A CROWN IS BORN../ The Hobbit Dwarves etc.. WIP's & Finished Builds Part 2

Sorry, I couldn't help but think... do you go off on expeditions to kill bears in your spare time? I can completely relate to the feeling of reticence and guilt when modifying a fine and expensive sculpt -- how much more so when doing that to something even rarer and unique. But I know your talent and skill, and have no doubt you will do a great job.

GubernatorFan wrote:Sorry, I couldn't help but think... do you go off on expeditions to kill bears in your spare time? I can completely relate to the feeling of reticence and guilt when modifying a fine and expensive sculpt -- how much more so when doing that to something even rarer and unique. But I know your talent and skill, and have no doubt you will do a great job.

Yeah...I hunt Teddy Bears! It's all faux fur lol. As for the sculpt, I know what you mean sort of, Peter always asked a fair price so it's not like one of those limited edition heads that go for £100 on eBay! He also made and painted them in one night (each) so it's not like I'm trying to modify the Cysteine Chapel that took a lifetime. At the end of the day Peter's sculpts are great for the price, communication and quick delivery, but sometimes something won't look right to me and I'll have to try and modify it until I get closer to what I want as he said himself "They're your sculpts, do what you want with them". I think I read your comment wrong! Oh well I'll leave what I've written as a defence anyway! Talking of mods his eyes need to be closer together, I absolutely hate painting, let alone sculpting eyes!! Been driving myself nuts with sculpting tools and milliput for the last few hours....

Well, one of the reasons you are so good at this is because of perfectionism. So you will keep looking for ways to improve what you've got. I see what you mean about the eyes, and it's fair. But certainly not the easiest modification (far from it).

GubernatorFan wrote:Well, one of the reasons you are so good at this is because of perfectionism. So you will keep looking for ways to improve what you've got. I see what you mean about the eyes, and it's fair. But certainly not the easiest modification (far from it).

I have a back up plan for the eyes if my sculpting goes pear shaped, use my box of donor heads to find some appropriate eyes to cut out and steal replacing what ever mess I've made!

Well this has been an interesting and fairly rewarding few days, I actually think I got the eyes right eventually, what had been missing was a proper brow ridge as Ori's is very prominent. So after sculpting the eyes with milliput and changing the nose (narrower) and mouth (more of a lopsided grin), I got out the Fimo Professional putty/clay and sculpted a new forehead  for him then baked the head for 40 minutes in the oven. Next were the ears which I cut from a hs in my donor box then attached them to the head at the rather extreme angles the character/actor has his. Then lots of paint experiments to give him the pale freckled skin of a ginger that his character seems to have, did the eyes fairly calmly for a change with about as good as a result as I can expect from myself in this area that I suck at. Then different washes, rewashes, sponge work, marker pen work, matte clear coat and gloss nail varnish for the eyes and mouth. He now looks like a bit of a lunatic as is, sort of a cross between the local village idiot and an escaped convict from Scotland! LOL. The hair and beard should change that, I've already made his braids using a mixture of coloured synthetic hair and black thread just like the prop wig. The hair application is next which will be tricky as I have to turn a flat piece of unidirectional faux fur into a dome while incorporating the braids at the same time, of course the beard has to be done with it's little tied off tufts too.
Don't be scared..he can't bite...actually reminds me a lot of my drug dealing and drug addled neighbour who looks a lot like this and after too many beatings in prison and at his own flat, has hardly any brain cells left or teeth...kind of a freaky coincidence as I hadn't thought of that until now!!





Now Baked..quite an apt description of my neighbour too!





Neighbour hasn't done a Chopper Reid ear slicing thing but did get stabbed in the neck one night which was entertaining!









Going to have to do something about those crazy caterpillar eyebrows I've ended up with there.. I'll resculpt and paint them tomorrow.





Looks a bit like Wallace from the Wallace & Gromit timelapse animation films! And the singer from Mightnight Oil...

Holy cow! Dude, that is insane. What a change and he’ll of a lot of work. Looking so different and more like him (sorry, Peter).

Holy cow! I think at this point you should have just sculpted a new head instead of tried to modify Peter's sculpt. Either way, I am sure you will end up with a perfect Ori in the end... or a mini-neighbor, or both.

Stryker2011 wrote:Holy cow! Dude, that is insane. What a change and he’ll of a lot of work. Looking so different and more like him (sorry, Peter).

GubernatorFan wrote:Holy cow! I think at this point you should have just sculpted a new head instead of tried to modify Peter's sculpt. Either way, I am sure you will end up with a perfect Ori in the end... or a mini-neighbor, or both.

