My Custom 13 Dwarves & Bilbo From 'The Hobbit' Movie WIP. Bombur Weapons & Accessories.

He does look really good.

How about splodging some marker ink onto a piece of card and applying it with either a very thin brush or a pin?

CHEERS!

Daaaaammmn! Pure madness seeing this come together. Can't even believe how good this is looking. Incredible.

GubernatorFan wrote:I take back my previous statement that he was nearly perfection incarnate and I apply it to this new posting.

Only 'nearly' now?

Rogerbee wrote:He does look really good.

How about splodging some marker ink onto a piece of card and applying it with either a very thin brush or a pin?

CHEERS!

Thanks Roger, tried that before without much success, the 'ink/paint' tends to dry super fast and you just end up with a gooey puddle and a ruined brush. Most of the metallic markers seem to be alcohol based even when they say they're acrylic.

ReverendSpooky wrote:Daaaaammmn!  Pure madness seeing this come together.  Can't even believe how good this is looking.  Incredible.

Thank you very much RS!

Done all the little paint bits I wanted so he is officially finished now, I promise! Looking very outnumbered with the Wraith!!









Did his fingernails too with paint and gloss.

















The flash kind of kills his details but it was that or completely dark!









Ordered a gold pencil and thought I'd give these markers a try..

Man, he turned out amazing. All the building that went into this figure... I wish I had that kind of ambition.

Wonderful work Alex, you have created a great looking Dwalin, your attention to detail, to say nothing of your ability to custom make it, is truly admirable.


Cheers,

Peter.

Yeah, those markers could work. You could always try bare metal foil or even gold leaf.

CHEERS!

Yep...In the midst of all those rascally wraiths, poor little Dwalin ain't got a chance.

Fear not, Dwalin. Helps on the way.

Great work, brotha. I'm consistently impressed.

And, I'll be interested to know how those markers work. I've actually tried some similar to those with varying degrees of success.

Stryker2011 wrote:Man, he turned out amazing. All the building that went into this figure... I wish I had that kind of ambition.

Thank you Mark! Well setting the bench mark higher for myself each time is how I continue to learn and improve my skill set. Plus the challenge makes it far more interesting to me, like a puzzle.

peter the painter wrote:Wonderful work Alex, you have created a great looking Dwalin, your attention to detail, to say nothing of your ability to custom make it, is truly admirable.


Cheers,

Peter.

Thank you Peter! Means a lot!

Rogerbee wrote:Yeah, those markers could work. You could always try bare metal foil or even gold leaf.

CHEERS!

Thought of that but won't work for a bunch of reasons, I appreciate the ideas though! I think I'll end up doing a 2D styled drawing/painting technique where you just show partial bits of the patterns like a trick of the light.

dadrab wrote:Yep...In the midst of all those rascally wraiths, poor little Dwalin ain't got a chance.

Fear not, Dwalin. Helps on the way.

Great work, brotha. I'm consistently impressed.

And, I'll be interested to know how those markers work. I've actually tried some similar to those with varying degrees of success.

LOL! Thank you dadrab! Great narration of his predicament! He'll have to hold them off for a while so just as well I started with the biggest warrior Dwarf!
The markers, like you say will be hit or miss, if they don't work on this I'm sure they'll come in handy for Zoid builds etc..

Got Balin mocked up to get an idea of what I need to do...

Depending on the intricacy of the design, you might be able to cut up pieces of gold duct tape and attach them to the cloth. Worked ok on my non-superhero Thor's Anglo-Saxon-design-based tunic, but of course I was dealing with fairly large geometric patterns. Check out The Odinssons thread.

GubernatorFan wrote:Depending on the intricacy of the design, you might be able to cut up pieces of gold duct tape and attach them to the cloth. Worked ok on my non-superhero Thor's Anglo-Saxon-design-based tunic, but of course I was dealing with fairly large geometric patterns. Check out The Odinssons thread.

I'm afraid it's too complicated and subtle for that, works nicely on the tunic you made though. I might actually get away with not actually doing the subtle gold patterns as there are quite a few pics where you can't see it if it's even there due to all the costume changes he has, I think it's most prominent on his sleeves but there are also the rippled segments around his shoulders to do which is the tailoring of the fabric and not a printed pattern. Started sewing his robes anyway, I'll try and stitch together some borders for it in 'Paint' then print them off on fabric.

Looking great, even if a tad Christmas-y. Yes, these are fairly intricate and narrow. On the Thor tunic I made the narrower, finer lines with gold fabric marker from Alene's, but they weren't quite this fine (or didn't turn out that way). It was a pain, and I was already working with a perhaps less fluffy fabric than what you appear to have on those surfaces.

Yes Balin does unfortunately have a rather Santa Claus vibe going on...I will be toning down the red but as usual just working with what I've got. Spent the rest of the day using Paint to cut bits of boarder pattern designs from pictures of Balin, resize them and rotate them with sod all success as Paint is vey limited but at least it's okay to use i.e. doesn't fry my brain! The printer actually behaved from the get go so miracles do happen, got a jigsaw's worth of little border pieces to cut out (they're on the cotton self adhesive sheet) and muddle together. I had lined up a load of pics like last time to create instant boarders but the details must have been too small for the printer to manage as they just came out as brown strips.











