Moria Cutaway: Balin’s Tomb Completed

Balin’s Tomb is now finished. This has been a project like no other - started maybe six years ago, 'rested', then revisited over the past couple of months, it's been repainted, revised, restored and with a resident corpse stored within its stone foundations. I’ve extended the base on one side to make it a little more symmetrical (though it’s by no means centred), and included a few bones here and there – something of a green stuff lesson for me as I worked at it. Finally, finding a perfec square of larger card by chance I mounted the complete diorama on a further tier and repeated the exercise again. The new base is now thicker and, I hope, a little more robust. I’ve squared off the corners of the crypt (being built around a plastic box with rounded corners) as much as I was happy to, and there’s a surprising heft to the model now, mainly due to the card itself.

Outside Balin’s Tomb is Ori, still, his head remodeled slightly and his book given a spine of sorts. I’ve also added arrows to the model, a detail I’d always intended but never got around to – here they’re pins with painted woodchip flock for fletching, sealed with PVA glue and finally washed with some Brown Ink to make them look oily and nasty. The lid to the Tomb still comes off, deliberately, and has a raised floor to present Balin’s body better. I had to thicken the interiors of the walls with ice block sticks to make it look more robust and stone-like, while the lid underside was lined with two layers of card on which the legend Baruk Khazad – Khazad ai Menu is inscribed. Well, painted.

Here’s a WIP picture of the Balin model, a green stuff sculpture formed around an armature of matchsticks on a rectangle of foamboard, with a stick-on gemstone from a craft shop as a shield to rest the separately-sculpted head on. Balin’s pose is based on a number of real-life crypt effigies, as I thought they conveyed the necessary dignity of a fallen hero. I kept any major details the most defining characteristics of Balin – his white beard, an axe similar to the one I chose his earlier model from, and his age, of course. The great axe (possibly Durin’s, a detail inferred by the movies) is in his hands and is the only concession to the plastic Dwarf models, but he’s crown-less –it was just too much detail for me, unfortunately. Instead, his head rests on a Dwarven shield (based on a design from the LotR movie art books). After a LOT of angst about whether to line the sarcophagus interior with plush fabric, heap up treasures and tributes around him or lay Balin’s corpse on a detailed stone slab I abandoned all of these concepts after several dry runs. Every one of them ended up making the crypt interior look cluttered, overly busy and venal. We know virtually nothing of the burial practices of Dwarves, but my concept is that to Dwarves death is a return to the earth, and a body committed for burial is therefore an object stripped of treasures and sentiment.

Here, Balin is buried partly in armour (chain and shoulder vambraces), but is mostly robed and akin to the old soul of The Hobbit, his only concession to war the axe and shield. Anything else would, as I say, have visually detracted from the fallen king himself. It should in the main be a pathetic image, recalling the nature of Balin’s death, and perhaps the quickly diminished fortunes of his fellows now trapped in the halls they sought to claim. Early versions of the crypt floor (much bolstered by foam card and scrap wood) were painted in gold and silver – again, it was flashy and gaudy and said nothing, so a simple black outline of overlapping geometric shapes replaced them. Finally, some colours. Purple and red were of course early contenders, as well as gold and grey, but I wanted them all watered down or at least toned down – bright colours on a corpse look cartoony, and I avoided grey or white fur (befitting an older Dwarf seeking warmth rather than riches) so it wouldn’t blend into Balin’s white hair. The skin is closer to a light tan than the warmer Dwarf Flesh colour GW’s paints reserve for their (living) Dwarves. And with that, Balin is now at rest.

The larger base was added last weekend and early this week - more thick card with thinner card for flagstones (some are deliberately offset to show some age) and more detritus - I guessed at the colour mixes for the stone floor and strewn papers and got lucky! There's also some green stuff here - a couple of skulls (a frequent destiny for any left over blobs of green stuff late in the evening), some plastic shaving ribs and a rather grisly spine and hip combination; Tolkien himself spared no detail of the carnage that took place there, so I followed suit.

And with that, my time with Thorin Oakenshield's late company is finally at an end! or my nest project I;ve promised myself models with more stature, more colour, and less individuality. And I know just the subjects...

Moria Cutaway: We Need to Talk About Balin

After what seems an interminable amount of time prepping and revising my Balin’s Tomb model, I’m racing down the good side of the hill, albeit around a month after I’d intended wrapping things up.