That's a lot of Holy cows! I must be in India...bad joke .
Cheers guys!, I always need reference points when doing sculpts, I'm terrible at doing human hs's from scratch, even if they end up looking radically different like this one, without them it's like staring at that dreaded piece of white paper (if you've done any 2D artwork you'll know what I mean). An analogy would be: starting with a sculpt is like being dropped in the desert with co-ordinates even if they are miles from where you want to be, starting without a sculpt is like being dropped in the desert with nothing.

I removed his eyebrows (before I even had my coffee or first smoke), sanded down what I didn't want like edges etc.. then tried using my fairly fresh (loads of ink) Gundam panel lining brown markers with no luck, they cost £5 each and hardly ever work!! When they do they're brilliant, tried dipping them in water, then acetone nail polish remover, did the paper towel trick, nothing seems to work . Ended up using Daley-Rowney water soluble coloured pencils that I've had for 26 years!! They worked a treat but aren't smudge proof like Gundam markers and won't like clear coat.. .
Anyway, Mr. Potato-Head now has better looking eyebrows, don't forget the camera shows super high definition and not what we would see just looking at the figure with the naked eye.

Doing the hair and beard, added his undercut first and trimmed it, then the top 'mop' that I had to cut sort like an egg from Alien so the fur/hair stayed going in a downwards layered direction since the fur is unidirectional, while covering the crown of his head cleanly and looks natural; gave that a trim and started on the beard. Now that he is a proud only member of 'The Beatles Fan Club Quakers' Chapter' I'll leave him be for a bit and have lunch then a nap...

I would have left the eyebrows for last, but you can always add to them. I think they worked out. You've got some more hair grooming to do, but he is really coming together.

GubernatorFan wrote:I would have left the eyebrows for last, but you can always add to them. I think they worked out. You've got some more hair grooming to do, but he is really coming together.

Leaving them for last is probably a good idea actually, cheers! These will most likely rub off with a wet rag. As for hair grooming, well it's the beard that needs to be done and the braids attached, blending the edges of the beard with lose hairs is going to be tricky not to show the glue, it's so fine a beard that my usual techniques won't work here.

Finished his hair, beard, braids basically the head is finished as far as I can tell unless I've missed something? Started on his accessories, remade his canvas scribe's bag including wooden scribes (early pens), quills and a distressed book, also redid the strap with a buckle and stitching matching the statue version. Got his smaller leather bag (ammo for the slingshot I think and holds the weapon). Cut some branch bits from my garden to make a slingshot (no idea how they are supposed to have vulcanised rubber to make one, natural latex would just snap and degrade a lot faster) but whatever.. I was tempted to give him a hatchet or club instead. Also wood for making long stem pipes that the Dwarves like the rest of Middle Earth seem to love (except the bad guys, odd that lol) and a possible staff for the Wizard I might make too (I think it becomes Gandalf's staff as he is gifted it so already got a bunch of plastic ones of those but saw the wood and grabbed it anyway). Need to do his knife and sheath too, write some Dwarvish runes on the open pages of a book I want him to hold as he is writing their tale down on it with another quill I have for him to hold. I'll also finish his brother Nori's weapons too.































I MIGHT SPLIT THE BRAIDS INTO 8 SETS 4 FOR TOP 4 FOR BOTTOM LIKE THE PICTURE HERE, DEPENDS HOW MUCH IT BUGS ME..

Wowed by the attention to detail. Like these braids, for example. The bags and implements turned out great too. Does he still look like your neighbor?

GubernatorFan wrote:Wowed by the attention to detail. Like these braids, for example. The bags and implements turned out great too. Does he still look like your neighbor?

No! If he had any hair he wouldn't know how to braid it! He is a ginger though but a typical Chav crackhead. I'll probably be making the braids a bit more complicated as I alluded to in my edit up there. Cheers!

Okay, going to a bit of a photo dump here, this post is all the final stuff like accessories and weathering, also more experimentation with the hair and beard. I darkened the hair then realised I'd inadvertently removed all it's 'puffiness' and it was back to looking like the sculpted hair, to fix this I just sort of 'paved over' it with new fur/hair on top of the old hair then cut to shape and styled it with wax. I'd already done the splitting of the braids which involved a lot of thread winding and strategic gluing before cutting the 4 braids into 8 independent ones. I wrapped the beard 'dreads' to tighten them up, throwing a bit of white here and there too. Creating the book's text was interesting, I used an ink stylus and black ink to hand write each rune using some Middle Earth Dwarvish text and alphabet, it's basically Norse/Viking runes which is why it looks so familiar to me. I made his slingshot out of wood, leather and waxed twine, a long stemmed pipe out of wood, his knife from an old casting I made years ago and the sheath from leather, fabric card and a nail.

