for the staircase idea, and I think it looks quite good. Right now there's a lot of foam drying on the flat areas, this will receive some putty to smooth it out a bit once it is dry. You can ignore the pillars in the middle, they were drying when I took the picture.





And a wip shot of the wraiths. It's still early days for these guys, and you can't see the detail very well as it is washed out by being totally white. I'm sculpting with mostly milliput for these guys and I'll add the details with procreate. Milliput is very different from procreate, so it is an interesting experience thus far.

It looks promising! I like it! Keep it up...

Small update right now, more to come later today. I've finished puttying the main piece, and I've started on the pillars. I've done some more work on the wraiths, but the photo's were way to washed out. I'll update them after I've done some more on them later.



I thought that pinning the foam might be a good idea to add extra strength....very easy to do, just push the pin into the foam, no drilling needed!

Looking good!

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In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

Looks great. Very interested to see how the wraiths turn out, something I would like to do myself.

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http://www.sithious.webs.com

Thanks for the replies guys! Sithious, I thought that sculpting a wraith would be easy as it's all cloth, but it's turning out to be harder than I expected. It also has to do with the fact that this is my first go at sculpting a complete figure out of milliput. Milliput acts very differently from procreate, so getting used to it is taking a bit of time.

I've done more work on a wraith that is again hard to see, and some initial posing for Aragorn (the spear head will become a torch).





*Edit*
Aragorn with most of the conversion work done, I just need to add a little more under his arm, figure out his quiver, and decide if I'm repositioning his head. (As well as sculpting the fire onto the torch)





A quick wash/basecoat on the main base to see the texture. The pillars' final coat of putty is drying, so I should be able to attach them later today.

I think for a wraith (which I will probably try at some point) I would make most of the shape and fill it out and let it cure then would roll out a flat piece of epoxy and put it on like a cloak and tuck or fold onto the shape as needed. But of course, who am I to say as I am not the one doing it. Don't worry, every project is a learning experience right, you will only improve as you work on it.
Aragorn looks good.

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http://www.sithious.webs.com

Yeah, think my main problem was that I am rushing to get it done this week, and I figured because it is cloth I didn't need to make the under-stuff anatomically correct at all. Wraiths don't necessarily have bodies, but getting proportions correct off the hop is apparently still important. Live and learn, I guess. I am now basically doing it as you say with sheets of thin putty, though as I said with the under-pinnings not great it is more difficult.

I would be very interested to see you take a stab at sculpting a wraith though, I think it's a pretty good thing to start off with as one of your first complete scratch sculpts, and I know you have sculpting skill.

Not too much of an update this morning, though I will hopefully have a larger one by the end of the day. One of the wraiths needs a hand, while the other just needs a sleeve and a hand. Aragorn's torch is now finished, and he is ready to paint. The terrain is all glued down, and also ready for painting.

Both wraiths are finished, and now it's on to painting! Neither of the wraiths are that great imo, but I will have to live with that for now as I want to get this project done this weekend. (I have one more weekend to get it finished if I need to, but I don't have time to restart both wraiths, even though I kind of feel like doing so...) Also, the terrain is all painted up. I will add some variation yet with some dark green washes, and probably add some brown in some areas as well, but on the whole this is what it will look like.

Cool paint job on the tower

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In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

....And I'm back. I have to finish this by thursday, so the pressure's on. I don't like Frodo's face atm, I may see if I can fix it yet. I tried to push the contrast on Aragorn's green cloak further by adding some red to the shadows for extra contrast. It seems to have worked well, and it fits in with the worn look. The pictures definitely do not do it justice, I'll have to see if I can find some better lighting conditions to get pictures in. And the last photo is of the terrain. I've been adding some leaves and a bit of grass to spice it up a little bit. I think I should do a dark wash over the fallen leaves to make them darker though. Thoughts?

Finished. At least for now. This is (basically) my first try at osl, so any comments on that would be appreciated. At this point I would change some things for the diorama, but I cannot as I do not have the time, or tools/materials here at college.

Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. I know this could be better, I just need more experienced people to tell me what!

This looks fantastic!

One suggestion i would make is the OSL is well done but i think it would benefit from a stronger orange mid tone at the edge of the lighter area which yiu already have there followed by a darker red colour at the furthest point. I can see that you have got those 2 stages in there already its just they are a little drowned out by the yellow at the moment. The light could strech a little further and you could add these two steps in without making much of an alteration to what you have done already. It will increase the contrast of the whole piece and make the OSL look a lot more effective.

Really nice piece tho. Love the wraiths!

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The osl looks very good

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In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

Ditto with Kevs suggestion, throw a little on Frodos left elbow and generally his left side.. Just enough to give the suggestion

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Great work, i like it

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Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

I actually looked for the light source before reading the comments. Beautiful piece.

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Well done

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