Extending the cardboard base

The cause of much of the delay has been, as with Bombur and Dain, getting the tone right. Balin’s Tomb as encountered in 'A Journey in the Dark' is easily described – set low in the hall of Mazarbul in Moria, it’s the centrepiece to a bone-strewn room littered with the mute remains of Khazad-Dum’s records and the doomed efforts by Balin’s surviving kin and retinue (among them Ori, the Book of Mazarbul’s last diarist) to defend the resting place of their fallen king. It’s a site of defeat, and speaks of Balin’s failure to reclaim the kingdom, another step in the demise of his people.

I detailed the early construction of the model here, but left with the promise that I’d be tasking myself with also modelling the interior of Balin’s sarcophagus, and so here I am, nearly done. Lots of decisions to make, most of them about Balin. There’s no doubt that Balin cuts a tragic figure in the history of Middle Earth, but is distinct and quite different from the likes of Thorin. Balin is almost as old (and is already venerable in The Hobbit), a veteran of the Battle of Azanulbizar, and is a kind and gentle figure as far as we can tell from Bilbo’s story. That he then becomes a figure immortalised in The Lord of the Rings for his death in an ill-judged mission is remarkable. Certainly a few reader and scholars have sought to understand why one of the more sensible members of Thorin Oakenshield’s company would later mount such a hazardous quest – and at such an advanced age? Of all Dwarves Balin should have known better – he presumably witnessed the deaths of Thorin and his nephews in The Battle of Five Armies – a consequence of another ill-measured attempt to reclaim a Dwarven throne, and was present at Azanulbizar when his future king Dain shrank back from the gate of Moria, seeing for the first time the presence of Durin’s Bane – the Balrog that dwelled there. Was it pride, impatience or desperation that caused Balin, Oin, Ori and their companions to leave Erebor in pursuit of Moria’s treasures and throne? For what it’s worth, the early entries in the Book describe an early success to the mission. Balin’s company secure upper levels of the Mines, finding riches of mithril once more and repelling the goblin presence there. But there are early tragedies that prefigure their eventual fate as well – Oin is taken by the Watcher in the Water, and the creature seals the gates again, trapping the Dwarves. Balin falls overlooking the Mirrormere, Durin’s sacred lake. Rather deliberately on Tolkein’s part, Balin’s death is ignominious and far from the fate of kings – shot from behind a rock by a lone orc in an unguarded moment. After that, defeat and darkness.

Extended base with more detritus added

The Hall of Records is decorated and the defending dwarves slaughtered with only scant clues to their horrible fate. Balin’s tomb seems itself undisturbed, however. I drew a number of sketches in preparation for a model of Balin’s body (which were accidentally thrown away!) I kept coming back to The Hobbit’s version of Balin, though, and found that the more armour I put him in, the further away from that more sympathetic character he drifted. Oh, by the way, here’s Games Workshop’s LotR version of Balin of Moria:

Ultimately I had to decide how to depict the body of Balin, a fallen king, and in doing so try to imagine how he was at the time of his death. Was he fierce, grim, and powerful, or was he more like the humble and generous soul encountered and befriended by Bilbo? I decided he had to be more the latter, for sympathy’s sake as much as Bilbo’s version of his could be relied upon. Again, it’s not in battle that he meets his end but a moment of quiet contemplation. But he is, of course, the last king of Moria. Oughtn’t he then be clad in thick armour, a crown on his head and mighty axe in his hands? Well, perhaps. That’s for another post though.

Oaken's Twelve coda: Dain Nainsson

With the Company of Thorin Oakenshield done, there's now only one remaining Dwarf from The Hobbit to cover.

Well, there is Thrain, Thorin's father, but Dain is the last Dwarf to make a personal appearance in the story, and despite its fleeting nature, he is kind of a big deal. John Rateliff calls Dain son of Nain the sine qua non of Dwarves, and identifies in his personality and actions everything that Thorin ought to have been but fails to be either through his own rashness or the growing dragon-sickness once Smaug's treasure is recovered. Dain proves himself patient, diplomatic and well-resourced. As later King Under the Mountain he is a generous ruler, dispensing treasure to those promised and forging new alliances with his neighbours. All of this important to recognise because, as mentioned above, Dain's role in The Hobbit is not too obvious compared to Thorin's, and it's not hard to see his late appearance and triumph as usury if not also something of a cheat on top of Thorin's sacrifice.

