The Grond Finale!

Well, hopefully you have all anxiously awaited these final images of GROND!

As I mentioned in the first post, the display base was about 25 x 13.  I used at least 4-5 pounds of sculpey!

The trolls and the orcs were metal, so every part of this giant diorama weighs a lot.  Now that I play LOTR all the time, it would be very interesting to actually make this again, with the knowledge I have today.

It's hard to believe that I did this almost 8 years ago.

In some ways, my techniques have changed a lot, and not just painting.  Even the display board would be much different, using brand new ideas that I explored on the recent terrain project.

I might be more inclined to convert some plastic dinos to pull this thing, to save on time and weight.

This piece required many many hours of work, and it really has been fun to look at it again (at least in picture form).  As I look at the sculpting of Grond itself, I am very pleased with how that turned out.  It was extremely close to the movie version, as I did have a lot of artwork and references on the battering ram.

If I did this again, I would leave more space for surrounding orc horde. :-)

I hope that you folks have enjoyed all the various posts concerning this diorama.  I split it into many posts to make it easier for me to manage.  There were tons of pictures to go through, and I was able to make it more cohesive when I broke it down into the individual components.  

Thanks for checking out the blog!!!

A break from Grond with Wrath of Kings. Sword pattern blues?

Before I get to the final post of Grond, I thought I would interject with a little Wrath of Kings.

I think the reason I wanted to post these was to discuss the real challenge of painting weapons (swords in this case), that have a very unusual shape.

It seems like I never get to paint "regular" swords anymore!

I guess companies are trying to make their minis more unique and stand out by doing some different patterns with the swords, but that makes it way more difficult to determine what surface is getting direct light, where the reflected light goes, etc.

I was restricted here in my color choices by the pre-determined concept art.  If I had a choice, I would have had much more 'earth' tones show up in some areas.

This one was not too difficult, since the surfaces were quite large.  Still, I had to change on the fly at least twice with the weapon n his right hand.

Again, these color choices were not mine.  After doing all the wild fluorescent colors on my Tomb Kings weapons, everything seems dull now. :-)

Here is one of the "grunts" of this faction.  These weapons were even more difficult, as the ends were rounded, and not flat, as they were on the big guy above...

Not long before the final images of Grond appear... Stay tuned!