"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.

"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).

"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.