Dain is therefore a complicated character, but for all that is easier to read if face value can be relied on - his influence lies beyond the story of The Hobbit as well, with Gandalf recalling his part in the War of the Ring alongside Bard's descendant Brand of Dale, and we can infer that he refuses Balin's request to attempt to re-take Moria - once again proving that he is a Dwarf of some wisdom. 

All of which gives me some pause when I anticipate Peter Jackson's version of Dain, to be portrayed by Billy Connolly.Seriously, he comes into the story riding a giant boar with a mohawk (Dain I mean, not the boar, mind you...)? This is going to be distracting, I can tell. And it's not as if Jackson has been the first to cast Dain as a Dwarven 'Hard-Ass' (even if the aforementioned vision sounds the most GW-inspired of all the Hobbit trilogy's visualisations). Here's GW's War of the Ring-era Dain, squeezed into their licence by virtue of the LotR Appendices:

I painted that five or six years ago, based on GW's own catalogue picture; but I've no desire to commit to this figure being Dain - he just doesn't feel like Dain to me. He's just a well 'ard Dwarf with a big axe.

This is my Dain, comprising nearly as much green stuff as the Bombur conversion, including chain mail, cloak, braids, hands and his base - which I'm really quietly proud of as it used up a heck of a lot of old rolled up green stuff scraps.yes, I know. I'm stingy with my supplies!

 

Here's the original Dwarf Warrior from GW's 'Khazad Dum' expansion of their Rings movie licensed line:

Note the beard tucked into the belt? That was a big factor in picking this pose. But add to that Tolkien's own description of the Iron Hill Dwarves (knee-length chain hauberks, braided beards tucked into belts, round shields, and a picture builds as much as a worksheet.

As for the the finished product, the axe, I must point out, is not the figure's original and it was only in seeking a picture of the original model that I realised I could have saved myself a few evenings of work and plastic filing. Oh well. A few colour changes occurred along the way as well - my dain was originally grey-haired with less brass highlighting and more chestnut (I was using his Dain Ironfoot epithet as a design template, basing the palette on metal and rust colours), but decided I wanted more warmth in the figure. He is an old, humane character, and setting him up in such steely colours didn't convey that. Also, it tied in nicely with the other colour clue offered by Tolkien's appendices, his 'red axe' he uses as a very very young warrior avenging his father's death in the Battle of Azanulbizar.

Of course it might not literally be a red axe, more an axe red with the blood of orcs, but it's Tolkien - you take what you can get!

That's it for the upright Dwarves of The Hobbit! There's one last visit I'll make to the members f the Company - well, two at least, and then I'm on to pastures new.

Oaken's Twelve: Rounding out the Posse

Naturally, the Company of Oakenshield isn’t complete without a Wizard and a Thief…

My Gandalf and Bilbo figures are, as you might expect, not official Hobbit figures, although they are from Games Workshop’s Tolkien license line. Gandalf is one of five or six metal variants on the character (including two mounted and one on a cart), and is simply the easiest and most appropriate to use. This being a LotR version, there’s no silver scarf as mentioned in the book, but short of making one from green stuff, this will do – the important elements, his hat, staff and sword Glamdring, are present, and you can’t ask better than that.

 

Bilbo, on the other hand, is not Bilbo at all, but Frodo repainted and chosen for his pose and for having his sword/letter-opener Sting in hand. In his other hand ought to be the One Ring on a chain, as supplied by Bilbo himself, but as this was not present in The Hobbit I’ve remodelled things slightly and used the opportunity to include the scarf Bilbo wears in An Unexpected Journey. The green cloak loaned by Dwalin is, of course, not present in the movie (for shame!), but I’m happy to include it here, and the backpack is a nice touch and a happy accident, as the movie most definitely features one. No walking stick as seen on the big screen, however, but I’m not worried.

Bilbo, it has to be said, is not really just Frodo with different coloured hair. That said, I’ve not made any attempts to bulk up this hobbit or change his physique too much, hoping instead that a judicious paint job on his face will soften the more sculpted cheekbones and jawline of Elijah Woods circa 1999 and nod towards something closer to Martin Freeman circa 2011.

