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

Wow! Just — Wow! All the reworking of the head, hands, and feet, to the amazing coloring of the body, and now the helmet! Man, this is looking so cool.

Ovy wrote:Yaay it's Torchor, revolutionary freedom fighter hero of Isengard! What a badass. The mask is a real beauty, complimenting our lone hero's graceful smile. I won't mention again how much fun you might have with worbla.

Great to see that body, hopefully a good investment, you caught that tone quite well. And I also don't believe In Oil Paints, it's one of history's greatest lies. Guess why you are not allowed to touch any of those centuries old oil paintings at the museum? Because they are not dry yet.

Fun times indeed haha

And no the Australian was not shadiversity, I never bothered much cause I found his content kinda weird.

But to add to the Commonwealth,  I also like Skallagrim of Canada for unconventional stuff.

Well, and what's weirder, an American talking about European history stuff or an Italian dressing in Samurai armor, haha. Yeah watched some metatron too, he taught me about all those Mempo masks.  If they know their stuff and are good at explaining, they can be from anywhere.

LOL, yes oil paint does dry it just takes a long time! In fact it's acrylics that technically never dry, they are considered to be in a constant viscous (thick liquid) form like glass is too, odd but true! If you ever get the chance to look at some very old glass windows (hundreds of years old) you can actually see that over time the top of the glass is thin and the bottom is thick due to gravity!
As for American historians, I think what drives me nuts is how they call anything over a hundred years old ancient! The definition of ancient is over a thousand years old, it's just a personal thing that drives me nuts, I still love watching 'The Curse Of Oak Island' though!
Skallagrim is actually German I believe as is his long time partner, moved to Canada about 8 years ago but also lived in the UK I think. He made videos about the move, then later videos about moving from the west coast of Canada to the east coast (I watch way too much You Tube!). As for Metatron, he did live and study in Japan for quite some time, training in dojos and is a linguistics teacher.

Finally finished the bloody helmet!!  So this will be the last time I subject you all to repetitive pics of it too! Need to show them as it's part of the building process and the hardest part as well unless you are extremely lucky to find something that fits perfectly right off the bat onto a custom head! Tidied the feet up some more then painted some parts with black primer. Discovered a little trick to armour building too, I had no studs left to use as rivets so made more out of leather using the hole puncher, so now I can make them in various sizes and use various materials to do it i.e. leather, rubber, card, soft plastic etc..































CUT AND CHANGED THE SIZE AND ANGLE OF THE 'LOBSTER TAIL' HELMET PORTION AS WELL AS ADDING THE RIVETS

















MINE'S SORT OF A BLEND OF A FEW INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BERSERKER HELMET















I THINK I'VE SOLVED MY 'HANDS' DILEMA, I'M GOING TO CUT OFF THE LITTLE FINGERS OF EACH LARGE HAND. THEN MILLIPUT THE THREE FINGERS TOGETHER WHICH I'LL THEN SCULPT INTO FOUR FINGERS, THIS WILL KEEP THEM SIGHTLY BIGGER THAN THE HT PREDATOR HANDS BUT SMALLER THAN THEY ARE NOW.

SORRY I HAVEN'T BEEN GETTING REPLY NOTIFICATION EMAILS FOR SOME STUPID REASON SO I'VE MISSED THANKING SOME OF YOU FOR YOUR GREAT SUPPORT!

GubernatorFan wrote:Oh well, perfectionist! Let that be the worst thing said about you, right? I'm sure it will look glorious.

LOL, I'm pretty sure I know some people and ex's who would argue with that but I welcome the the encouragement GTF!

Stryker2011 wrote:Wow! Just — Wow! All the reworking of the head, hands, and feet, to the amazing coloring of the body, and now the helmet! Man, this is looking so cool.

Thank you and I hope so, I'm just trying to find shafts the right thickness for arrow shafts, souvlaki sticks are too thick I think.

The helmet and head are coming along perfectly. Glad you modified it after all, and made this very useful discovery about the rivets. The primed pieces are excellent; they look so cool, I'm almost sorry they will get painted for the final figure. But it will be for the greater good. I'm sure your modification to the hands will be just as successful.

