Goblin Town Crier's Halloween Spider Challenge

Ring_of_Gyges · **Posted:** Fri Mar 10, 2017 5:09 pm

Fantastic work!

Sithious · **Posted:** Tue Mar 14, 2017 11:12 pm

Awesome sculpting.

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:35 pm

Bolg is all painted up!

I'm super pumped to have this fella completed! I think he has come out true to the movies and looks just like the scene I based him off of... Poor Kili!

I haven't seen another sculpt/conversion like this so I am happy to have created something original. Thanks for looking and hope you found this interesting.

Now I gotta get my speed paint on for this months Hobby Challenege which i'm super late entering!

Morghot · **Posted:** Sat Mar 25, 2017 6:58 pm

Wow lovely models and great sculpt, super congrats!!

GreatKhanArtist · **Posted:** Sun Apr 23, 2017 6:38 pm

Your sculpting is really quite good. I just started this week with making capes, bags and pouches on WoMT to convert them into Osgiliath vets. Not super great, but I had a lot of frustration at first, then fun.

I also really like the green on Grima. It ties him very nicely to Rohan, but still makes him look evil.

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:02 pm

"Take up arms... fight... fight!"

Thins month Iv painted up one of my favourite miniatures in the range;
Radagast on his Sleigh and a new favourite; Gandalf from the Goblin Town boxed set.

Radagast was motivated by the Hobby Challenge for this month and Gandalf by The Unexpected Journey facebook page.

First up Radagast and the Bunnies:

Its a super cool model to make and paint but taking photos of it was a massive pain, its obviously very brown but because its also quite muted I found it hard to not have it washed out or really dark compared to the background.
I ended up making a light box desperately out of my laundry bin! I also made a platform that can take a piece of paper (I sprayed this one with a grey gradient) the combo of these two new items will lead to some improved photos in the future.

Next is Gandalf:

I am over the moon with him, I think the paints have turned out real smooth and the eyes only took me 2 attempts! If I mess them up i use a scalpel and scrape the pupils off, its painful!

As you can spot I have used some flowers on the bases, I bought an assortment of them on ebay for not too much and I think they look great, Radagasts base is just so big that it needs lots of basing materials to make it interesting and as bluebells are in season now they feature predominantly on his base and a few have found their way on to Gandalf's too!

Im thinking of painting up the Three Trolls this month, but I'll probably wait to start to see what the Hobby Challenge will be!

king elessar 2615 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:44 pm

That Gandalf is absolutely superb, the use of blue to brighten up the model is sensational. Probably the best Gandalf I have seen to date! Definitely given me some ideas for when I get around to mine

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Sun Sep 30, 2018 4:49 pm

So i'm getting back into the swing of things after a bit of a lengthy break in Canada.

The other day looking jealously at my brothers 9 ringwraiths, none of which are painted any more than their black undercoat... decided I wanted to paint one and I didn't want it to be the same as any of his. So I went ahead and sculpted my own, I figured that it would be a fairly forgiving way to get back into modelling.

Below are some WIP pics of the fella, I didn't picture the armature which was an old Dark Eldar warrior's legs and torso. I also used the arms for some support and the upturned hand. Also in the first stage I just smooshed a blob of green stuff all around the torso and thighs and pressed a scale mail pattern into it. I then built up the cloak(s) in layers waiting for each to dry before moving onto the next, so it ended up taking about a week as I did so many layers. But it was fun and not too stressful.

I found that sculpting these tatty robes it was easiest to build up a general shape out of a flat sheet of green stuff then to let it dry and then build the folds on to using sausages of the stuff. Also I found that you can sculpt a cloak much thicker than it would be in real life and it looks just fine, if not better than if you try to make it very thin and realistic. Stufying most of GW's cloaked models shows that they often have very thick cloth, especially when being blown in the wind, for support I guess.

Anyway I have some painted photos I will post up soon, hope you like it, its good to be back!

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Sun Sep 30, 2018 6:10 pm

Here he is all painted up, I am super happy with the result and so quick to paint, he is gonna ally in with my Goblin Horde and his pose is supposed to evoke the idea that he is rousing the rabble!... or doing a 'Bring it' The Rock style!

Small backstory is that he was an ancient king who used to trade with the Dwarf Kingdom of Moria, now a Nazgûl he still serves the same purpose for the Dark Lord, rousing the Goblins from their caverns in service of Mordor.
Thinking of calling him something like The Demagogue, Firebrand or something like that... any suggestions on that would be awesome.

Whatevier · **Posted:** Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:58 pm

Woah, that's a great looking Ringwraith and thanks for the WiP pics..
It's got a dynamic pose and the green tint makes it visually interesting!
Kinda reminds me of warlocks in World of Warcraft.

Only thing I would suggest is some extra work on the Halberd, like painting the pole a dark brown and a little colour on the leather partattached on the pole..

