To seek the pale enchanted gold

We still had the last group of dwarves, here they are!

The only thing we know about Bifur, Bofur and Bombur's attires is that 'they hung up two yellow hoods and a pale green one'. Tricky colours, never easy to make them work properly. Never mind, in this case I was far more concerned about the characters themselves and their designs. Let me show what I did and why.

 

The same but not the same

 

Bifur... Well. Nothing wrong per se about the general concept. I could work with what I had... more or less. But sorry, sir Peter, a character with an axe stuck on his skull, who doesn't speak a single word of Westron and barely communicates in Khuzdul isn't really a good idea. You don't make the character interesting, you make him confusing for the viewer. I just removed the axe tip and replaced it with some hair.

 

A mane indeed he has!

Once again, the hood is greenstuff

 

Regarding Bofur... Oh, where to start. Long story short, I would have been happy with just a hood, not that weird hat. I kept the braids, and now that I see them again, I'm beginning to regret...

At least he has a hood now

May add some stuff here?

 

Finally Bombur... Oh Bombur... I really disliked his beard. All about his facial hair, to be fair, but I really didn't see a feasible way to remove the braided beard, so I simply greenstuffed the beard and hair. I should have sculpted the hood on, but I finally didn't. Hmm.

This was all I could do

I should have done a bigger hood for that head!

 

So this is what I did to the group, you can see the three of them here:

Ready to join Thorin's Company!

 

 Bonus piece! The box also included Radagast the Brown. I'll spare my opinion about what they did to him in the movies (but... seriously, sir Peter? Seriously?). Sooo I had to do some work on the hat (focal point for the mini) and the cloak and robes (the rest of the mini).

 

Radagast the Maia, one of the Istari. He really deserved better

Not that I pretend to be saving the day, but at least I tried not to make him Radagast the hobo

You can be the Tender of Beasts and still keep some dignity

Now this is it, the full Thoin's Company (and Radagast!):

 

Now they look ready to kick that Smaug out of his lair

 

As I said at the beginning, not that I'm claiming to have he 'right' view about the dwarves, but on the whole I humbly think some improvements have been made. I hope Aulë is happy :D

The box also includes some cool scenery which I still have to paint and some ugly Goblins which most certainly I won't use as Middle Earth Goblins. Still on their sprues, but I believe they can look nice with some guns and stuff, some kind of post-apoc creatures from the Waste. I'm still not sure of what will I do with them, but that's a possibility. For the moment this is all I have to give out of the box, I still have lots of ongoing projects and some more boardgames to review. But some day I'll put my hands again on the box, one day...