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

Excellent. It really pops now, and not just in the gleaming sense.

It just keeps getting better and better! I must admit, griming up fake metal is one of my favourite things to do in miniature, and I really ought to come up with a character who has metal armour just so I’ve got an excuse to make some! XD Obviously this is a bit big for your purposes, but googly eyes and/or dried split peas/lentils are great for making fake rivets!

You may have already seen this whilst researching, but I remember finding this site yeeeears ago and it has some really useful references and techniques. Obviously it’s for full sized cosplay, and the site was built not long after the films were released so they didn’t have quite the same high res photos we do now, but it still has some useful stuff on there, plus some patterns for outfits that could be scaled down!

https://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Nasty/Orc/Making/MakeMoria.htm

(Also, it’s kind of blowing my mind that this December it’ll have been twenty whole years since the first film came out. )

GubernatorFan wrote:Excellent. It really pops now, and not just in the gleaming sense.

Cheers GTF! Yeah, nothing gleaming here! LOL.

Lynkhart wrote:It just keeps getting better and better! I must admit, griming up fake metal is one of my favourite things to do in miniature, and I really ought to come up with a character who has metal armour just so I’ve got an excuse to make some! XD Obviously this is a bit big for your purposes, but googly eyes and/or dried split peas/lentils are great for making fake rivets!

You may have already seen this whilst researching, but I remember finding this site yeeeears ago and it has some really useful references and techniques. Obviously it’s for full sized cosplay, and the site was built not long after the films were released so they didn’t have quite the same high res photos we do now, but it still has some useful stuff on there, plus some patterns for outfits that could be scaled down!

https://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/Nasty/Orc/Making/MakeMoria.htm

(Also, it’s kind of blowing my mind that this December it’ll have been twenty whole years since the first film came out. )

Thank you Lynkhart! Don't think I'll be using googly eyes or dried peas though
Cheers for the link, I love how the casually add a £1,000 piece of equipment (bandsaw) in between items like glue and a hole puncher for things you'll need!!
Check these guys out, always drooled over the full metal armour work for LOTR etc.. especially the Gothic concept Ring Wraith armour and Witch King armour!
https://www.kropserkel.com/reproductions.htm

That paint work looks excellent, Alex. And Christine, what an interesting site.

You mean not everyone has a bandsaw/tablesaw/fully kitted out workshop at their disposal?!
Honestly, the most expensive bit of kit I have is a dremel and I’m always slightly terrified of chopping off fingers each time I use it! It’s weird because I used to use a bandsaw all the time at college and felt completely at ease with it!

Oooh, I love the Twilight Witchking crown there!

Random fact; the first LOTR film came out when I was 11, and me and my cousins were obsessed with it, going so far as to make our own home movie ‘trailer’ for it in the garden. It was, as you can imagine, utter crap, but to this day I still cackle at our reproduction of the infamous ‘hobbits hiding from the ringwraith’ scene, with my cousin in a halloween vampire cloak (with no hood and massive collar) and massive adult size gardening gloves as gauntlets. We thought it looked really convincing at the time. XD

Absolute masterclass armorsmith ! Thanks for showing and all the inspirations. The Orc itself naked, is just fantastic. What a shame to hide him behind that wonderfull armor.

Everything is looking excellent, shovelchop!!  

Lynkhart wrote:Random fact; the first LOTR film came out when I was 11, and me and my cousins were obsessed with it, going so far as to make our own home movie ‘trailer’ for it in the garden. It was, as you can imagine, utter crap, but to this day I still cackle at our reproduction of the infamous ‘hobbits hiding from the ringwraith’ scene, with my cousin in a halloween vampire cloak (with no hood and massive collar) and massive adult size gardening gloves as gauntlets. We thought it looked really convincing at the time. XD

LOL, this is brilliant, love it! The good ol' days of making home videos.....

Stryker2011 wrote:That paint work looks excellent, Alex. And Christine, what an interesting site.

