Nick's 1st Age Project

[Aethelwulf]

I've also wanted to do a first age version of MESBG but the amount of troops, Balrogs, and dragons I would need for each side was rather prohibitive.

[Daeothar]

You can always do a skirmish... 

[Ceepee]

Hi Nick

beautiful models.

Have you considered Reaper rules; very much more unit based but with room for heroes.
Quite flexible for unit design so you can do your own thing; like I do.

Thes are my LoTR rules since Noah was a nipper, uses percentage dice if that suits.

If you want to have a look let me know as I think I have a PDF somewhere

Colin

[DivisMal]

I can tell you: 1977.

Thanks. Was it part of a certain Tolkien calendar?

Great project - however long in the making!

That's a really interesting image because it's one of very few winged balrogs to actually fit the description in the text. Something I like about older Middle-earth illustrations and miniatures is that you can see that the artists have gone back to the source rather than relying on other people's interpretations. One example would be the Asgard and Ral Partha not-Isengarders having the S-rune on their helmets; another is this balrog with its mane and wings that can actually be spread from wall to wall in a huge chamber. I love the slab-laying trolls too!

So true. And it’s become much worse since the movies (or rather the two artists responsible for the aesthetic in the movie). Their influence on the visualization of Middle Earth has sadly been immense and thereby marginalized other interpretations (often much closer to the holy text itself).

I’ve become tired by this an tremendously enjoy these older pictures.

[tikitang]

Was it part of a certain Tolkien calendar?

Yes it was! And, according to this webpage, the original sold for $55000!

I tremendously enjoy these older pictures.

I like older pictures myself for the same reasons, but I have to say, while Joan Wyatt does have some great ones, she's also got some duds as well, such as this rendition of Shelob:



The face reminds me of a lobster from The Muppets!

[Daeothar]

That is a face only a spider-mother could love... 

[Aethelwulf]

Yes it was! And, according to this webpage, the original sold for $55000!

I like older pictures myself for the same reasons, but I have to say, while Joan Wyatt does have some great ones, she's also got some duds as well, such as this rendition of Shelob:



The face reminds me of a lobster from The Muppets!

Wow that is intensely creepy actually

[tikitang]

Wyatt seems to have a trend for extreme horizontal elongation of large monsters, despite an otherwise well proportioned and nicely composed background!




Anyway, apologies for hijacking this interesting thread with LOTR artwork commentary! I'll stop now!

[DivisMal]

I must say I found both pictures by Joan Wyatt pretty intense, and if nothing, at least original. I need to go back to the text, but iirc Toökien nowhere says Shelob is just a big spider like in the movies. Isn’t it rather suggested she’s a spiderlike monster?

This picture really gives me some great ideas for my version of Shelob/Ungoliath in my 15mm project. I need to get some more of Wyatt‘s work.

Thanks for derailing the thread and sharing those!

[Hobgoblin]

I must say I found both pictures by Joan Wyatt pretty intense, and if nothing, at least original. I need to go back to the text, but iirc Toökien nowhere says Shelob is just a big spider like in the movies. Isn’t it rather suggested she’s a spiderlike monster?

You're quite right - and note the description of the claws and horns; it looks like Wyatt was cleaving close to the text:

A little way ahead and to his left he saw suddenly, issuing from a black hole of shadow under the cliff, the most loathly shape that he had ever beheld, horrible beyond the horror of an evil dream. Most like a spider she was, but huger than the greatest hunting beasts, and more terrible than they because of the evil purpose in her remorseless eyes. Those same eyes that he had thought daunted and defeated, there they were lit with a fell light again, clustering in her out-thrust head. Great horns she had, and behind her short stalk-like neck was her huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between her legs; its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench. Her legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above her back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.
As soon as she had squeezed her soft squelching body and its folded limbs out of the upper exit from her lair, she moved with a horrible speed, now running her creaking legs, now making a sudden bound."

[Daeothar]

[DERAIL] Ah yes; the great flying beasts. In my young mind, before Jackson's imaginings, they were more like Pterodactyls. Or, at least, how those were depicted back in the early eighties...  [/DERAIL]

[tikitang]

Bakshi was also my first introduction to the airborne Nazgul (and in fact LOTR in general). I remember this part was my favourite part of the film:



Though far too brief!

[DivisMal]

You're quite right - and note the description of the claws and horns; it looks like Wyatt was cleaving close to the text:

That’s a brilliant find! Actually the picture is very close to the text. A great discovery! That’s what I hate about the movies (and before someone is insulted, I know it’s not the films but rather their omnipresence): everyone only has a single picture in his or her head. Early Tolkien art is really exciting.

I think I have an old RAFM model of a drider that fits that description perfectly. I just fear it might be too big for my 15mm project.

[Sunjester]

Thanks guys for reminding me of Joan Wyatt's art, I'd forgotten about her.

I am glad that I discovered The Lord of the Rings, and the assosciated artworks, back in the mid-1970s, rather than in today's Jackson/Lee/Howe dominated enviroment. Don't get me wrong, I like Alan Lee and John Howe's work, and I enjoyed Peter Jackson's films (when I disengaged the purist in my head).
But to me they were just another interpretation, amoung so many others I had seen before.

Apologies to Nick for continuing the derailment of his thread. It's looking good so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the progression. A good few years back we played a succession of large Tolkien battles, with the two of us pooling our ridiculously large 25/28mm fantasy collections. For one game we acheived 1000 orcs on the table, with not a single GW model in sight!

[nicknorthstar]

I love the slab-laying trolls too!

They get missed out so often, especially by Jackson inspired artists.