GubernatorFan wrote:The helmet and head are coming along perfectly. Glad you modified it after all, and made this very useful discovery about the rivets. The primed pieces are excellent; they look so cool, I'm almost sorry they will get painted for the final figure. But it will be for the greater good. I'm sure your modification to the hands will be just as successful.

Thanks GTF! I'm still not 100% happy with the helmet, need to make smaller rivets (luckily there is a smaller setting on my hole punch or I can just use a smaller gasket punch to make them, also the tail's brackets should be scalloped to look more tribal in shape than the soft cones they are now...the curse of perfectionism!

Okay I mean it now, the bloody helmet's finished (except for paint, padding and chinstrap) I reduced the size of the rivets buy cutting around their edges, scalloped the lobster tail (hmmm...shellfish and lobster..yummy) into more Gothic/Tribal curves. I did the hand mods, cutting a finger off then making 3 fingers 4 with milliput (these guys need to sponsor me! ) them sprayed it all black. I also added more black pastel to the body as taking a look at the Toy Biz figures, all the Berserkers have a sort of black camo pattern on their skin, probably war paint like all the white hands of Saruman but it made me think of Conan in that cool striped black 'night camo' he and his friends wear while breaking into the tower; so I sort of emulated that.

























Camo and accoutrements yet to be made:













FINALY ORDERED ONE OF THE 1/1 FULL STEEL URUK-HAI HELMETS TO GO WITH MY SHIELD AND SWORD, SHOULD MAKE A GREAT DISPLAY!

Actually I like your helmet better, although I realize it is a different one. Nice progress. Just be careful where you put Saruman's hands on this one, I mean he's a nearly naked dude, so...

That's pretty slick. Are you going to be running around the moors dressed in your helmet wielding your weapons and screaming like a lunatic? (Don't actually do this...)

GubernatorFan wrote:Actually I like your helmet better, although I realize it is a different one. Nice progress. Just be careful where you put Saruman's hands on this one, I mean he's a nearly naked dude, so...

It's the same helmet the Uruk-Hai shock trooper I made is wearing just a bit less angular or pronounced in places. The full metal 1/1 version below is awesome but literally twice the price for some longer tusks, it also doesn't match the weathering on my shield at all. As for the hands, they'll go where the reference pics and my Toy Biz figure say they should go but I get the joke I'm just half asleep and can't think of a witty response involving perverts and white fig leaves etc...Sorry!

Stryker2011 wrote:That's pretty slick. Are you going to be running around the moors dressed in your helmet wielding your weapons and screaming like a lunatic? (Don't actually do this...)

Cheers and nah, don't worry I'm far too lazy and Wales is made of hills and valleys no flat moors so running anywhere would be exhausting even if I was remotely fit!

Somehow the shorter tusks work better for me, maybe more iconic? But I'm not really an expert of any kind when it comes to these guys and these movies. Hope you got some rest.

GubernatorFan wrote:Somehow the shorter tusks work better for me, maybe more iconic? But I'm not really an expert of any kind when it comes to these guys and these movies. Hope you got some rest.

Cheers!

Painted then attached the the head, feet and hands; not a fan of the tiny metal ball pegs on this body they limit articulation and have next to no grip on the attached parts. Also not a fan of my meaty hands on the figure, might look better when they are partially covered by gloves and gauntlets later or I have the Predator ones to use. The skin colour and shading is what I was going for today but hard to match up when it's glossy and the body's matte, also handling the body so much seems to fade the pastel colouring; all a bit of a juggling act and guessing game! The head might need to be lowered on the neck a little too. Lined the helmet and made a 'Hand of Saruman' stamp to use later. Oh and his shins look really skinny, I'll need to add some greaves to fix that as the figure was probably designed with those in mind.

The progress photos actually look great. But I'm worried about the fading color when handling (for what it is worth, I do not actually notice it in the photos). This should not be happening. I realize you used a different technique for coloring the body, and I wonder if that is why you have this different experience. It may be time to get a cosmetic sponge (and this is not the point to experiment with something else that might damage the surface) and really work in the color into the surface. And apply more color as needed. Same thing when you add any additional color details. I don't think there is a way around it. Better tackle this now, before you have to disassemble your finished figure to do damage control. And I feel you pain -- it is always a somewhat frustrating process to match the color and shine of painted plastic with colored TPE -- but don't give up, you'll get there.

