I am no man

But I'm not here to announce a sudden gender reassignment either.

I've been working on this a little bit over the last week. I've never made a box like this to display models on, and thus was completely unaware how difficult it would actually be to make a seamless cuboid. Black foamboard surrounded in 0.5mm Evergreen sheet styrene, and paper glued over the top to try to help hide the styrene-styrene joins and styrene-card joins. The... well what would they be called? ...plaques, I suppose, are made of balsa that I etched with a 2000mW handheld infrared laser pointer (I spent a lot of money earlier in the year buying up lasers right before NZ law changed to make them practically impossible to get), and surrounded in more styrene painted gold, and held in place by "nails" of brass rod. There are identical plaques on both sides. The problem with doing my own laser etching is that any variations in speed, or in distance to the laser, end up fairly obvious in the final product.

The balsa was stained with watered down Steel Legion Drab, followed by watered down Rhinox Hide, and then black to give a similar look to walnut wood (I've like the colouration of walnut ever since I got myself a one ring replica from Weta that came in a walnut box).

I've yet to progress beyond the base because the Witch-king's sword hand was missing (luckily the guy I bought these off found it, and at the same time I've bought a bunch of other stuff off him which should arrive later this week/early next).

Even though I've already glued the Fell Beast's head on, I might go back and repaint its skin because after applying a second black wash to it, it's looking a little shiny. I'm also tempted to add some Woodland Scenics Field Grass to that base to eventually hide Merry's jawline, because the sculpting of his jaw (and face in general) is a bit of a let down. More than anything, I think that will depend on how it goes painting him though.

I've never really bothered to paint my models to be weathered and dirty, mostly because I'm always concerned that I'll screw up a nice paintjob if I do. I think good weathering is quite difficult to achieve with paint, both in getting the right dusty colour, and in application so as to actually look like dust ingrained in fabric. These models deserve the extra effort.


Until next time, may the wind under your wings bear you to where the sun sails and the moon walks!