The Making of: Doors of Durin

In what has been a pretty mammoth project over the past couple of months, I decided to take on the challenge of making something that I'd wanted on my shelf for a long time. A scene that had stuck in my head since first seeing Fellowship of the Ring nearly twenty years ago - the Doors of Durin. For this Making Of I'll be going through the ups and downs of making this diorama, the techniques implemented and materials used (I'll be providing a full list at the end of the article) so buckle up, this is a big one.

Using a cutting of 3/4 inch thick MDF as the base, I set about using blocks of plant foam cut into various rough shapes to start building up the rough design of the piece. My main aim with the piece was to incorporate various aspects of the scene: Frodo and Gandalf in front of the doors, Sam saying goodbye to Bill, and the Hobbits throwing rocks into the water thus disturbing the Watcher in the Water. So for one, it needed to have enough space on both the bank and the water for all of these parts of the scene. All of these sections were hot glued together in the form of the steep cliff walls and the sloping bank into the water. This of course is a rough idea so far and going forward after checking the scale, I added some more height to the cliff walls and smoothed out the various right angles.

A quick test with miniatures helped to check if I had the scaling right before heading forward and also gave a good idea of the scene composition. One thing was certain however - The Watcher needed be set lower into bed and the tentacles bent downward as I wanted them to only just be breaking the surface of the water. During this moment of composition, I also started thinking about the three members of the Fellowship I hadn't primarily considered: Legolas, Gimli and Boromir, so I went back to the scene to do a little digging and figure out what they would be doing. The two former would be the tricky ones, and require the most converting, as they were happily just sat on tree trunks in their cloaks - but more on that later.

Next up was to create a more realistic rock face. For those who read my Making of: Rohan Valley you'll recognise the Woodland Scenic plaster rock moulds I used for for that on display here as well. The great part is, even if it's similar rock faces, the arrangement of all the different moulds, and even breaking them up into smaller sections and flipping them upside-down can leave you with a a varied surface. One thing that plant foam is great for is how easy it is to chip and sculpt so the space in between the moulds is rather simply filled with detail using sculpting tools to carve small sections. 

Now this looks odd for the time being, but next up we'll be giving it a coat of masonry paint on the base and external sides to seal the foam (it is rather thirsty stuff, so we don't want any paint to disappear into it - the masonry paint is thick enough to give a good seal). Once this is dried, the external sides will get a layer of polyfiller to cover up any gaps between the foam and the whole thing will get a base coat of grey spray paint and work can then begin on making the rock faces looking more realistic.

First up however, is working on the Door itself to slot in. My first idea was to try and make the design on balsa, but given the grain of the wood and how soft it is this didn't end up being very feasible. Another option was to sculpt it out with milliput, but this gave the problem of a lack of transparency in order to let my intended light set-up to shine through the door. In the end, I settled with a 3D lithoplane print of the door itself - designed originally for clear resin, but given the scale I would be printing would be thin enough to let a decent amount of light through when using grey resin. With one side blacked out, you can see how well the light came through when tested! All that was left was to sort out the lighting. I had originally intended to do my own wiring and setup using a a kit from GreenStuff World - turns out my wiring skills aren't great and I ended up going with a cheap set of battery powered LEDs from Amazon. These would be stuck behind the door in the slot seen above, with the switch and battery pack kept in a small hole I'd carved into the back for easy access. 

With that all good, it was time to make the rocks more realistic. As with the Rohan diorama I went with the following process:-

1. Base coat with a 1:1 mix of Eshin Grey and water
2. Dry brush liberally using Dawnstone (dry)
3. Lighter drybrush using Longbeard Grey, particularly on upward facing angles.
4. Wash using a 1:1 mix of Nuln Oil and Lahmian Medium
5. Dry brush Eshin Grey
6. Repeat steps 3 and 4. 

In previous experience doing this double layer of dry brushing, one before wash and one after, has lead to a more subtle and natural change in tone, especially when doing each rock face by standard wet layering would take an astronomical amount of time by comparison. This process can be repeated more  or less depending on what tone of rock face you're going for with whichever colours your choose as well.

As you can see in the image above the plaster moulds, foam and door have all been blended together to create as natural as a rock face you can have with a magical door slotted in in. What you'll also notice is that the base has now got more of a texture than just the foam and masonry paint. This was accomplished by using AK Interactive's Neutral Texture for Rough Terrain with a mix of Eshin Gray liberally applied to the entire top section of the base to later be covered by loose shale, slowly graduating into a mix of the AK Texture and Dryad Bark to represent the silt at the bottom of the lake.  Both sections were given a 1:1 mixed wash of Nuln Oil and Lahmian Medium and then dry brushed with Dawnstone and Sylvaneth Bark respectively. Whilst these sections won't be largely on display in the final piece, it's still good idea to have a decent base which matches your further plans so that nothing sticks out like a sore thumb later on.

With all the surfaces done it was now time to start populating the board and bringing it to life a little - the trees flanking the door and the Watcher shaped hole in the lake! The trees were another piece of resin printing, but the roots weren't quite as long as I needed. This was remedied by gluing lengths of wire and then covering with a layer of green stuff - in order to stick to the wire better fellow DC writer Dan gave me the trick to score the wire in order to help the green stuff stick easier. Once this was set, I added a thinner layer on top so as to better sculpt the texture of the roots without the whole thing shifting off the wire. As for painting them, they needed to look relatively dead and withered so I went with a base coat of Baneblade Brown treated with a wash of Agrax Earthshade. Once dry, a light coat of Dryad Bark was added on the more raised sections to allow small sections of the lighter brown to come through as small sections of exposed bark. This was topped off with a drybrush of Terminatus Stone to give the top layer of bark a more aged looked.