I'm being pretty ham fisted with the guy, grabbing around the waist and the chest a lot as well as the arms and legs often without thinking or shoving parts on pushing against the silicone a lot too. I'm not stressing about it, don't forget I have two colours that are probably just merging, I'll add more red when I've finished painting the solid parts. I got the head off, pain in the neck for both of us! LOL ....ah couldn't resist! This was when a small ball joint would have been handy but nope, they've gone with a giant one about .50cal in diameter; luckily the head didn't crack. Dremelled it out further then inserted hot glue again and pushed down, I'd already lined the silicone neck with silicone grease so the glue wouldn't stick to that area, now he looks a lot meaner and less like a giraffe!

LOL, pain in the neck! Funny. Well, just so you know, there are coloring results where you don't have to worry about handling the figure any which way. But then perhaps you would not have gotten quite the color you did using your technique, I'm not sure.

GubernatorFan wrote:LOL, pain in the neck! Funny. Well, just so you know, there are coloring results where you don't have to worry about handling the figure any which way. But then perhaps you would not have gotten quite the color you did using your technique, I'm not sure.

Probably, I don't think the camera light is helping either, it's making everything too pale and uniform, these pics are closer to what I see which actually looks better to me. Head fixed here too.













I'm going to matte coat the solid parts next to get a better idea of where I am colour matching wise.

now after giving the appendages a couple of coats of matte clear, some reddish brown pastel on the body scrubbed in vigorously with a cloth here he is in actual natural light since the sun has come up. I plan to do the white bits and hand prints next curious if my hand stamp idea will work.

He looks so good. That color is really well done. It’ll be interesting to see how your hand stamp works on this.

He is coming along very nicely. Just don't scrub too hard. I don't know what matte varnish you use, but when I was using Vallejo's, I always felt the results were still too shiny. Perhaps it is a question of how many thin layers one applies and, as usual, I was being impatient and wasn't applying enough. So I learned a trick from Skywalkersaga, to use Liquitex Ultra Matte Medium mixed in with the actual acrylic paint I was using to paint heads, hands, feet, whatever. It works like a charm. In fact, so well, I forego matte varnish altogether (which can be a problem if you scrape the surface afterwards). At any rate, your results look very good. These being Uruk-Hai, perhaps their hands and feet can or should be a little larger than human and, besides, as you've pointed out, there will be more equipment added on. Be careful with the vigorous scrubbing. That is the way to ensconce oil pastel into the TPE, but it can only take so much before the surface gets slightly damaged -- in the sense that it would cease to be smooth (it would take much more damage than that to cause any actual tears or bigger problems).

Stryker2011 wrote:He looks so good. That color is really well done. It’ll be interesting to see how your hand stamp works on this.

Thank you very much Stryker! I've done the white hands using the stamp below, see what you think, I'm happy with the results (except for one shoulder where I applied it while the 'flesh' was compressed so when I lowered the arm the hand distorted like a tattoo would) but it's just meant to be white clay slapped on while in a battle frenzy!  I'm going to be adding some pink/red pastel to some of the surface areas of the skin as he's too dark now.

GubernatorFan wrote:He is coming along very nicely. Just don't scrub too hard. I don't know what matte varnish you use, but when I was using Vallejo's, I always felt the results were still too shiny. Perhaps it is a question of how many thin layers one applies and, as usual, I was being impatient and wasn't applying enough. So I learned a trick from Skywalkersaga, to use Liquitex Ultra Matte Medium mixed in with the actual acrylic paint I was using to paint heads, hands, feet, whatever. It works like a charm. In fact, so well, I forego matte varnish altogether (which can be a problem if you scrape the surface afterwards). At any rate, your results look very good. These being Uruk-Hai, perhaps their hands and feet can or should be a little larger than human and, besides, as you've pointed out, there will be more equipment added on.  Be careful with the vigorous scrubbing. That is the way to ensconce oil pastel into the TPE, but it can only take so much before the surface gets slightly damaged -- in the sense that it would cease to be smooth (it would take much more damage than that to cause any actual tears or bigger problems).

