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 

The Conversion Corner: Easterling Dragon Cult Acolytes

On this instalment of the Conversion Corner, I'll be following on from my article 2 weeks ago and will be taking a look at the Easterling Dragon Cult Acolytes. This is a very recent release, which has received a few mixed reviews. And while it's not for me to comment on those specific issues, I do feel that the models didn't totally hit the mark in terms of the Easterling aesthetic, and also feel a bit out of place with the SBG range as a whole. However, this is just my opinion - yours may vary completely - and these models are converted to suit my personal tastes and aren't meant to invalidate the originals in any way! 

I wanted to bring across a few of the design elements from the rest of the force to these new models - in particular, I wanted to change the heads and the arms to make the models feel a little less 'heroic' and a little more 'historical' - and I'm fairly happy that I achieved that.

First up, the finished results!

This conversion really wasn't all that tricky - just a little time consuming. I've had a little bit of converting experience while putting the rest of this force together, but I am far from an expert, so if I can do it, I'm sure it would be no problem for your average hobbyist. 

Here are the tools I used - just a few diamond files, some clay / oil paint shaping tools (readily available from art shops and online retailers), and a home-made shaping tool. If it looks like it's just a sword that's glued and green stuffed on to the end of an old paint brush handle... Well, there's probably a reason for that. 

In addition to these, I just needed some green stuff, and I also used a little bit of Milliput for gap filling, but this wasn't all that necessary, and you could use your gap filling method of choice. 

I of course also needed some new heads - I used Easterling Warriors, with the aim of making these models look a lot more similar to my rank and file troops. If you've bought a box of warriors and only needed to use the pikes, then not to worry - you'll have 16 spare heads left over! (Not that I'm bitter about it or anything...)

You could also use Kataphrakt heads for this. I wasn't as keen on them, and found them a bit bulky and dominant on the model, but your mileage may vary!

Firstly, I shaved off the top of the head using a flat file, right down to the scarf that wraps all the way around the head. This is really conveniently placed, and provides a very nice, natural looking joining point for the new helmet with minimal effort. 

Note - ALWAYS use a respirator when filing resin, and try to do it in a well-ventilated area. This stuff is not good for your lungs.

Next up is the heartbreaking bit - or potentially not, depending on your opinion of the model's faces! At a roughly 90 degree angle to the previous filing, I used a flat file to begin shaving down the face to a flat surface. Try to avoid touching the shoulders and the robes, as it's quite easy to nick them and cause damage during this filing.

To keep everything straight and true, I used this triangular marking at the back of the head to make sure that my new 'face' surface was flat and wasn't leaning off to one side. 

I was left with this 'peg'.

Time to test fit the helmet. The aim is to have the top part of the helmet completely covering the flat surface we created earlier, so that it just about protrudes out at the back of the head. You can see here that there's a long way to go, which is intentional - it's much better to file a bit and then check against the helmet how much further you need to go. I did this a tiny bit at a time, making sure I never filed too far, and checking that all the angles were correct.

I also used a sharp file and hobby knife to carve out the inside corner of the Easterling Warrior helmet. There is actually a small curve to this part, and sharpening up this angle really helped it to fit more tightly on to the 'peg'.

This is almost there. I continued filing the face back a little bit more, to make sure that the top part of the helmet was centred over the head.

Once the head is fitted well, I glued it in to place, and used a tiny amount of milliput and water to cover the small seams on each side where the plastic meets the resin.

A shot of all of the heads fitted. At this point I was happy that I had a decent idea on my hands - now just to do something about those arms.

The first step was to roll out some green stuff. After mixing, I flattened the piece of green stuff with my fingers, before sandwiching it between two sheets of waxed paper. Be sure to use plenty of water here, or it will stick. I used the handle of a hobby knife to roll it out to a thickness of 1mm or less- I'm sure you can do a much neater job than I did, but it won't matter much at the next step. Don't go too thin or it will just stick to the paper. 

Note: some people have told me that unwaxed baking paper works better here. I did not personally have any luck with it, so I think it's best to try with what you have - you may get lucky. Even if the paper sticks a little bit, as mine did, you can just apply some water and try again. 

Here I'm just checking the arm against the green stuff to see roughly how much of it I'll need to cut out. I then cut a small rectangle out and wrap it around the exposed skin, stopping just before the bracers. 

Here's the trickier part, and there is no exact science here - using the clay shaping tools and plenty of water, I pushed and coerced the green stuff around until it made one continuous wrap around the upper arm. I gently pushed it up towards the bracers so that it covered the upper arm with one seamless 'cloth' wrap. If the green stuff tears, it's possible to add a small dot to cover the gap. I continued working it with my tools until the arm was completely covered. 

I pushed any excess green stuff upwards towards the top of the arm, and kept smoothing it out until it formed one continuous thin layer. 

Here you can see that some green stuff was pushed up over the shoulder - I just trimmed this away with a wet hobby knife. 

Time to add texture. Again, there is no real recipe for this - but using the clay shaping tools, I gently prodded and pushed the green stuff into fabric-looking folds. This took a bit of trial and error, and I will definitely change my process a lot for the next time, but the good news is that if you're not happy with the way it looks you can smooth over the green stuff and try again. When making these folds, I tried to picture the cloth hanging from the upper parts of the arm, and this indicated the direction the creases would lie.

After I was happy with the rough layout of the folds, I left the green stuff to firm up for about an hour, and then came back to smooth everything over, and to sharpen up a few of the more dramatic folds with my plastic 'shaping tool'.

Note - I've since been informed that vaseline is really helpful at this stage to stop the tools from snagging on the green stuff. 

A shot from the back - this was the first model I worked on, and I'm the least happy with the fabric on this one. Fortunately, I learned a lot, which was applied over the next couple of models, which I'm significantly happier with. 

The three models after sculpting the sleeves.

The irritating thing about scuplting the sleeves is that it's very difficult to do this seamlessly without gluing the arms in to place. This made painting the models a bit trickier, but it was still doable with a bit of dexterity! I left one arm detached, as it really would have made painting too difficult. This resulted in a slightly more visible seam once it was glued on to the model, but it's not a big issue. 

The bases were made with milliput and a green stuff rolling pin. I smoothed a thin layer of milliput over the base, thoroughly wet it with water, and applied the cobblestone rolling pin. I trimmed off the excess milliput around the edges while it was still wet, and tidied it up with sandpaper the next day before gluing the models in place and priming. 

After priming. Once the primer is down  you can really spot any imperfections, so I went back in with a few files and a sanding sponge to smooth out a few rough spots. 

And after painting! I struggled a little bit with the colour scheme for these models - I really wanted to showcase the red colour on the upper body, but after testing this out, it just looked WAY too red. I dialled this back and in the end I went with a scheme that's quite similar to what GW used for their demo Acolyte models. However, I went with red for the head scarves, as I feel that this balances the model out a little better. 

A couple of people were curious about the scale of these models compared to Easterling Warriors, so here is an image to show how they look alongside their brothers in arms.

Thank you for reading - and good luck on your own conversions!