Had to cut bits like this with Paint as there's very little reference on the internet and unfortunately no sites or pictures dedicated to his embroidery patterns..

Just one word: WOW.

GubernatorFan wrote:Just one word: WOW.

Not sure if that's a 'What the hell are you doing?!' WOW or not!
Can't take a nap, too hot and I'm itching all over from cutting back that big bush in my garden, always forget I must be allergic to it somehow.
Remembered I have some better material to make Balin's robes from, it's a darker red and more of a maroon so should look way better, hard to tell in the pics but there is a big difference in hand.

Cut and sewed him some new robes out of the better colour matching material, it has a piping texture in it already which I have used to my advantage for some texture and detail. It's quite thin though so may need some puffing out in places using thin foam or another red material on the inside. Needs some hemming and/or trimming but you get the idea.

Another ambitious build. Looking good so far.

That printer technique looks like it might work. If all else fails, just do a battle version and cover it in mud. That's saved my bacon a few times!

CHEERS!

Stryker2011 wrote:Another ambitious build. Looking good so far.

Cheers!

Rogerbee wrote:That printer technique looks like it might work. If all else fails, just do a battle version and cover it in mud. That's saved my bacon a few times!

CHEERS!

LOL, unfortunately his 'battle version' if a gorgeous fully armoured costume! I hope to make some of these one day using casts from Peter's sculpts for the faces inside the helmets..



But yes weathering could certainly help!

I think I just had a 'eureka' moment, he seems to have three sets of robes, his under clothes (trousers and tunic), his main robe with all the boarder embroidery held with a thick belt and an outer robe that has no embroidery but has all the complicated gold patterns in the material and short sleeves. If I don't do the outer robe (he can be seen in the film without it) I can avoid all the gold patterns!

First layer:



Second (main) layer:



Third (outer) layer:

Problem solved, get in!

CHEERS!

Hours of cutting, pealing and some gluing later..

Done the rest of the boarders just need to make his black polygon collar then glue it all in place, perhaps do a lot of sewing too as I never trust glue to last very long.

That's a really good start on Balin, You've got me totally hooked on seeing how you make these characters come together, great stuff.



Cheers,

Peter.

Looking good!

CHEERS!

Shovelchops81, always amazing. I need to post my wip soon.

peter the painter wrote:That's a really good start on Balin, You've got me totally hooked on seeing how you make these characters come together, great stuff.



Cheers,

Peter.

LOL, thanks Peter! And you don't even like LOTR etc.. quite a complement then!

Rogerbee wrote:Looking good!

CHEERS!

Thanks Roger!

MerylAkiba wrote:Shovelchops81, always amazing. I need to post my wip soon.

Just saw you thread and the cool work you're doing on Gothmorg.

Been one of those days, one step forward three back... hot water went of while in the shower while washing my hair, steam had tripped the whole house so the computer then decided it didn't want to live any more so spent a good couple of hours fixing that by repeatedly shocking it ironically (pulling the power plug repeatedly until it decided to reset and behave). Of course this theme continued with Balin, I realised that his robes would look better the other way around because of the seams showing on his sleeves and the sewed on panels showing the way I had it. So I put it on the other way around, sewed up the cut I'd made for the front initially then found that there wasn't enough robe to close at the front so had to unpick all my stitching, leave a gap in the back and glue on a new panel to fill it, by this point I was fed up of sewing only to unpick all the work later. Seems okay now, I'm working on his collar and some dark boarders to go under all the embroidery so it looks more chunky and movie accurate.







Striped and glued the tunic together to reduce bulk and make it more form fitting.

Consistently blown away by the amount of research you put into your builds.

That's looking damn good, man.

dadrab wrote:Consistently blown away by the amount of research you put into your builds.

That's looking damn good, man.

Thanks dadrab! Just trying to find as many reference pics as possible to do an as accurate build as my time and skills allow bearing in mind how many there are to make!

Doesn't look like I've done much but been gluing and cutting, then not happy so ripping off, recutting and glueing etc.. taking a while to get him sort of right, understanding how the costume is actually made in real life is the biggest hurdle with limited reference pics of the same costume due to all the costume variants used.

Looking great, and no longer so Santa Claus. You mentioned one can buy this printable cotton stock. Is the use of it limited to specific kinds of printers, and if so, what?

GubernatorFan wrote:Looking great, and no longer so Santa Claus. You mentioned one can buy this printable cotton stock. Is the use of it limited to specific kinds of printers, and if so, what?

You must be stressed, forgot the magic words!
It's for inkjet printers mostly and comes with instructions. There are a few options for laser printers but I think that's mostly acetate and adhesive material for 'stickers' etc.. Mine came in A3 but you just cut them in half to get A4, they're sold in A4 as well.