Lets get down to business. The fellowship project.... So a few posts back I showed a picture of a few unpainted miniatures from the out of print Mines of Moria starter set along with the DeAgostini Mines of Moria display piece primed in black (the way I bought it). I've basically put a ton of hours into this piece because I wanted every miniature to be as top level as I could get and this project is a birthday present for my nephew.
Take note, this is going to be picture heavy.
So we'll start by showing the piece as a whole with the miniatures.
Now lets take a look at just the base itself....
Now the miniatures....
So there is the miniatures. Now maybe a closer look at the display with the miniatures.
So I think that about sums up this project. My thoughts.... I think all in all it turned out pretty good. That being said, I hated painting these miniatures. The sculpts are terrible and it's hard to tell what is what. Of all the Fellowship models available, these are the worst. I know it's early plastic, but they could've done a better job with the casting. Aragorn model looks nothing like Viggo Mortensen as well as Legolas looking nothing like Orlando Bloom. Gimli's head is so scruntched together it was hard picking out any of the details. All the hobbit models look like generic hobbits (minus Samwise, he actually is the best looking model of the bunch in my opinion). Boromir is another model that I liked in this set. The rest are pretty bad.
When I picked up the paint brushes for the second time in my life (as an adult), these particular models were some of the first I had painted. One thing that has always annoyed me when looking at other people's blogs and hobby sites is the fact that they show they're awesome paint jobs, but never models they did when they first started painting. As a painter who's been painting roughly 4-5 years now, I like seeing my old models compared to my new, as it gives me insight on how far I've come as a painter. I would love to see some of these top painters first works, but alas they never post them. I might not be a top painter, but I like taking comparison shots and posting them for the world to see. I hope it gives people who are struggling insight into the fact that we all didn't start off as fantastic painters.
Take a gander at these..... the ones on the left are the ones I just painted and the ones on the right are ones I painted when I started up again after a 15 year hiatus (in which I was amateur back then at best). Note, the ones on the right have been used in games many of times, so there is a little wear and tear on them.
As you can well see, there is a very clear cut difference between now and then. It really is amazing how your skill increases with every miniature you paint. That's about all the pictures I got for now. I hope this makes up for my lack of LOTR and content in general lately. I hope you guys like what you see and I hope my nephew enjoys them. Thanks for looking!!