BUILDING THE SHEATH



HAIR MADE FLAT BY MISTAKE TRYING TO DARKEN IT WITH INK



BRAIDS SPLIT INTO 8 THOUGH





BOOK RUNES









REDOING THE HAIR













WAX ADDED









WEAPONS AND WEATHERING









FINAL PICS AND POSES NEXT..

Now the finished figure pics, might be a boring character but he was fun to pose for these pics at least! Might be slow loading for some as these are a bit better quality according to my phone at least..

Excellent craftsmanship all around, Alex. So many cool details it’s hard to pick out just one thing to compliment.

I'm happy to see him done, and your perseverance even after yet another hurdle (with the hair). The attention to detail was exquisite, as usual in your builds. Like Stryker, I am lost (in a good way) in all the glorious detail, and loving all of it. Your ranks are filling out.

Stryker2011 wrote:Excellent craftsmanship all around, Alex. So many cool details it’s hard to pick out just one thing to compliment.

GubernatorFan wrote:I'm happy to see him done, and your perseverance even after yet another hurdle (with the hair). The attention to detail was exquisite, as usual in your builds. Like Stryker, I am lost (in a good way) in all the glorious detail, and loving all of it. Your ranks are filling out.

Thanks Stryker and GTF! I still feel I failed on this build as far as the resculpt goes, those eyes look like they belong on Tutankhamen's gold mask and not a 'real' face and the hair is still too bright. perhaps I'll be able to correct them in the near future when the mood takes me, for now I want to move on to Bofur played by James Nesbitt and is the most likable of the Dwarves (I'm Irish maybe I'm biased) and friendly to Bilbo. He's also Bombur's brother and Biffer's cousin, which the opposite to what I thought and makes less sense but anyway... Talking of Bombur the cook, I had to make a second leg for the chicken so he can hold it, I spent hours looking for the tiny leg in loads of large boxes full of parts and useful scrap, seriously I have former post office as a storage room full of boxes that are mostly figure related! I'll take a pic, it's also the end of my shooting gallery, don't worry the figures are safe!! Anyway made the leg myself from a bit of thick yellow wire and part of some little figure's (Narnia?) sword pommel that looks just like a curled up chicken's foot in 1/6!! LOL.

Just the scratching the surface of a 1/6 scratch builder's heaven and a collector's nightmare!







BAGS ARE FULL OF 1/6 CLOTHING, MATERIAL FOR BUILDS AND LARGE WEAPONS FOR 1/6, DRAWS AND TUBS ARE FULL OF LOOSE 1/6 WEAPONS, PARTS, ELECTRONICS AND BUILD PROJECTS. IT IS ACTUALLY ALL ORGANISED AND LABLED BELIEVE IT OR NOT!LOL.













OKAY BACK TO CHICKEN FEET...

That poor, poor chicken! Well found and adapted.

Man, I thought my work space was cluttered!

Nice find for the chicken leg. If you hadn’t pointed out it’s source, I would have thought it was the actual leg that had been there all the time.

GubernatorFan wrote:That poor, poor chicken! Well found and adapted.

Well he has to put food on the table and Dwarves don't get all that strength eating salad!

Stryker2011 wrote:Man, I thought my work space was cluttered!

Nice find for the chicken leg. If you hadn’t pointed out it’s source, I would have thought it was the actual leg that had been there all the time.

That's my storage room not my work area!!

Starting Bofur now. I don't have too many yellow/beige/mustard clothes for 1/6, it's not exactly a common colour for figures unless it's desert camo (just remembered I have a box of firemen's gear and clothing in 1/6) so I've had to be a bit creative in sourcing yellow materials I can use to make his clothes, they are heavily textured and even a lowly Dwarf miner's (as he is described in 'One Wiki To Rule Them All') work clothes have complicated geometric patterns all over but especially the kneepads and cuffs of his clothes. I painstakingly cut and plucked all the threads from two stuffed animal toys (came with clothes left on the street in recycling bags but they don't recycle clothes here) to reveal and create a bunch of useful textured yellow and brown material to work with.

Here are some of the reference pics I'll be using:































Material and clothing collection:







IT'S THE INSIDE/REVERSE OF THE MATERIALS I LIKE:

Ah, that one. I was going to say that hat should be fun, but hey, it comes pre-sculpted. I hope you don't feel the need to redo the sculpt this time. Looks good from what I can see.