My base for Bilbo here incorporates some Mirkwood leaves – using the old modeller’s trick of dried birch seeds. I’ve not mentioned this before, but my original intention with these figure conversions some five years ago was to portray the company as they were making their way through Mirkwood – hence Fili’s grappling hooks, and giving me a reason to keep weapons like bows on the models (bows and knives being the weapons Beorn gives the non-sword-bearing party members in the book.) My birch leaves date from then, so they’re getting pretty withered now, and I’d based the figures originally with medium-grain local beach sand and herbal tea leaves – all of which needed to be scraped off after moth larvae took a shine to the Raspberry Zinger (or whatever it was I’d used.) Gandalf, of course, doesn’t accompany Thorin’s team through Mirkwood, so that idea is now laid to rest.  

And so, with the Company complete, here’s the whole gang gathered at last:

Next time: I’m still not done with Dwarves!

Oaken's Twelve: Thorin Oakenshield

"There is no knowing what a dwarf will not dare & do for revenge"

And so finally I'm here - Thorin Thrainsson, the Oakenshield, Chief of the Company of Oakenshield. The Boss.

   

Thorin is the most complicated Dwarf character of The Hobbit, and his story is the most rewarding because of this. He has Fatal Flaw etched in him indelibly, and seems to personify the most infamous traits of his kind as lamented by Gandalf- obsessed with past injustices, wedded to revenge, servant to his passions, and not in a Mills & Boon way. I'm very curious to see how the remaining Hobbit movies will treat this character. So far he seems pretty close to the book version of Thorin, perhaps not so haughty (but then Richard Roxburgh's character hasn't met Elf king Thranduil yet), and maybe a little more sympathetic. His coming around regarding Bilbo of course happens earlier in the movies for reasons, I presume, of the movie trilogy's storytelling. That said, Thorin and Bilbo's relationship is an up and down affair throughout the book, and his mercurial personality is a major challenge for our Hobbit hero. 

Thankfully we have a pretty clear image of Thorin provided to us by Tolkien - an older Dwarf (older than Roxburgh's version seems to be to me), with a "sky-blue" hood with a long silver-tipped tassel. This style of hood is in fact a liripipe, and it was only through reading John Rateliff's notes to The Hobbit that I had a clearer picture of this in my mind - the earlier version of the model I simply opted to have a silver-braided wire tail with moulded tassel, but I was quite wrong and, in trying to correct this with more green stuff sculpting, met a rather heft challenge in getting the dynamics and flow right. In the end I don't thin  I did, quite, but it's a fudged-sort of movement that I think balances out the raised arm bearing Orcrist, not an Elven blade as such (it's the hand and sword of a butchered Gondorian soldier I've used here), but a significantly de-stabilising element to the model.

As shown here the model I used for Thorin has been altered a fair bit, including a new sword and hand, removal of hand axes and of course the tail and tassel. I also enlarged his shoulder bag (a hangover from when I stared these models back in the day and didn't want to sculpt backpacks, so opted for the nearest thing), and a gold chain around his neck which, strictly speaking, Thorin shouldn't have until he reaches the hoard of Erebor. The colouring is simple - some purple to the inner cloak to signify his regal bearing, and a Dwarven motif added at the last minute to break up the space a little bit. And that's Thorin.

Ah, but is it all the Dwarves? Wait and see...

Oaken’s Twelve: Where Are We Now?

Time for a quick summary. You may well have imagined, dear reader, that with Bombur, the twelfth member of Thorin Oakenshield’s company now complete, the job was done. Au contraire. You can’t have a Company without a leader, and so this weekend I intend to finish him off. Yes, the Oakenshield and heir of Thrain II is nearly ready for unveiling. He’s no Bombur as conversions go, but I’m pretty happy with him. Group shot to follow, of course.

The question then remains on what I’ll do next. Dain? Bilbo and Gandalf? But then what about Gollum, Elrond, Thranduil, Bard…? Actually, I think I can see a line to stop at, and I’ll likely do it. More projects beckon, time to move on.

Then there’s Balin’s Tomb, my cutaway project which has moved on from the last snaps, but not hugely. I’ll add that to the list. And then I’ll be done with Tolkien for a while I reckon. Come the end of 2013 with a new Hobbit movie released – that’ll be when I tackle some more figures from that world.

In the mean-Time, some long-expected artwork beckons, and on the figure front another near dozen wandering heroes, each one a Lord…

Oaken's Twelve: Bombur

At last – finished!