Cheers Stryker!

Lynkhart wrote:You mean not everyone has a bandsaw/tablesaw/fully kitted out workshop at their disposal?!
Honestly, the most expensive bit of kit I have is a dremel and I’m always slightly terrified of chopping off fingers each time I use it! It’s weird because I used to use a bandsaw all the time at college and felt completely at ease with it!

Oooh, I love the Twilight Witchking crown there!

Random fact; the first LOTR film came out when I was 11, and me and my cousins were obsessed with it, going so far as to make our own home movie ‘trailer’ for it in the garden. It was, as you can imagine, utter crap, but to this day I still cackle at our reproduction of the infamous ‘hobbits hiding from the ringwraith’ scene, with my cousin in a halloween vampire cloak (with no hood and massive collar) and massive adult size gardening gloves as gauntlets. We thought it looked really convincing at the time. XD

Well some tinfoil on the gardening glove would have finished off the look very well, great picture either way! I have no videos or pictures when I was that age, I guess my parents do.

Ephiane wrote:Absolute masterclass armorsmith ! Thanks for showing and all the inspirations. The Orc itself naked, is just fantastic. What a shame to hide him behind that wonderfull armor.

Thank Ephiane! I am only using a cheap (but hard to find now a days) black 12" Jak's Pacific WWE body that has lots of joints on show, The next one will be a Beserker using a seamless Anubis silicone muscle body and only wears a loin cloth, a helmet, some gauntlets, sandals and war paint! So you'll get your wish!

skywalkersaga wrote:Everything is looking excellent, shovelchop!!  

Lynkhart wrote:Random fact; the first LOTR film came out when I was 11, and me and my cousins were obsessed with it, going so far as to make our own home movie ‘trailer’ for it in the garden. It was, as you can imagine, utter crap, but to this day I still cackle at our reproduction of the infamous ‘hobbits hiding from the ringwraith’ scene, with my cousin in a halloween vampire cloak (with no hood and massive collar) and massive adult size gardening gloves as gauntlets. We thought it looked really convincing at the time. XD

LOL, this is brilliant, love it! The good ol' days of making home videos.....

Damn you guys must be young uns! I had absolutely no way of filming anything as a kid! The closest I had was Kodak disposable cameras.

Final paint, a gloss clear coat, it was 50/50 whether to go with gloss or matte here but I liked the pictures of the statues I'm using for reference in gloss better than the matte finish; I also remember it raining in the movie at the beginning of the big battle in LOTR:TT but could be wrong! After that I sorted through a lot of leather for most of yesterday (sorting fake brown leather from real brown leather) and chose the real leather pieces I wanted to use. I cut the leather on his jerkin at the front of his waist and all around his shoulders (still held together by the wax cord I used to sew the jerkin together) this allows for a huge improvement in articulation shown below. I also sorted through all my belt buckles and made custom leather straps that had to be painted to hide the lighter sides of the leather underneath and where it had just been cut. I'm now in the process of carefully attaching all the armour in a realistic way that won't hinder articulation.

































PAINTED THE LEATHER EDGES

Love the weathered paint and impressed by the leather work. I'm glad the armor, cool as it is, would not hinder articulation -- a very common problem, both in figure sets and I suppose to some degree in real life. I also think gloss was the right call.

GubernatorFan wrote:Love the weathered paint and impressed by the leather work. I'm glad the armor, cool as it is, would not hinder articulation -- a very common problem, both in figure sets and I suppose to some degree in real life. I also think gloss was the right call.

Cheers GTF! Yeah I might even go with another coat of gloss on the armour. As for being restrictive in real life, not if you were fit and trained with it constantly, also the quality and design of the armour plays a huge part in how well it works and has to be made for you personally which is incredibly expensive!! Here is a clip of Matt Easton from Shcolagladitoria one of the top instructors of HEMA (historic European martial arts) and Tod Cutler a top tier weapons smith who also makes weapons for movies and tv like The Witcher etc.. he made the real steel unusual poleaxe copied from one he saw in the British Museum. Matt is wearing top of the range personally tailored, hand forged and hardened 15th century full plate armour (gorgeous!) and not the thin badly fitting stuff we can only afford on eBay!

