Back to Mazarbul

After I have finished the 3d printed dwarven paragons, I returned to my ongoing project: the chamber of Mazarbul diorama. I was finishing the paintjob when I found that i was missing something: dead dwarves, the knowledge bearer with his book leaning to the grave and some other dwargen casualties.

I was close to finish this diorama, but when a new idea comes to my mind, it seems I have to follow it. Damn OCD, if you know what I mean. I started sculpting some dwarves and found that I would need to develop some skills for this. Here is the first result.

Really busy at the moment but things move forward

Hi everyone,

sry, that thing went quiet for some time now, I am awfully busy at work so that I dont have any time left for the hobby. I hope this will change soon because I am really looking forward to finish my mazarbul diorama. I have got for you a sneak peak on the paintjob so far. Stay with me.

Lord of the rings tabletop hobby is becoming even more expensive

With lots of the original games workshop models gone out of production I noticed a vast increase in prices for almost every miniature from the range on ebay(except for the ones that flooded the tables from the Deagostini magazines). It's kind of funny (and sad) that the products GW dropped because of a lack of demand and revenue became instantly "rare collectibles". I wonder who buys a bunch of models for over 100 Euro that cost 35 Euro just a few months ago. Certainly not me. I love the LotR miniatures but I have a pain threshold. For now I have still 300 unpainted miniatures left (recently counted them), but there are other model ranges and every single one is suitable for dioramas.

If things go on with the LotR tabletop like this (and I fear they will), I am going to switch to another miniature range sooner or later. Any suggestions?

"A chamber of old wisdom" - Illuminated dwarven runes with LEDs

Hi everyone, this is a short update on my recent project, the diorama of the chamber of Mazarbul in Moria. I finally finished all the wiring for the glowing runes effect around the doorway. If you hope you like the results.

Next on the printer: Dwarven Paragon

Hi everyone,

a good friend of mine is a talented digital sculptor and made an amazing 3D modell of a dwarven paragon based on a recently published video game (Do you know which?). I am heating up the printer and I am curious how this will turn out. Estimated printing time for an 8cm high statue is 3,5 hours. For best detail and resolution I am printing 418 individual layers of 200 microns. This is by far the biggest print I have made so far.

Thanks to Felix for your support.

First 3D printed test piece - statue for wargaming terrain

 

Hi everyone,
my 3D printer finally arrived and I managed to print a first test piece. I would like to share some thoughts and details about the process and show the results.

  I hope you like it, please leave a comment if you do.

"The old chamber of records" - Work in Progress of the chamber of mazarbul

New year, new video. I finally managed to finish the first video on the chamber of mazarbul, the showcase I am currently working on. I tried a lot of new thing with this one and everything worked out as planned so far. Suggestions and further ideas would be most welcome. Feel free to leave a comment.

"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).

Christmas is early this year

Look what Santa got me this year (I must have been a very nice boy so far ;-)

No, that is not a coffee machine. I got hands on a 3D printer and I am so exicted to get it delivered in a few weeks. This technology is so amazing, and I have been thinking about a 3D printer in general for awhile now. If everything works out as planned, I will start to try 3D printing for different application for wargaming terrain next year.

 This is a model is a Up! Mini by PP3DP. Right now I feel like a little boy back then waiting for his presents under the christmas tree.

Returning to Moria - once more

Alright, after finishing the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm I was up for a new project. I got hands on an old metal cave troll with hammer and chain which went out of production at that time and started painting it right away. I like painting large miniatures and the fierce troll was a lot of fun. I started thinking on how to showcase the cave troll the best way and searched for inspiration. After watching the Moria part of the fellowship another time I knew what to do:

To showcase the epic confrontation of the fellowship with the cave troll I will build a diorama of balin´s grave or more precise the Chamber of Mazarbul. On my shelf the cave troll was kind of a companion who kept me motivated when I lost focus for my ambitious plans about all the details and lighting.

I haven't based it yet because I want it to match the floor of the diorama. In the next update I will hook you up with the details on my inspiration and planing for the Chamber of Mazarbul diorama.

How to use polystyrene foam board for wargaming terrain - Video tutorial

It is finally done. This is the first video of a series of tutorial I have been planing for awhile now. It is about polystyrene foam board, a material I use for my showcases most. I hope you find this interesting and helpful.

This video took too much time to shoot and edit, but I guess that is something I need to learn. Messed up the sound on the first render and had to reupload it. Hopefully I will be more time efficient on the next part that is going to be about tools and accessories for terrain building.

"Let's hope our friends last the night" - Miniatures Gallery of Helm's Deep diorama

With some delay I updated the review on the helm's deep diorama with a miniature gallery. Having a big number of miniatures on this one I typically dislike to have identical poses and gestures. I converted some of the uruk-hai and haldir to alter the appearance.

"Escape from Moria" - Miniature Gallery

Started into the weekend to do some soldering for my latest project (I will announce this soon) and.... ran out of shrink tubing after half an hour. So I grabbed the camera instead and took a few pictures of the miniatures from the Bridge of Khazad Dûm diorama. Looking at them today I am not too content with paint job but I did most of them several years ago and improved my skills ever since.

"You shall not pass" - Slideshow of the Finished Diorama

It´s done although video editing took some time again. In this slideshow I take you on a tour to have a detailed look on the features of my second showcase.

