"Drums in the deep" - Inspiration for Balin's grave

Hi everyone,
and a happy new year to all of you. Still waiting for my 3D printer I am going to fill you in on the inspiration of my latest diorama I am working on right now. Again a valueable resource for the chamber of Mazarbul were the scenes from the fellowship movie and the book. In fact balin's grave has such iconic features that I honestly felt I didn't have much of a choice because missing any of these feature would make the diorama incomplete.

The first thing I liked about Mazarbul was the grave itself with the white marbel stone giving contrast to the overall greyish room. And I loved that ray of light hitting the grave stone like a spot light through the ceiling. I would you a bright, focused LED for this task that should work well to get this effect.

(© New Line Cinema)

(© New Line Cinema)

Two additional pieces of architecture that could be recognised easily were the old wooden doorway and the mysterious well that a fool of a took tosses a dwarven skeleton in. Both will be represented in the showcase.

(© New Line Cinema)

(© New Line Cinema)

The diorama should showcase the dramatic moment when the cave troll and the goblin breach through the door into the heroes of the fellowship awaiting them ready for a fight. To get miniatures right it would require some conversions but I think it will be worth the effort. With one axe in each hand Gimli would be the centre piece standing on top of the grave.

(© New Line Cinema)

I wanted to include additional features that didn't appear in the movie. I like the runes Tolkien created these fabulous runes for the Angerthas Moria (the dwarven rune alphabet) and I love how their style fits to the dwarven theme. Ornaments and wall decorations would be needed as well as a lot of rubble and collapsed pillars. And I planed to let the runes and some of the cracks in the ground glow in the dark with a bunch of LEDs.

In the next update I will show you some of the tests that I used to tried out certain effects before building the actual showcase (which is generally a good thing if you don't want to waste a lot of time with mistakes or misconceptions).