Cool video. His name is Leo Todeschini. "Tod" is his nickname. "Tod Cutler" is the name of his retail business. Matt and Tod both have their own series of videos on Youtube and both are worth watching.

shazzdan wrote:Cool video. His name is Leo Todeschini. "Tod" is his nickname. "Tod Cutler" is the name of his retail business. Matt and Tod both have their own series of videos on Youtube and both are worth watching.

I know and have been watching them for years now . In fact I remember 'Tod' or Leo (he introduces himself as Tod Cutler on his channel now a days) from when he would guest star as a judge/expert for 'Scrapheap Challenge' (one of my favourite shows ever!) and 'Beat The Ancestors' with Dick Strawbridge also from 'Scrapheap Challenge' .

Oh man beautiful what you did with all that leather, love that strapping.
The armor looks beautifully used, with all the recesses toned. That white hand is great.

So many parallels to the stuff I am doing atm. Although you are much faster.

Great video, and haha, Matt Easton! Just last week before I made my  pole axe I did some research too. I watched an Australian, American and British video.

-Australian: A funny guy sparring with his friend showing how to fight with pole axes, taking breaks for jokes and explanations.

- British: That guy named Matt Easton wearing a brigantine over his sweater plus sallet and enthusiastically talking for 26 minutes straight about Pole Axes.
(Then there was another video were he talks to that American historian living in London, playing with polearms at the Wallace collection)

- US of A: Strong people with American pole axes hacking, smashing, destroying severed pig heads, animal carcasses, plastic bottles, cars and watermelons in slow motion, to metallic rock music.

Another interesting channel for armor is Knyght Errand by a guy named Ian La Spina.

It is actually "poll axe". Poll means "head" and refers to the bludgeoning appendage on the back of the axe.

A brigantine is a two-masted sailing ship. The armour is called brigandine. It comes from "brigand", which means "soldier".

I loved Scrapheap Challenge as well. In memory of the Barley Pickers, I declare Shovelchop's Uruk-Hai to be a "proper job".

Ovy wrote:Oh man beautiful what you did with all that leather, love that strapping.
The armor looks beautifully used, with all the recesses toned. That white hand is great.

So many parallels to the stuff I am doing atm. Although you are much faster.

Great video, and haha, Matt Easton! Just last week before I made my  pole axe I did some research too. I watched an Australian, American and British video.

-Australian: A funny guy sparring with his friend showing how to fight with pole axes, taking breaks for jokes and explanations.

- British: That guy named Matt Easton wearing a brigantine over his sweater plus sallet and enthusiastically talking for 26 minutes straight about Pole Axes.
(Then there was another video were he talks to that American historian living in London, playing with polearms at the Wallace collection)

- US of A: Strong people with American pole axes hacking, smashing, destroying severed pig heads, animal carcasses, plastic bottles, cars and watermelons in slow motion, to metallic rock music.

Another interesting channel for armor is Knyght Errand by a guy named Ian La Spina.

I think I know the Knyght Errand(?) channel, an American guy right? Something just seems wrong watching an American discuss European history but not Australians, no idea why lol. Is the Australian guy Shadeversity? He's barking mad and a Mormon Pastor/Priest too! Another good channel is Metatron, he's Italian but it's in English, he really knows his Roman and Japanese history, weapons armour, he also speaks about nine languages including Japanese and Mandarin! I find this amazing and sort of hilariously ironic because when I toured Italy on my motorcycle many years ago no one spoke anything but Italian! I speak fluent Greek and rather bad French but even though both these countries border Italy no one could speak either language or English; I had to do a lot of drawing and waving arms, pointing etc.. to get anything! Fun times and an adventure back when I 18.

