Saturday 10 January 2015
Lord of the Rings GW Elves
I was thinking about doing a tutorial, because I'm in the process of painting/ re-painting my old Lord of the Rings models, so let's just call this phase 1 of my process. Basically I'm just gathering pictures and having a good ponder about the direction to take with the models. I've established how to paint the armour, but the robes and cloaks are another matter entirely.
If you watch the very first battle of the Fellowship film, the only source shown for the Elves in question, there's a bit of a discrepancy in the colouring. All I've ever seen is fairly bright, blue robes, white/ creamy cloaks, white/ creamy sash tie. It doesn't look bad per se, but it also isn't 100% accurate based on what's in the film. For a start, me and LotR models, I can't stand bright colours for the model's clothing. Watch the films. The only thing that's bright is the armour and the weaponry. Every character on screen's clothes are always really muted and somewhat dull, which I think is perfect, considering it provides a good backdrop for weapons, armour, skin, and fits in with a genuine fighting force, or downtrodden people. I know it's supposed to be "fantasy battles", but one of the best things about LotR and the likes of Game of Thrones etc. is how realistic and grounded they are. In any case, I don't think the set colours shown by GW and most painters are accurate, and I'm setting about pursuing a more accurate colour scheme for them.
From what I've seen so far, there ARE one or two elves with blue robes, they're the ones that play hit hit-his-mace-with-your-face with Sauron. Looking closely, with barely a second or two of non-blurry screen time, you can just pick out a fairly dark, deep blue for their robes. The cloaks are still way off, but I'm guessing that's the shot the GW painters got their inspiration from. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not exactly the image that sticks in your mind when you think of the Elves in battle in LotR, and with the cloaks left the way they are, it's a bit of a shame, the film has them wearing some really unusual material.
The scene everyone remembers from that battle, one of the best scenes in the trilogy, is the one where they're in a perfect battle line, and attack in synchronicity. If you look at that scene, there's actually quite a lot of seconds to work with, and the Elves appear to have really unusual, lightly coloured robes, not blue ones. Their cloaks seem to be some kind of shimmering silvery material. I'm actually thinking this will be really difficult to paint to the standard I want to, but I'm going to give it a crack nonetheless.
So, paint steps as follows, I'll add to this as I go along:
Armour:
Citadel Shining Gold basecoat
Dark green ink wash
Citadel Shining Gold mixed with about 30-40% Mithril Silver, gently highlighting the metal, staying away from recesses
I'll add pictures to each stage too, and I am still tinkering with the penultimate step, I don't know if I'll like the black ink wash or not. But what the Dark Green does is just pick out the detail really nicely, it makes the gold look great without reducing it's shine. I've done two test models this way and I'm happy with how they turned out.
Robes:
Bleached Bone/ Tyrant Skull basecoat
Cloak:
Bleached Bone/ Tyrant Skull basecoat
Mithril Silver light covering
Tiny amount of Shining Gold spread around the surface area
FreakFlex Brown Tint (may not be 100% necessary)
Boltgun Metal/Leadbelcher for recesses and to blend colours
Very light amount of Burnished Gold spread around the surface area to give the unusual shine
(Just an aside, dear goodness Bleached Bone/ Tyrant Skull has zero shelf life! I don't know how they make that paint but it's just total garbage if you leave it for more than a few months. I've had no problems with any other colour in the range, but that colour, it literally always dries out and unmixes itself)
Cracked it! :D Phase 2 is in play, I've added the steps up above but basically I've managed to make the robes nice and shiny while also being subtle enough to pass for a light-ish, almost cream colour. Hard work but I'm happy with the results. I'll add some pictures in the next little while, I've got a few more to paint to prove the method is going to play out consistently but promising signs. I'll find out if I can add pictures from the movie as well, so if you're interested you can see what I was trying to achieve.
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Are you having a resurgence of interest in GW LoTR? If so, what has brought that on?
ReplyDeleteHey Fred :). I think there's a few reasons. It was partly to do with the films, I watched the Battle of Five Armies in the cinema and really enjoyed all of Thorin Oakenshield's quest, and I bought the original trilogy on Blu Ray because it was on sale over xmas, so that put the game back in my mind. I have always been really proud of my LotR character model's paint jobs too, I took a lot of time over them and loved the model's design and detail, so they were always somewhat in the back of my mind as some of my favourites.
ReplyDeleteI also picked up the Escape from Goblin Town boxed set after the films, because I wanted to have miniatures of Thorin's company while they were available, and from there I was remembering the fun I always had re-enacting the battle of Helm's Deep and the like, I had a lot of fun playing the game, and I like the models. The Lord of the Rings game can be great if you're re-enacting scenes, and particularly the sort of overwhelming, flood of dark forces style sieges, they're a lot of fun to play. I do think the game needs the films or books though, you need that evocative world and narrative to immerse yourself in. Without the films and books, while I like the models, they wouldn't represent as much for me.
As far as ongoing gaming, it probably won't be the case, I have modern/ zombie models, sci-fi with 40k, and Star Wars miniatures too, I'll probably game with them more than the LotR models, though it is awesome to come back to from time to time. I can see myself digging out the models to replay specific scenes any time I re-watch the movies in the future :).
Hope that answers your question without being too much of a ramble haha
I might put up some pictures if I do the battle of Helm's Deep, or if I do any kind of campaign, just to let people see my terrain set-up and models.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason I asked was because, like you, the new movies have rekindled my interest. And Lotr was definitely GWs best system especially, as you say, for the big set-piece evil is taking over the world battles. I'll look forward to reading anything you care to post however, also like you, there is a lot of other stuff to be getting on with :-)
ReplyDeleteHaha, I understand :). Well I'll definitely put up a few articles about painting, I enjoy putting my process down in a firm way, it actually helps me so that's the main reason, and if anyone gets benefit, all the better :). I intend to do pictures of the elves, Uruk-hai, possibly Orcs, men of Gondor and Rohan, and I might do a quick slideshow with the characters too, though I can't actually remember what paints I used and the new paint names make it even harder to recount.
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