As the fattest Dwarf (Tolkien pulls no punches), Bombur cuts quite the figure, but is largely (oops) taken to be something of a figure of fun by all and sundry. I’ve found, though, as I’ve worked on the character, that far from being a cut-out stereotype ‘Billy Bunter’ figure, there’s a lot going on with this member of the team. True, some of it was edited out of the final draft – chiefly, Bombur’s own membership of what Rateliff assumes was a sort of ‘hearth guard’ of Thorin’s, along with his brother Bofur and cousin Bifur. And then there’s the small matter of Bombur post-Quest, as described in The Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring; not only does Bombur survive the battle of Five Armies, but grows in esteem and size in the years that pass, to the point that by the time Gimli and Gloin relate his status to Bilbo at Rivendell we learn that Bombur requires the strength of six stout Dwarves to carry him everywhere, due no doubt to both his age and his increased girth. And yet, like Ori (much abused by the new movie trilogy so far, as I argued earlier), he’s chosen by Thorin as a representative and compatriot in the Quest for Erebor. Why?

Well, it’s evidently not for comic relief. Nor for brains (Bombur is outwitted by Bilbo on the slopes of the Lonely Mountain – an easy feat given the Hobbit’s appealing to the Dwarf’s base desire for sleep), nor does it appear to be for his cooking skills – which are given no description of any kind in the book. The movie adaptation has a go at two of these three reasons, mind, with the main character beats of Stephen Hunter’s Obelix-like Bombur so far given to food and size-based visual slapstick (he’s yet to speak, although we can be sure he’s likely to before long in the movies), and of course afforded a giant ladle as a weapon because... well, because ladles = food! It’s funny, right?!

It’s more than a tad obvious is what I think, as is the early design notion of the movie to have Bombur’s various beard-jewelry contain morsels and snacks for the journey, the Dwarf being his own private quartermaster. I think it’s a lazy fall-back on characterisation, and the only thing I liked about the early Bombur concept sketches was one showing a drum (his musical instrument at Bag End) secured on his backpack, back in the days when the Company was conceived to be more of a band of travelers.  To be fair, even Tolkien abandons that notion early on in his story, and Bombur seems to be one of the least-likely to adapt to life on the road going by the blundering way he journeys through Mirkwood.



And yet, as we hear, Bombur survives. We also read in Roast Mutton that he is a pretty ferocious fighter, so it’s fitting that he should have a weapon more befitting a Dwarven warrior than a big spoon. Because of this, and to fit the earlier hearth-guard idea, I decided mid-conversion to remove the branch prop and waterskin I’d made and give Bombur his own Dwarven quarterstaff, which he might use as a walking stick on his journey as well. I think it also puts him in the company of some pretty fine stout fellows as well, notably Friar Tuck, and why not?The whole figure is almost 50:50 (if not more) green stuff and original plastic figure, the original of which is the same as Nori. If I perspired over giving Nori a bespoke hood to distinguish him from the then-similarly posed Bombur then I had no idea of the lengths I’d go to with the latter figure to further distinguish their silhouettes. Part of the story you can no doubt infer from my work in progress pics; the rest is some rather tentative explorations of how to realise in three dimensions the anatomy of fuller-figured people (and I should really acknowledge the movie as a positive influence here). It’s not just size and shape, but weight, gravity, movement and locomotion, and the dynamics of clothing and physique. Bombur’s a hefty boy, there’s no other way to address this than to do him justice, so I’m glad I did my best and took the time on him. I think I learned a lot.

For the record Bombur has green-stuff assistance with his belly, thighs and outer clothing, his left arm and right hand, his extra hair braid and beard (of course – bifurcated to improve from front-on the impression of his protruding abdomen), and I redid his satchel and gave him a small purse, and made an extension of his cloak because I reckoned that at the size I’d made him, his earlier cloak would have given him scant covering indeed. His staff is the same toothpick and green stuff creation as done for Bifur and Bofur, his knife is from scrap plastic, and his left hand is from a plastic Travelling Uruk-Hai. And so, with a new pose wiping some sweat from his brow as he joins his fellow Company, here’s Bombur.

Colour-wise I’ve found it hard to move away from the red hair of the movie Bombur – it just seems to fit, even if it owes a little to the aforementioned cartoon Obelix. In keeping I gave him a mix of warm ochre and browns to tie him in with Bifur and Bofur, and greys to allow a transition with another tricky cloak colour – Tolkien describes it as “pale green”, which is to say not light green, but something more washed out and less vivid. I have a straight bottle green in GW’s old Snot Green acrylic, but couldn’t make it work alongside the other colours, nor could find some appealing colours to coordinate it with, and so a mix of Fortress Grey with Catachan Green was the answer.