GreatKhanArtist · **Posted:** Mon Oct 01, 2018 6:27 pm

He is really well done. I like the idea of your backstory and the axe fits it as well. If you come to Alberta next time you are in Canada, give me a shout and we'll see about arranging some games.

Fëanor, the mighty elf · **Posted:** Mon Oct 01, 2018 8:10 pm

Great sculpt! :yay:

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:50 pm

Thanks for the positive comments guys

I do agree that Mr. Ringwraith could benefit from some colour but I wanted to keep it very monotone except for the ghoulish armour - much like the new ones forgeworld have just released.

What I may do in the future is when my brother eventually gets around to painting his 9, is help him out and add an extra highlight to the cloak to make it pop a bit more.

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Wed Oct 03, 2018 5:46 pm

IT'S A TRAP!!!

Totally random project I have been working on to waste some time before painting something harder - Trap counters!
These took just a couple of evenings work to complete and I think they look pretty smart, certainly a lot more fun to play with than bits of paper or coins.

These are predominantly used in GW's old Scouring of the Shire sourcebook and feature in a few of the smaller scenarios involving the Hobbit resistance vs the invading ruffians. The idea is that you have 'blank' tokens scattered round the board and when an enemy moves close to them you flip it to see what trap is revealed, not all have traps, so its a bit of a guessing game.

I bought a bunch of 25mm bases on ebay and roughly primed them black so that I could finish the rims nicely later.
I superglued the bases topside and bottom to grass matting whcih I had spare from building my gaming board.
I then carefully cut around the bases using scissors touching up any loose matting as I went with superglue.

I then used little bits of string to make the Tripwire and Snare traps. I just used superglue to strongly fix them in place. I used some Agrax Earthdade to create the impression of a path on the Tripwires too.
Half of the bases are left blank to keep you opponent guessing where traps are.

The Pitfalls were a bit trickier, I had to carve out some of the underside plastic first and then used a blob of green stuff to create a dish. Then i cut a hole in the grass matt before overlaying it... Trial and error to get it all to line up.

And here they all are completed, 4 of each trap and 12 blanks. I added some patches of static grass and painted the rims a nice coat of black to cover up the superglue marks, finally giving them a quick varnish to protect it all.

Simple, effective, super fun to make and hopefully they will be really fun to play with, I'll let you know!

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Sun Oct 07, 2018 1:13 am

Halloween's on the horizon and that means the supermarkets are full of spooky decorations, I came across packs of 8 hard plastic spiders for £1 in Sainsbury's and reckon they must be about the size of the GW Mirkwood Spiders. I bought 3 packs of them to give me enough to play the Hobbit scenarios.

I also bought a bunch of 60mm laser cut MDF bases on ebay for £5 - bringing the total for all 24 spiders to £8, thats 33p each... Pretty damn affordable!

THE CHALLENGE: Paint and base 24 'Mirkwood' Spiders and pit them against Bilbo and The Dwarves in the Flies and Spiders pt.1 and pt.2 scenarios by Halloween on OCTOBER 31st.

I'm gonna post my progress as motivation and hopefully you'll get to see them all laid out on a spooky Mirkwood board trying to eat Dwarf by the end of the month, wish me luck!

Goblin Town Crier · **Posted:** Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:56 pm

Running out of time!....

I have managed to get 13 fully painted and have just a few marking to go on the remaining 5. I have decided to reduce my challenge to just the 18 spiders needed for the Mirkwood missions. Whether I manage to play the specific missions before Halloween seems doubtful but I hope to get the 18 used in a game still this month..

I have done 2 varieties so far and plan on one more, the top one is based on a Brown Widow and the second a Zebra Spider.

The next batch is going to be painted like Yellow Back spiders to add some more colour to the mix, they also look creepy as anything.

Here are the rough base layouts, as the spiders are all gonna be the same pose I thought some scenic bases would add variety so I had a go at sculpting some roots to add to the rocks. They are in the middle of being painted right now so hopefully will have them done and pictured tomorrow.

Cave Dragon · **Posted:** Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:05 pm

Amazing. I love the trap tokens, and the first round of spiders is very well done. Cannot wait for round 2!

Gangleri · **Joined:** Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:09 pm **Posts:** 58

Very nice work all around. The traps are a good idea. Spider bases look very nice as well. The roots are quite convincing. I am eager to see your Yellow Backs, since they are one of my preferred spider species.

infinateremains · **Posted:** Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:39 am

I will definitely have to look out the next time I head to sainsburys as those spiders work really well! It's one of those models from GW that was always out my budget range, especially if you want to run the scenarios.

-EDIT: Went out to Sainsbury's at the weekend and bagged myself 3 packets of these spiders. Very useful, just need to make myself some scenic bases and do a little work on the poses.

Loving the converted wraith as well. Very unique!

paliouras · **Posted:** Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:25 pm

excellent use of the spiders! bravo

Goblin Town Crier's Halloween Spider Challenge

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