Bored of the rings... nah only kidding

However I am really bored of the same advancing Balrog position, who wants their Balrogs to all the same or even to look the same as everyone else's Balrog., so here goes.

First break the Balrogs head off and his wings too for good measure

 then get your favourite power tool, cut his bleeding arms off

 then reassemble him to your taste

 green stuff his elbows on

 sort him out, new spear shaft and reposition the sword too

then paint him up to join your heavy metal band, ready to play guitar as a tribute to "in flames"

Smaug's new clothes

Neck details (underbelly texture)

 still some work left at this point

 The underbelly was base coated with talarn sand, and then drybrused with a mix of talarn sand (desert yellow)and sunbusrt yellow, until a pure drybrush of sunburst yellow and eventually a dry brush of sunburst yellow mixed with ushabti bone(bleach bone)

 Lovely nashers... scorched brown highlighting up with talarn sand ushabti bone in mixes and drybrushing, same goes for the cranial dorsal and pteryl spines

 The eyes were painted using as a base an orange made form mixing mephiston red and sunburst yellow together  and gradually highlighting by adding more yellow, but the central slit of the eye was not highlighted leaving the dark redish streak in the middle, to finish off the eyes were highlighted with sunburst yellow and a last detailing of white scar mixed to the yellow, then the black I shape was painted in the centre of each eye.

 The back scale and legs were base coated  with an opaque layer of terracota, then dry brushed with mephiston red (blood red)

 Wing membranes were painted with a mix of mephiston red and enchanted blue, this was the base layer, then the detail was picked out by drybrushing shadow grey

 Below you can see the scale of the beast, notice Treebeard looks tiny in comparison

Sculpting Smaug

It's has been a while since I posted anything up here but this project is without a doubt the biggest hobby project I have ever undertaken and probably ever will again mind. 

Here is the step by step photo log of me building and sculpting Smaug.

Don't forget the image thumbnails can biggify.

The recipe:

-3 old Citadel paint pots

-3 corks

-A small gorilla pod

-An old Lego palm tree bole

-Lego tyre

-Some Bamboo chopping board

-Old LotR ruin

-Wire

-Mdf board

- Card 

-Coffee stirrers 

-Magnets

-10 Packs of standard milliput

-40" of Kneadatite (Green stuff)

-3/4 pack of pro-create

- About 180hours of time... ish

-3D printed latex gaming mat sample

Now for the tools:

-Scissors

-Knives (1 for putty cutting, 1 for cutting the base)

-Plastic paint brush

-Pliers

- Hand drill

-Camo trouser pocket

-Lots of super glue

 so to begin with I glued up a frame... to find appropriate material for the armature demanded me to use a little bit of immagination so I begun, using the things I had lying around my room and house. notice the neck is a palm tree

 Notice below the tail extension using wire,

 Tiny balrog.

 Below you can see how I made the base, it took me several attempts on MS paint and printing to get the base to the correct GW size, But I got there in the end, then the template was used to mark out on the Mdf the base...

At this stage Smaug had overstepped his bound so I had to break his back right leg to fit inside the perimeter of the base, it is pretty narrow after all.

 I then used some spare sample printed latex gaming mat made by Zuzzy miniatures to avoid basing the bugger with sand and other crap that would over time come off or just annoy me.

 Below the armature now almost completely covered in the first layer of milliput, those are Uruk hai bersekers and such in the foreground.

 Side note, Milliput is really not adhesive to cork, it was a real pain in the ass this stage.

 Wing being created out of sticks and card.

 Below an attempt at texturing using a T-shirt. this was not a successful texture.

 Old GW dragon looks small against the wing of this guy.

 Early head work.

 the Spikes are in place

 Trip to the dentist

 Hand taking shape

 back claws also being worked on now

 overall structure of the model coming together, click on the image, there is a cave drake in there(below)

 Smaug gets his first armour patch...

 going all the way down the tail

 Texturing is well underway

 the wing membranes filled in.

 Tendons are added, as the lower limbs will not have any armour

 Magnet in place

 Legs are done

 From below downwards the model is finished, no more sculpting needed

 I believe that is an A2 sheet of foam card beneath those two to give you an idea.

 What lovely nashers  you have

 wing complete

 Below the texture of the underbelly, this texture goes fromm the neck to the tip of tail

 The finished head

 One Smaug model

Now he just need some damn paint and extra vegetation around his base. There will be a wip of the paint soon.