In a Hole in the Ground there Lived...

Over the weekend two great completions happened to my free time. Firstly, and most recently, my model of Bombur, appropriately hefty and now more green stuff than original figure, is at last ready for undercoating. I've a good feeling about this one, and that's all I have to say about that.

The other significant completion is that on Saturday morning in bed I completed reading Watership Down. Regular readers will know that my memories of the film adaptation are reliably traumatic, and even a recent playing of a video for Bright Eyes was... troubling. The original novel was something I’d never considered reading until it was recommended to me years ago by my brother, who singled out the mythological aspects of the story, the bits that I’d not remembered from the movie. This reading was inspired by my recent posting on the film, and was, I hesitate to add, anticipated as a mild form of therapy. It was read in small bites - the last twenty minutes of the day, occasional bus rides into work, and that's all. After a spell in bed last week the book kicked in properly however, and I was through it quickly. And what did I think?

Well, I truly loved it.

Watership Down is now one of the most enjoyable and satisfying novels I've read, although it pains me slightly that I've read this possibly a little late in life, knowing the effect it had on me now has to be different from the effect it would have had on my younger self. Nevertheless I found the novel well-wrought, moving, evocative of a passed time and, thanks actually to dim memories from the movie, in places as tense as hell. Not recalling which of the rabbits lived or died (and the movie departs from the novel in places, as it turns out) in this aspect meant that more was at stake, and reading it with an adult sensibility and a certain degree of leisure allowed me to think about the story and the rabbits’ world more. I’m not surprised the book has survived as it seems to have – the story of its discovery and publication seems similar to that of J K Rowling’s first acceptance of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and yes, there’s an element of Tolkien in here as you’d expect – a story created to entertain the author’s children grows in the telling, and like The Hobbit it has quite the cast, each with their roles significant or small – quietly I think Adams succeeds here where Tolkien didn’t with his Hobbit cast. I had clear favourites among them – even the villains; some I championed, some I fretted over and still see where the story could have been expanded without diluting the core of it all, Hazel’s personal quest. I guess Richard Adams may have thought the same when he briefly returned to Watership’s world in a late follow-up of smaller tales and myths, without falling to the temptation to sequel-ise.

It’s a very clever book – literary in its epigrams for each chapter (opening with Cassandra’s doomed prophecy from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon gave it a big and chilling tick from me), and of course its pedigree is secure: it’s The Aeneid, but told in such a loose way it is more robust, evidently allowing numerous interpretations from different audiences. I appreciated the refreshing, almost Semitic creation story and tales of Elahrairah, the lapine trickster god, and the myth cycle’s matter-of-fact duality, a world dominated by the polar forces of Frith the sun and Inle, its lack. There’s no good or evil in the rabbit world, nor justice, and wickedness and selfishness are accepted and evaded as any number of the hrair, the thousand enemies of rabbitkind. Finally, there’s to me a sense of the elegy in dam’s telling, the story opening as it does with the threat of the countryside’s subdivision and (as later horrifically described) carving up by men and machines. The idyllic English countryside seems to have been more easily imagined in the Seventies, in the decade before urban sprawl condemned this world, exhaustively and sensorally detailed with the lives of plant and beast, to islands. Animals killed to suit the lives of men, as one character relates it.

So, with some relief and gratitude I’ve enjoyed returning to Watership Down, and may return again soon. A lot of the joy of reading this was in appreciating the book close to 'fresh', despite my reservations, and the experience offered as many moments of relief and catharsis as it did moments of real despair. It's a book I will certainly buy and, yes, hope to introduce to Jet Junior once he's old enough.

Oaken's Twelve: Bombur WIP

Oh, big boy. What an ordeal you're turning out to be.

 My third pass at Bombur, frustrated by a brief visit to the Arena of the Unwell (a 24 hour gastro thing), and Wellington's extended and very warm weather, which made pushing green stuff around late at night just that little less easy (the putty was too soft and sticky to hold its shape.)

As usual, I found things so much easier after a few days and returning almost to scratch...

