Squeeeee

Sorry for the lack of posting, combination of me being sick for a while, another semester of uni starting with me having been sick, my PC dying while being sick and uni starting and then my boy getting sick with me having been sick, uni starting and my PC dying.

So, been a little under the hammer!

Anyway, in the mail the other day came some AWESOME. You didn't know you could order awesome? Well you can.

One bit of eBay and two parts Majestic Bear Miniatures.

Don't know the name? Go here: http://www.majesticbear.net/

Yes, that's right, two ents, Radagast and my three eagles will make a 700ish point army =)

The ents are really fantastic sculpts, so much better in my opinion than the plastic GW ents. Here in Australia I could get these two awesome ents plus postage for about the same as ONE Treebeard. Here's hoping I can assemble and paint them well enough to do them justice, they really are great!

I've also won another eBay Radagast that I'll try to get mounted. My brother had a spare horse, but I think it's in too energetic a pose for him, since he's sort of facing sideways and not looking too much like he's riding at full speed!

Anyway, that's it for now, I'll WIP next when they're all glued together. Might take a while, slow setting glue and LOTS of branches!

Lonely Mumak

Yay! I finished the Mumak!

Please find attached:
1 Mumak on lava base with blue detail and scorpion motif for your Harad army.

Of course, he's a bit lonely because I've only painted one warrior so far, but hey, one at a time =)

I ducked around to my brother's place to take a shot of him on the board instead of the cardboard box!

Here's a top view from the back, showing the warrior on top for colour matching/scale.

Here's a shot of the side, I notice that the lava on the board is a little darker/redder.

Here's a close-up of one side of the banner. As you can see it's the constellation Scorpio with dots for the stars and faint lines joining them up. Antares is nice and red and there are a few little scripty scrawls on there. Oh, also there's a ring in the ear =)

The other side of the banner has the scorpion design on it, same style as the warpaint on the face.

And here's a full shot of the other side. The banner is made from greenstuff. I found a few tutorials on making wavy banners from greenstuff that worked really well. Basically you sandwich greenstuff between some plastic that you've oiled up. Then you roll it as flat as you'd like. Then you line up some pens/brush handles and weave the greenstuff around them to make ripples as you see fit. Then weigh down the ends, let it set overnight then cut to fit the size you want. The ripples stay ripply because it's set greenstuff and it's as easy to work with as you'd expect.

Just leave a few long tabs on the end to wrap around your banner pole. In this case I used some wire and small rings to hang from between the front forks of the howdah.

Just another angle for fun =) This one nicely shows the graduations of colour on the howdah from dark at the bottom to lighter at the top.

And a fairly top-down type shot like you might see while playing.

So there you go! One Mumak ready to trample =) Hope you've enjoyed the VERY long process, but it shows that someone that only has a short amount of time every couple of days can still get a project like a Mumak done, given long enough - ie. no excuses for those of you who've been putting it off!

The Hunter becomes the Hunted

I don't know if you know already, but Tolkien was interested in astronomy, he made sure that any astronomical details were correct in his books (like moon phases and the time of year constellations would show). I also have a keen interest in the area (I have an honours degree majoring in Astrophysics and a Masters degree in Astronomy).

He even mentions Numenorians on towers seeking answers from the stars (or words to that effect).

So, I figure my Haradrim are working for one such dark Numenorian (though I don't own any of the dark Numenorian models) and the reason I chose the scorpion for their figure-head is because they identify with the constellation Scorpio. Traditionally Scorpio is at odds with Orion, which Tolkien mentions as the Swordsman in the Sky. 

I figure the astrology/astronomy of this particular Numenorian/Haradrim lord has identified a hero in the North that the Scorpion needs to sting =)

So, to that effect, expect to see some astronomical type things on banners and what-not. First up we have a little balsa-wood easel with a star map on it of Orion. I've been a bit crook recently so haven't done more than this. 

Firstly a distance shot so you can see the size. Sort of big, but also not too large, fits in under where my missing strut was.

