The rock was dry brushed with seven colours:

• Chardon granite
• 1:1 mix of chardon granite and codex grey
• Codex grey
• 1:1 mix of codex grey and fortress grey
• fortress grey
• 1:1 mix of fortress grey and bleached bone
• bleached bone

After that I applied several layers of diluted catchan green to the flat area to make it look like moss where growing on the rock. The moss was highlighted with green camo.

The dirt was painting with devlan mud, Graveyard earth and hightlighted with kommando khaki.

The light effect where painted with several layers of diluted paint. Click on the image for a larger version.

The following pallet was used to paint the lightning effect:

• Enchanted blue
• 1:1 mix of enchanted blue and ice blue
• Ice blue
• 1:1 mix of ice blue and space wolves grey
• space wolves grey
• 1:1 mix of space wolves grey and skull white
• skull white

Remember when working with power tools, always use safety goggles.

I have stripped the arm of Sam’s miniature and replaced it with the one I made earlier. I also had to make some fixes to the bag since I was a bit careless with the Dremel.

I have also primed the diorama and I choose to use the both black and white for this. First I primed it black and then white in an angle from above to represent the omni light. Also used the white on the areas the light of Elendil will hit.

This will help  a lot when I start to paint the lightning, it also makes the details show much clearer.

Next step is to paint the test piece I did to get the colours right.

Instead of making mould from normal stones and casting the cliffs with plaster I choose to work with cork, which is an easy material to work with and gives a good stone texture.

Shelob has been pinned to the base on the second legs from the back. You don’t have a lot of room to drill the 1 mm hole in the leg and you can’t go to deep, but it should hold the miniature firmly to the base.

I tried to make the effect that the rocks are coming out of the plinth, as seen on the bottom of the picture.  When done the plinth will be painted black.

The miniatures are only dry fitted to the base and the next step is to give Sam a new raised arm.

I have started with the new arm by first making a mould with green stuff of Sam’s current arm and then made a new arm with it. Still some work to do with removing the arm from the miniature and fitting the new arm.

Overall I am happy with the progress I have made and hope to finish this project by the end of my vacation.

The diorama will be “In the clutches of Shelob”, it will be the scene where Sam holds up the light before Shelob with Frodo wrapped in a cocoon in front of him.

What’s interested me in this projects is the lightning, I will paint the light bright and it will be shined on all three characters and the environment.

The miniatures also comes in a ready made box which is good, the only changes I have to make is to remove Sam’s left arm and model a new one where his arm is raised with the light.  This is something I have never done and are looking forward to try.

The environment will be inspired by the film and I will have Shelob placed on a higher position between two rock faces with a set of stair between.

Frodo will be placed on the bottom of the stairs wrapped in spider webs.

Sam will stand next to Frodo and have his armed raised towards Shelob holding the bright light.

I have received the shipment needed to start this projects which include Sculpting tools, green stuff and the actually miniatures. What’s missing now is to get a mount for the diorama and I was thinking about using a 10x10x10 cm wooden cube for base.

Overall I am excited about this projects and will continue to post about the progress.

I have done the initial cleaning of the miniature and pinned the foot and the head.

The scene I will put him in is charging the battle field over some broken down concrete which has it’s reinforcement  bars sticking out on the sides and threw the cracks.

I will also try to lift the miniature a few centimetres and have some of the underlying soil showing on the base.

The first step was to create the mould for the concrete and making the reinforcement bars.

The mould was created by using the casing for the miniature and cutting a 0.5 centimetre piece from a toilet roll. I used some PVC glue to fix the roll to the casing.

The bars was created by taking a normal piece of wood and nailing a lot of nails in a square with 0.5 centimetre spacing, then taking a piece of wire and going up and down, then left to right creating the pattern of the reinforcement bars. I then applied some glue where the wires meet.

Then I used plaster and fill it half the way, inserted the reinforcement bars and then filled it all the way up.