 

Next I will update the galary with some pictures of the miniatures in the diorama which conludes this kind of reviews about the projects I did in the past. I am very excited that I can finally begin to show you what I am working on right now.

"There is one dwarf yet in Moria" - Work-in-Progress

Okay, enough with design and planing. I started drawing the templates to the styrofoam boards. At the time I used the bubbly type of styrofoam because it had no other available. Working with a hot wire cutter this material can easily be processed although I would recommend the non-bubbly type. I will cover both foam boards types and hot wire cutters in a tutorial later.

I stacked the main foundation using toothpick to secure them in place before glue is applied. I glued both sides individually but didn't glue them together yet to be more flexible during flocking and painting. The bridge was glued just to one side of the chasm. On the left side I arranged the pillars and some rubble around the collapsed one. Fissures and cracks were carved into the rock formations. I didn't mind gaps at this point as multiple coats of structure paint will cover these on a later stage.  At last I cut some groves for the wiring of the LEDs.

On the right side of the bridge I used almost 20 layers of 5mm thick foam board for the staircase. If you take a look at the templates of the stairs you can see that each layer is just one step shorter than the one underneath. This way I achieved a very accurate appearance because each step has exactly the same height. I put some rubble an rocks around the stairs so that they fit into the natural stone. Again, gaps will be filled up later.

I placed both sides onto the wooden board and took a look from the top view. Compared to the miniature size the chasm is already pretty deep but I planned to further enhance this effect.

First I needed to paint both sides. I coated the whole diorama in several layers of structure paint to hide the edges of the foam boards and build up a rock like texture. After the model was dry I painted it in brown and grey colours. For the next step I had the help of a friend with a DSLR camera and some photoshop skills. He took pictures from the steep walls an both sides. In Photoshop he combined the pictures, added a top view perspective and faded them to an endless black abyss. I had to print this several times before we got the colours right to match the colours of the walls. When I placed the models on top of the picture it created the illusion of an even deeper pit. Worked out fantastic, thanks to Felix.

Lighting the scene was the last step to finish the showcase. I wired the LEDs with appropriate resistors and hid all electronic below the surface. I created the flames with transparent window colours and yellow and red inks. Now the fiery glow of the balrog illuminates the sunless halls of Moria.

I am preparing a commented slide show for a close-up look on the showcase.

"The flame of Udûn" - Designing the showcase

Again this update took its time. I had a busy half year but now I hope for updates more regularly. This is the second part of the review of "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" diorama.

As the idea for the showcase took shape in my mind thanks to the inspiration from the movies and artworks, I started with a rough CAD model to visualise my plan. This method provides a great opportunity to try out things before cutting any pieces of foam board. With the given space in the vitrine I experimented with different depth for the chasm using varying heights of foam boards. After getting this right I created the staircase to get an impression if the angles and step sizes would scale properly to the diorama. As the balrog is a centre piece of this showcase which is very large because of its tail and wings I represented him with a few tubes and bars on a base. I chose a position in front of the bridge to threaten Gandalf and turned him a little to face a potential viewer of the showcase. Here is what the CAD model looked like.

The dwarven craftsmanship for stone cutting had never been better represented as in the mighty stone pillars of moria. I had to include these for sure but the original design from the movie felt to "heavy and massive" for the diorama so I sculpted a design myself. (© Dave Townsend; Source: davetownsend.org)

The dwarves would of course have aligned the pillars precisely. As two pillars would block the view on the balrog I decided that one pillar would have crumbled and partly collapsed into the chasm.

The last thing I thought about was creating light using LED circuits. I wanted to incorporated 8 LEDs evenly distributed over the diorama. Four would be positioned on the left side below the balrog's wings. They will be modelled into flames and give the balrog and its wings a fiery glow. The remaining lights will be made torches on the walls of the staircase.

 

Finally I rechecked dimensions and proportions of the model and started by generating templates and printing them on paper. I transferred them onto the foam board and cut out the pieces.

 I am going to release some work-in-progress pictures later.

"The dwarves delved too deep" - Inspiration on The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm

Hey everyone, it took me quite some time to get ready to share my second project with you. This diorama features one of the most dramatic scenes from the first Lord of the rings movie: Gandalf confronts the balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm crossing an endless chasm in moria.

I started this project almost five years ago after watching the first movie yet another time. I really loved the scenes where the balrog approaches in this very subtle way when you just see his lights glowing through the columns of moria. I knew I had to do this when the balrog bursts in flames clenching his fiery blade against gandalf´s magic barrier. (© Lukealgonda; Source: DeviantArt)

  
The next day I ordered the GW miniatures, assembled and painted Gandalf and the Balrog as soon as they arrived. This wasn´t probably my best paintjob but I was content at the time with my miniatures.

 Shortly after I started planing the diorama. Two elements I found most important: the contrast of the dark mood of the dwarven mines with the fiery glow of the balrog and the illusion of depth. Both were difficult to achieve in a showcase which size was determined by the vitrine it should fit into. I started with the expierence I gathered on the Siege of helms deep and some resources from the web. (© Flavio Hoffe; Source: www.flaviohoffe.com)

First I did a few sketches and a rough 3D model I made using CAD Tools, which I will cover in the next update.