Terrible photo, but you get the idea. There is some script next to the "belt" as well as next to Rigel (the big blue star) and Betelgeuse (the big red star).

Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon. Got a uni assignment due on Monday, so might not do much model work, but just want to do a banner or two to finish the Mumak off, then it's off to paint a heck of a lot of Harad models!

Mumak Warpaint

Well over the last few days I haven't spent much time on ye olde mumak, but have managed to get the warpaint done. I've chosen to just paint the face rather than the body.


My Haradrim group will be denoted by scorpions, as my brother has used snakes for his. So I doodled up a bit of a scorpion design to use on banners etc.


It's a little hard to see it on the face due to all the curves, but the claws are surrounding the eyes with the tail down near the trunk.

As you can see, I've stuck with the blue colouring.

The outline of the dark blue is cleverly designed to hide some mold lines if you're wondering =)

So there you go, small progress at this stage sorry!

Mumak Part 10

Yes, part 10!
What a job!


With about fifteen minutes before bed last night then another hour or so this afternoon I finished off the final top part of the howdah!


As you can see, it's slightly lighter in colour than the previous layer. Regal blue - enchanted blue - highlight ice-blue then a heavy blue wash. The poles were done the same way as all the previous ones.

The lighting in our house is cheap CFLs but to get any good light I've been literally holding the Mumak up near the ceiling to get the light just in case you've been wondering about the photos! My desk lamp is super strong and bright (as you know from other photos) so it's just a matter of trying to get a bit of light that doesn't make it too dim or too over bright! When I finally paint up the troops to go with it and play our first game I'll take shots at my brother's house which has MUCH better lighting.

Here it is near the front window, it's mostly winter sunlight illuminating it here.

So there you go! Job done!


Or is it...


Now it's time to work on all the decorations like banners, war paint and a few other things I think I'll have a go at that I won't spoil yet just in case I don't do them!

Level up!

My sister-in-law babysat for a couple of hours today, so I got the next level done.
I'd done the underside of it and glued it into place last night before bed, so it was good to go today!


This is stage 9 of the construction/painting job!


I've gone for enchanted blue over regal blue for this layer. It looks a little bright in the photo, but isn't quite that light in normal light.


The next level will have some ice-blue highlights so that the blue gets lighter as it goes upwards. Don't ask why, just because I felt like it =)

As you can see, I'm missing the strut on the back, but may hide it with a cleverly placed banner =)

And here's a view from above!

So close now! Will really try to get the last level done tomorrow, but will depend entirely on the sleeping habits (which are awful) of the boy!

Give me a long enough rope...

Well, I spent way too many hours of my day on this today. My day off and I did fiddly little bits, still, they came up pretty well, so I guess it was worth it!

Firstly I went over the woody bits with a highlight of Bestial Brown on all the edges to help it look less uniform.

I was still unhappy with the ropes, so looked at what other people had done. One idea I liked was to paint the smaller bits differently. I whacked bleached bone on them and got this hideous mess...

Fortunately good old Devlan Mud came back to the rescue and dulled them down a lot. Now it looks as though there are dirty ropes holding the howdah together, which I quite like.

The only part I don't like is the very edges, where there's no texture on the model (a bit of laziness on the modeller's part that I can forgive given how massive the whole Mumak is!)

Here's the view from the top as it currently stands. I also don't like the lack of detail on the front forks. I don't know if that's just because they've been painted over numerous times now or if they're naturally less textured, but they're pretty boring and flat.

Here's a closer look underneath, I've painted the buckles metallic to try and make them stand out a bit.

And I'm missing one strut on the second layer, so will have to think about what to do there, but if I just rest the other layers on top of the existing structure you can see how close I am to done!

Almost there! Unfortunately the top part was put together funny and doesn't line up, so I may have to greenstuff a bit to make it all work. Or just glue it anyway and hope it's not too noticeable! Just two small layers of howdah to go!