Watchful Peace: Normans in Middle-earth

[fastolfrus]

@Gutbukkit: 5£ is an unbeatable bargain... German prices are up to 100€!  

You can get a second hand copy for 66p on Abe, although postage adds a couple of pounds, but still well under the £5 mark.

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?bt.x=0&bt.y=0&sts=t&tn=tolkien+bestiary

I thoroughly recomend Abe for obscure books. Best if you search by title and author rather than keywords, but if you are not sure put a vague guess at the title and see what you find. Alasdair uses it a lot for text books.

[Mason]

 

Wow!
Late to the party on these, but oh, so glad to catch them.

These fellas look spot on with my original visions of the Soldiers of Gondor.
I detest the PJ versions of them as well as a few ( ) other things.

These are fantastic: Great choice of original figure, excellent conversions and lovely paintwork.
 

P.S. Thanks to Rob Bresnan, I have just ordered that Bestiary.
Looking forward to getting my grubby mitts on it!
 

[sukhe_bator]

Mason - I'm completely with you. They are exactly how I'd imagined Gondorians to be. Had I not decided a long time ago against kite shields for Gondorians (largely due to the dearth of good figures available at the time, my Gondorians would look like these now - curses!) And Mason - you will not be disappointed with the Bestiary...

[Momotaro]

Yeah, I've just found this thread - fantastic minis!

I'm now wondering if I can retro-fit all my Conquest Norman Gondorians with winged helmets.  IIRC, Hasslefree sell mini-wings for just such a purpose...

[Vermis]

Firstly, sorry to Finarfin for continuing this slight diversion.

I was in a branch of The Works today - turns out they had both the bestiary and the encyclopedia.  £6.99 softback and £4.99 hardback, respectively.  I flicked through the bestiary first and was pleasantly surprised to see it chock-full of illustrations by Ian Miller, among other artists. (Including Victor Ambrus and even a few by John Blanche)  From my POV, a real retro-warhammer feel to Middle-Earth.

Then the encyclopedia.  As mentioned it's pretty much the bestiary rearranged a bit, but with a lot of the illustrations replaced by offerings in two other styles.  How can I put it?  One was like an amalgam of a child's crayon doodles and mid-20th-C soviet bloc animations.  The other was like a young boy heard from a friend that they draw Spider-Man with ink and a brush, and thought that's all you need to make your drawings great.  Neither were pretty.  So I thought it was worth paying the extra couple of pounds for the bestiary, and brought it up to the till...

... where it rang through as £4.99 anyway.

On-topic!  Kind of:

I detest the PJ versions of them as well as a few ( Roll Eyes) other things.

I'm tempted to start a topic.

I'm now wondering if I can retro-fit all my Conquest Norman Gondorians with winged helmets.  IIRC, Hasslefree sell mini-wings for just such a purpose...

Good point!  I'd forgotten about those.  I'd be interested to see how they look, if you go ahead.

[sukhe_bator]

I'm with Vermis - I would be interested to see the results of Momotaro's conversion ideas

[Kitsune]

Really smart work on the unit. Good tips for sculpting as well.

[Treebeard]

Outstanding. They works far better for me than the GW ones

[Momotaro]

I'm with Vermis - I would be interested to see the results of Momotaro's conversion ideas

Oh.  Now I actually have to do it, don't I? 

[Finarfin]

Oh.  Now I actually have to do it, don't I? 

We have to insist... 

[Mason]

And Mason - you will not be disappointed with the Bestiary...

I certainly wasnt!
Great book, very inspirational.
So thanks again to Rob for first mentioning it.
 

AND an even bigger 'Thank You' to Finarfin, as I have decided to take the leap and am waiting for some similar figures so that I can try the same thing.
This is exactly what Men of Gondor should look like!

If mine come out half as well as yours I will be pleased!
 

[fluffy05]

Hi guys,

My two sons and I have only just finished watching the New "The Hobbit" movie recently and they are keen as mustard to game all things LOTR 

Your blog and brushwork is inspiring!

Please keep posting as the inspiration is great 

Consider me subscribed 

[Spooktalker]

I agree with everyone, the normans are great and an improvement over the movie designs.

I got mine when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I am 40 this year.

They had a copy in the school library and I used to pour over it, amazed by the fantastic illustrations- some of the finest fantasy art I can ever remember seeing. I was so enthralled by the book, I asked for it for Christmas. I got it as my main Christmas present because it was so expensive (it cost £25, back when that was a LOT of money to spend on a book). My Mum and Dad thought it was a bit of a waste of money to spend that much on a book, but I still have it, and it is very much treasured, unlike all those other childhood Christmas presents I had over the years. I still read it and refer to it, especially when planning campaigns to LotR. The art still enthrals me.

I believe it was also republished when the films came out,  under the title Tolkien: An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. It's pretty much the same book, but to be fair the new title is a better description of the contents of the book. You will probably be able to pick this up a bit cheaper than the Bestiary, because it was printed more recently and it much larger print runs.

Very similar experience here. I would get it from the library and renew until I maxed out renews, then come back a month or four later and get it again. I spent many hours with it and drew a number of pictures aping millers style with technical pens my architect father handed down to me.

  Later it came back in print and I only found out about it when it was on the remainder table at Borders for literally $2.50. Actually, I got two versions that way. The first was the text in a small and particularly cheap-feeling hardback called Tolkien A-Z and the printing wasn't very tight and the illustrations looked messy and blotchy. Later came the real deal, softback and with a crap cover but very nice inside. Both from the remainder table. I bought up several copies of each and passed them out to any of my friends I thought might be interested. This was a good few years ahead of the movies and the list was very small.