When it was dry I cleaned the piece from the roll and then started to create the cracks, My first thought was to use a hammer and I elevated both corners and then hit it in the centre. This created the initial crack from one side to another but with no real control.

So for the rest of the cracks I chose to use a normal wire cutter and cutting the cracks. Which worked a lot better and I had more control.

After some cutting and cleaning I ended up with the piece I wanted.

The concrete was then painted with Adeptus battlegrey and highlighted with Codex grey and Fortress grey.

The dirt was painted with Charadon granite and highlighted with Graveyard earth and Kommando khaki.

Next step will be to start painting the captain and I hope I will find time to do it during the week.

Initially I thought this would be a pretty simple model to paint, but it was a monster to paint and it took a lot of time. Same techniques as for the drop pod and dreadnought was used to create wear and tear effect on the hull.

Different setup with the missile launchers and heavy flamer.

I choose to ignore the transparent base and build a new one from a standard round base. The half barrel and metal pole was taken from the 40k battlefield accessories pack. The barb wire was made by twining two wires together.

Overall I am pretty happy with the result of the land speeder,  there are some things I would have done differently when painting the hull. but I am happy with the result.

I made a few alteration from the original guide.

I started with drilling a small hole on the gun mount and then dry fitted the guns, drilled a hole threw the hole I just did into the gun.

Then I used a 3mm drill to make the hole large enough for the magnets. I then glued the a 3mm magnet to the gun mount.

When it was dry I attached a second magnet to the magnet I glued on the mount. Put some glue into the hole on the gun and fitted it to the magnets, then turned it carefully to detach it.

The gunners was a bit more tricky, I first drilled a small hole threw the weapon grip. Dry fitted the guns and drilled a hole threw the grip to the weapon. Then used the 3mm drill to widen the holes.

I then glued the magnets into place, now comes the tricky part. To get the arms attached to the torso correctly. I did this by attaching one of the guns to the arms. Pinned the torso to the seat and dry fitted everything else. Then applied glue to where the arms fit on the torso and then put the gun with the arms in place carefully to attach the arms to the torso.

The sides followed †Talonstrike† guide on how to magnetize a land speeder. Basically  build up an inner wall for the doors, Fit and glue the magnets on the inside of the wall.  Make sure to dry fit them first to get a good position. I used 5mm magnets for this.

Remove the hinges and the inner part of the missile launcher doors.

When you have glued the magnets on the inside of the built up wall, put another magnet on the outside, it will align up automatically with the inner magnet. Put some glue on the door and on the outside magnet, fit the door and wait for the glue to dry. Remove the door and magnet should have stuck to the door.

You can now strengthen the hold of the magnets by adding some green stuff around them.

We now have a fully customizable land speeder with the weapons of choice.

The torsos and the top part of the land speeded is not glued and will be painted before I glue them in place.

Will try to paint using coloured light on a later project. Which will bring out the effect of multiple lighting more then what it did here.

I used the same weathering and battle scaring as the drop pod since the dreadnought had a lot of blank surfaces that needed to get some details. I also a few bullet holes on the left shoulder.

The general idea of the base was to create a crater that had a deeper depth then the rest of the base. This was done by cutting out a circular piece of 5mm plastic card, carving out the crater. I then used green stuff to shape the edges of the crater. Normal sand was then glued to soil parts of the base to give it more texture.

Some random shapes plastic cards was glued onto the outer slopes of the crater to give a feeling of destruction.

The metal beam still needs some work to fit in with the rest of the base better. The dirt was painted with charadon granite then highlighted with graveyard earth and kommando khaki.

The dreadnought have gotten all the blue armour painted and I have start to add the details. On the parchment on the left leg I have written “ULTRA” short for ultramarines and on the centre piece I carefully wrote his name “PRIMUS” which is a dreadnought from the 2nd company.

When all the details and metal are complete I will add a layer of wear and tear similar to the techniques used on the drop pod.

I estimate that I will have this model finnished in a week or two.