Now to add a little more texture - for the loose shale (in the movies it looks similar to small chunks of slate which populate the shoreline) I ended up using Element Games Basing Gravel scattered over a coat of Mod Podge, allowed to dry and then shaking the excess off. One issue of this however was that it had a slightly different aesthetic to the rest of the board - the  painted look. In order to bring the whole setting more in line I gave the gravel two coats of Testors Dullcote which darkened it up slightly, but also gave me a more solid surface to apply a light drybrush of Longbeard Grey to get things looking more consistent.

As you can see above, I had to go back and cut a big section of the lake bed out - turns out the Watcher miniature rises up a good amount. Despite me trimming a hefty amount of resin from the tail end, it still was rising up higher than the shoreline. I needed to get drastic so I started drilling sections from the MDF to help it sit lower, along with modifying the leg positions. Once at the right height, I used warm water on the tentacles (given the were made from GW resin) and bent them into the correct positions - I didn't want them all splashing out of the water!  Once set, the remaining space was filled with the AK Rough Terrain texture mixed with Dryad Bark. Next up would be the toughest part and the stage I was dreading most: the resin pour.

For the lake I went with a two part acrylic based epoxy resin - I'd used this on a previous build for a small stream and it came out very well for a my first attempt using the stuff so decided to run with it again only this time I needed to work on getting the Watcher more obscured. Before pouring however, I had to essentially turn my board into a fish tank to hold the resin. To do this I used a hot glue gun to attach sheets of acetate which had been trimmed down to size. These were then supported by a balsa wood framework made in order to try and keep the shape better. It's key here to make sure that there are no gaps for resin to escape when pouring, but don't panic if some does escape - just have your hot glue gun on standby to plug up any holes that you see. 

When mixing the resin in equal parts, and stirring very slowly as to reduce bubbles, I added in very small amounts of Kantor Blue and Dryad Bark to give the impression of deep dark murky water and by small I'm talking a ratio of 1 part paint to 100 parts resin. A key thing to remember is that even if your mix doesn't look dark, you need to take into account the colour of the base it's being applied to, and that any pigment will build up obscurity the deeper it gets. One other important thing to keep in mind is the working time of your resin, each brand can alter slightly but most you can stir for a good 5-10 minutes before pouring and still have time to work with.

Now the pour itself for me didn't going very successfully - remember my key point of 'don't panic if you see a small leak'? I forgot that point, proceeded to tip the board slightly to access the leak and covered an entire bank in resin. I won't lie - I was about to chuck the whole thing in the bin. After a few minutes feeling sorry for myself, I realised it was salvageable and continued with the pour to bring it up to level. One thing to make sure of is that the resin is reaching into all the nooks and crannies of the board and can easily be teased into these gaps using a pin. At this stage what you need to keep an eye out for is bubbles. You will no doubt have some at the surface, and the larger ones you can poke with a needle to burst and re-level, but there will also be a large amount of smaller ones just beneath the surface. Rather than acupuncturing your nice new water surface, simply breath on the surface as if you were trying to fog up a window and this will cause these smaller bubbles to disappear. Giving it time to cure, I covered the whole diorama to make sure no dust could settle and stick to the resin. after a few days (again this depends on the brand of resin you use) I removed the containing sides to see how it looked.

In the process, I did rip off some of the polyfiller so this would need to be filled back in. The sides would need to be sanded down again to remove the excess resin and was only a small extra step. When it came to sanding down, I first used a rough grit piece of sandpaper (make sure to wear a mask and do this in a well ventilated area!), gradually getting thinner the closer I got to the desired depth. This looks very rough and as though the hard work with the resin was all for nought but once cleaned off any residue, go over the sides with gloss Mod Podge and the detail comes back through. The gloss Mod Podge was also then used to create details on the waters surface to add a little bit of movement in the form of ripples, and also to create water dripping from the Watchers tentacles. Some of these details might not come through too clearly at first, but a very light drybrushing of Longbeard Grey brings out the little ridges your brush made with the Mod Podge earlier.

With the vast bulk of the work now done, all that was left was to work on the Fellowship, which took some time in itself as they were all sourced from various kits for the correct poses. The only ones I would be dramatically converting were Boromir and Gimli to be sitting on the tree roots. The others required either weapons being removed or small modifications. I ended up using:

Aragorn - Strider (Old metal Fellowship kit)
Legolas Greenleaf (Old metal Fellowship kit)

Gimli (Current GW plastic Fellowship kit)

Gandalf  the Grey (Gandalf on cart kit)
Boromir (Ambush at Amon Hen kit)

Frodo Baggins (Current GW plastic Fellowship kit)

Samwise Gamgee (Old metal Fellowship kit)
Meriadoc Brandybuck (Old metal Fellowship kit)
Peregrin Took (Current GW plastic Fellowship kit)
Bill the Pony (Personalities of Bree kit)

If anyone is interested in the conversions, I'll go into those in a future article. With them all converted and painted, it was time to assemble!

And there you have it, a long two months but well worth the build. If anyone has any questions about the build, please drop us a comment and we'll answer all we can!

Material List:

Citadel Paints - Eshin Grey, Dawnstone, Longbeard Grey, Nuln Oil, Lahmian Medium, Sylvaneth Bark, Terminatus Stone, Baneblade Brown, Agrax Earthshade, Dryad Bark, Kantor Blue
Floral Foam 

Multi-purpose filler (Most hardware stores)

Epoxy Resin 
Rock Moulds 
Mould Plaster 
Basing Gravel 

Mod Podge (Gloss and Matte) 
3D Files
Door of Durin 
Trees