The WoW Factor or, 'The Hobbit' reviewed

Over on his blog Jamas has just posted his review of the book of The Hobbit, making him (I think) a movie-first, book-second person - although with the full trilogy yet to be completed (let alone finish shooting), that claim could be a little shaky. I am of course book-first all the way, and I believe that adaptation or not, movies should be judged first and foremost by the standards of their own medium. So what did I think of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey?

Find out after the jump...

Oaken's Twelve: Dwalin Fundinson

And now here's Dwalin, younger brother of the agreeable and venerable Balin, albeit not quite as agreeable from the beginning. The Hobbit's Dwalin is a rather aloof character, not entirely convinced of Bilbo's credentials, and striking a somewhat haughty tone. Like the other Dwarves he comes around, but typical of the wider Company is given little more description, save for a dark green hood, and a golden belt into which is tucked a long blue beard. A far cry from Graham McTavish's 'badass' Dwalin of An Unexpected Journey, then.

Truth told, this combination of dark green, gold and blue (whatever a blue beard looks like) presented a problem in colour choices here - the green I started with (GW's Dark Angels Green)was chosen to reflect a sort of greenstone/jade aesthetic, but typical of that colour, I just couldn't make it work. It's a sod to blend. So, the olive drab Catachan Green it is, even if it is a green that recurs throughout my painting of the LotR minis (especially with Rohan and the hobbits.) And how do you paint a blue beard? Well I gave it my best shot, using Shadow Grey, Fortress Grey and a wash of blue and black.


The sculpting of the beard itself took three passes, but I'm happy with the result. I even gave him an ear! Being able to do the beard justice was what consigned this model to the back of the queue, as I reasoned that I'd be more enthusiastic about it after I'd got better with putty. I've never been crazy about the model's pose (there's too much cloak, and even front-on that bow intrudes across the model, plus Dwalin's bow hand is wonky), but I do think a larger beard pulls things together a little better.

Finally, I was rather unkind to Dwalin and filed some of his hair off, giving him a bald pate. The sculpt's hair wasn't best rendered (it's also been bulked up with green stuff), and giving him a little more flesh area introduces some variety to the Company's look, as well as complimenting that beard as well.

Oaken's Twelve: Nori and Dori

The three Dwarves Dori, Nori and Ori are, like Bifur and Bofur, somewhat lacking in the description department for the novel form of The Hobbit. Ori is the stand-out with his grey cloak and future history related in The Fellowship of the Ring, but of the other two we only know that Nori and Dori both wore purple hoods, played the flute, and of the two Dori distinguishes himself for his strength (he acts as 'porter' for Bilio on at least two occasions) and for being, by all accounts quite a reasonable chap. In An Unexpected Journey this translates to Dori losing his strength to the Dwalin, and being interpreted as  something of an effete Mancunian spinster, while the almost silent Nori in the book becomes Jed Brophy's sneaky potential kleptomaniac, with a not-too inconspicuous starfish hairstyle.

The other significant change to Dori, Nori and Ori in the movie is that they are all brothers - Ori's grey hood colouring being markedly tinged with lilac to rein him in with the others. Aside from similar names and hood colours, plus their arriving together there's nothing in the book at deliberately earmarks these three as brothers. True, Fili and Kili would be the nearest comparison for hood/name resemblance, but the oppostie seems true with Bifur and Bofur who wear the same colours and are, as mentioned earlier, cousins. For myself it's not an argument I'm wholly convinced by - every other detail of kinship in the book is specified, but not Dori, Nori and Ori. I'm happy to leave them as they are.

Figure-wise Dori and Nori here have had significant makeovers, with Nori acquiring a green stuff hood (three attempts, thankyou very much) for reasons that will become obvious in a later post, and Dori having some of his cloak cut away, and sculpted to be 'shredded' at its tails, as though by a snapping Warg at the bottom of a pine tree. It's Dori who comes to Bilbo's rescue in the book, allowing the Hobbit to climb to safety. I decided that such bravery had to come at some cost at least. I briefly toyed with the idea of weapon swaps to allow for knives for the pair rather than axes, but considered the change wouldn't be that noticeable in the end. Finally, as purple seems an unlikely colour for a Dwarven cloak, I've adapted it as indeed the movie designers did - a mulberry shade for Nori, and my own addition, something more like indigo for Dori. Matching good colours for Nori without making him look too clown-like in particular took some time and was frustrating, hence the delay with these two.

And that's the end of the double-acts of Oaken's Twelve!