01/06/2015

To dungeons deep and caverns old

A few more minis from this crazy project. These ones are almost unmodified, as I already liked the original designs.

First one would be Dwalin, the first member of the Company Bilbo meets at Bag End. "It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked into a golden belt, and very bright eyes under his dark green hood". I like the aspect Dwalin has in the movies, that tough warrior look, I think it works fine for the purposes of the story. So I just made his beard a little bit longer and added a hood to his cloak.
 
Still in the movie style
I also kept the colour scheme:
 
Grrr, angry dwarf!

Awful hood scupted there
 
I even tried to replicate the tatoos on the head, these add some character to the guy.
 
Stress on tried to replicate
 
The next one Bilbo got to meet was Balin, Dwalin's brother, "a very old-looking dwarf with a white beard and a scarlet hood". Once again, I do believe the movie makes quite a good work on this one, so I just added a hood to the cloak, as before, as well as removed the spikes on the point of the sword, they looked kinda weird to me, not functional for a weapon of this kind.
 
Less is more
 
I also like the embroided trimming of the cloak, it speaks of a noble dwarf, not just a wanderer, but somebody important to his people who dresses accordingly, the dwarf who some day will become king under the mountain by his own right.
 
Marching to a quest always in style.

Now that I look at it, some more trimming on the cloak itself would have been nice too

 
Well, so these two work fine, so I had no need of any heavy converting work. This is the original...
 
 
And this is my result:
They are brothers, promise. You may be thinking of the 'Twins' movie...
 
As I'm with these almost unconverted guys, I'll keep it that way with the two non-dwarf characters in the Company, Bilbo and Gandalf. Two minis that didn't need any work on them, they both are sweet and nicely detailed.
Mr. Baggins

Gandalf the Grey

As you can see, I'm keeping it close to the movies. As I told last week, this is all about concepts and designs, not about the movies themselves or the characters during the story. But what I hope is that anyone reading the book could identify the dwarves and see them related to the original Tolkien's writings.

Still working on more dwarves, coming soon!

6 comments:

  1. Nice work there Suber. You were absolutely right to remove those spikes. They didn't really add anything to the miniature.

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    1. That was my impression. That mace-sword didn't work for me, so I think the simpler, the better :D

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  2. Very discrete and yet essential modifications here Suber, I can't say I enjoyed the movies much but I do enjoy your models a good bit here !
    You really have the "eye" to make little details matter, that's a thing I really like in your work.

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    1. I'm afraid I must say the same about the movies :(
      But woah, I thought I still could take something out of these minis and make my own storytelling :D
      Thanks for your kind words!

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  3. Oooo ... very detailed work on the head. And Gandalf looks awesome! Impressive ... most impressive. I know, I know ... wrong scifi/fantasy universe ;)

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    1. :D :D

      Thank you very much! Glad you like them :)

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