Dude you're obsessing! Relax, it's going to do what it's going to do  I've noticed the injection points of the mould are a weak point and to stay gentle there, part of the back of the neck ripped getting the head off but super glued the silicone back together with no problem. As for proportions, I like to think of the Shock Trooper type a stoic gorillas and the Berserkers as the faster chimpanzees as portrayed in the last POTA movies.

That color matching between the model parts and the seamless body is so good. I like the ingenuity on making the handprints, I thought you had freehanded them somehow but I saw you made a stencil out of thin foam for it.

Looks like he will be another great Uruk for your collection.

Theboo-bomb wrote:That color matching between the model parts and the seamless body is so good. I like the ingenuity on making the handprints, I thought you had freehanded them somehow but I saw you made a stencil out of thin foam for it.

Looks like he will be another great Uruk for your collection.

Thanks TBB! Ironically both those things have changed now, I lightened the body colour then matched the other parts too it but that meant rubbing off most of the white hands, I think when I do the hands again I'll try white pastel first and cover that with printed on acrylic and just try not to touch it or try sealing it with some matte clear? Who knows it's all a bit experimental at the moment. I detailed the eyes, mouth and finger/toe nails then added gloss, made his leather and fabric loin cloth, cut out his fibre card armour etc..





Sorry, tired!

Just had an idea, I'm going try and literally tattoo the white paint into the silicone skin, means I'll have to make a rudimentary tattoo machine which won't be the first time. My third year project in my Product Design Bsc(hons) degree was a fully working new type of tattoo machine that got exhibited at the Dyson  student designers show in London and it was fully functional with its own inbuilt power pack and speed control unit, , no wires, ended up talking on a radio science show about it; I also showed it to the head of the European Tattooists' union(?) at an event I specially flew out to Berlin for. Then I started working on custom Harleys in Florida and forgot all about it, I still have the non functioning production mock up prototype model I made but the working one is in bits back in Greece.

I'm curious to see what comes out. It is certainly more adventurous than what I would undertake.

GubernatorFan wrote:I'm curious to see what comes out. It is certainly more adventurous than what I would undertake.

I made a quick tattoo shading needle set up just to manually use and see if my idea worked, sadly it didn't as the silicone just closes up forcing the paint back out again; I was even hitting the metal skeleton in places on his back so the needles were definitely going deep enough but it doesn't act like living skin, I've had better results on tomatoes! ALSO just remembered that white ink on black skin doesn't work with real skin anyway DOH! It's the hardest 'colour' to use in tattooing even on white skin, takes loads more work and tears you up; so tattooing on a pale skin silicone body might still work fine. Tried the white pastel next but that was useless too so I've gone back to acrylic but coated these areas with matte clear coat and will just have to be careful handling the figure. I made his sandals, studded  and painted his armour sections black for now.





TATTOO RESULTS



WHITE PASTEL RESULTS
















BACK TO ACRYLIC BUT WITH ADDED CLEAR COAT

Done pretty much the figure itself just need to do all his accessories such as long sword, bomb igniter flare, maybe a Rohirran soldier's head? Some arrows to stick into him and lots of blood! He's looking a bit purple for some reason, maybe it's the lighting, not sure but red ink for the blood should sort that out as he will be covered in it, if it cracks, well so does real drying blood. Lurtz is in for a wardrobe makeover, needed more leather and it all needs to be painted with black ink, had to mod his head connector. Funny how he dwarfs the Beserker, no idea where that body came from, thought it was a WWE one but nope, totally different.

The Berseker looks great. If I were you, I'd leave him arrow-free -- as in before he gets shot. But you are more adventurous than I. It's not just a matter of piercing the TPE, but also the practical challenges of having a figure with arrows sticking from all over it. The size comparison with the other figure is interesting. These are probably TBLeague's beefiest bodies, but not their tallest.

He looks amazing! I'm am especially impressed by those foul teeth you painted there!
The hands and feet work really well with the leather. I was skeptical at first about their size, but you obviously know what you're doing, and now they are perfect.

They look great side by side.