I loved Scrapheap Challenge as well. In memory of the Barley Pickers, I declare Shovelchop's Uruk-Hai to be a "proper job". Smile wrote:

Thank you sir! Ah yes they were great fun as a team and their leader certainly enjoyed himself and was great at blowing up truck engines!! I can't believe I've forgotten his name, what a character!

If everyone still spoke (or at least wrote/read) Latin, we would be in business... Maybe the Italians were counting on that? Just kidding. I recognize some of the channel/presenter names, too. Great to see you have been putting them to good use in your own builds, Alex.

GubernatorFan wrote:If everyone still spoke (or at least wrote/read) Latin, we would be in business... Maybe the Italians were counting on that? Just kidding. I recognize some of the channel/presenter names, too. Great to see you have been putting them to good use in your own builds, Alex.

Well it's more to do with my huge sword and melee weapons collection but I guess it translates well into the type of 1/6 builds I like to do too.

Armour all done with harnesses tight and in place. Started on the weapons that include his fist coverings, one side has the signature double prong stabby, stabby Wolverine like claws and the other has some spikes but the shield is a weapon in itself. You can see my real steel full sized hand made Uruk-Hai shield and machete/cleaver styled sword for reference in the pics below (I still need to get a helmet!).
Made a handle for this 1/6 shield using wood, metal boot tacks and fibre card reinforced with super glue; the straps are real leather with a metal buckle. I reinforced the vinyl sword with a thin metal spine to stop it drooping over time, the grip will be wrapped with real leather. Not sure about making a pike yet as I haven't spotted the right piece of wood lying around as of yet.. we shall see. Next will be the head i.e. hair, paint for eyes mouth and claws on hands and feet.

You have such talent for recreating metal out of everything else, and making it look like it. The character is practically done! Already looking great and grimey, although I can't wait to see the finalized look with the completed treatment to the head.

Wow shovelchop that looks great - really like out of the movie, nicely used look and dirty. Great chop - I will have to check more of your thread later. Time is always a thing I need more of.

Wow look at that beautiful orc, fantastic weathering on the armor and on his outfit too, he's starting to look like he's wearing a few pounds of gear.

"Looks like meat's back on the menu boys!"

GubernatorFan wrote:You have such talent for recreating metal out of everything else, and making it look like it. The character is practically done! Already looking great and grimey, although I can't wait to see the finalized look with the completed treatment to the head.

Thanks GTF! Well I build so much armour in 1/6 it would be rather embarrassing if I couldn't make it look like metal! You realise the life size Uruk-Hai shield and sword are steel right? I got that distressed effect by leaving it out in the rain and pissing on it regularly!

Valiarde wrote:Wow shovelchop that looks great - really like out of the movie, nicely used look and dirty. Great chop - I will have to check more of your thread later. Time is always a thing I need more of.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my thread Valiarde! I'm terrible at visiting other threads which I apologise to everyone out there for, I'm just (egocentric) so focused on building my stuff.

Theboo-bomb wrote:Wow look at that beautiful orc, fantastic weathering on the armor and on his outfit too, he's starting to look like he's wearing a few pounds of gear.

Thank you TBB! He certainly is wearing some very heavy armour (in a real world scenario), I have the steel shield (pictured above) and that alone weighs around 5kg! This is no fancy light weight Milanese armour like the Gondorians wear.

shazzdan wrote:"Looks like meat's back on the menu boys!"

LOL, not sure he'll get a chance to eat any before he's killed by 'magic' Elven arrows. Why didn't they use a repeating bolt thrower or something similar to defend against these guys in the movie or am I forgetting something?

(surprised you didn't call me out on this) His bevor/gorget was blocking his helmet from turning far too much so I've cut it back and folded it down, not a cool looking but now he can turn his head!







A comparison to the figure that inspired the build or the top half at least!

That turned out amazing. All the work to put this guy together — from the body to the armor — is astounding. Well done, Alex.