The Hills are Alive with the sound of... Troll beasts?

So as alluded to in my last post, the crafting halls of Karningul have been hard at work with hill trolls. Lots. of hill trolls. First by adding some finishing highlights to Buhrdur - a.k.a. The hill troll.



highlights added to skin and leather, tarnishing on metal
he still looks a bit grey in photos though - skintone is actually on the greener  side



enter the poor man's lightbox: a flashlight from 2' away and a sheet of white paper

just another gratuitous sword shot. I love that thing.

With the troll chieftain completed, the urgency of "chieftain of whom?" began to take its toll. Away went the paints, out came the modeling clay. With the assistance of some pretty nice tutorials for sculpting fur, some plasticard, some old newspaper and a scavenged warg head (sorry Tavros), I set about converting the troll clan.

very small pieces of slightly crumpled newspaper covered in superglue seems to make a decent stab at cloth coverings, with strips of thin plasticard  for the leather strappings to tie it in place  

for a first attempt at sculpting fur in this quantity, I think it turned out decently well.

you know, I think that head looks better there than it did on the warg. apology retracted Tavros. 

some small jewelry chain added. after the clay hardens this will be glued
 in place across the chest to connect with the existing troll chain in his other hand

I have three cave trolls in my collection - about to accidentally be four. Having the trolls w hammer and spear, I attempted to order the really schweet hammer-overhead pose, but somehow G-youknowWho managed to bungle that and send me the old hammer version instead. When I called them on it, they offered a free replacement - with the "mistake" essentially as a gift. I guess customer service isn't dead in this world after all! Only this means I know need to come up with a fourth conversion... I guess there are worse problems to have.

troll with... no spear. still tinkering with the weapon arm. it seemed better to finish that before attaching

Opening the 2013 LOTR Fashion season with the latest accouterments from the slopes
of the Misty Mountains: warg pelt cuffs. Ooo la la!  

all questions of "so how exactly does a troll skin a warg with out destroying the pelt?" aside,
I think these have turned out pretty well. Very promising for the rest of the project.

I think that is a good break point for now. I'm planning to get the first one finished and painted up before I get too far with the others. I want to make sure things actually work before I've committed 4 trolls to this project. Gives me a chance to make tweaks and sculpting adjustments. Any pointers from the peanut gallery are more than welcome...