Flies and Spiders WIPs (Updated with tree pics)

[Dr Mathias]

Hello,
I thought I'd show some of my WIP shots I took when working on my round 5 LPL entry.

I knew right away that I wanted to do the 'Flies and Spiders' scene from The Hobbit. When I read the story many years ago, that scene in particular resonated with me. I read the book again for the LPL and I also watched the animated film. Then it was a matter of searching for the right figures for the conversions I had in mind. The spiders are stock Reaper, high quality, mean, and dumb looking so they were perfect for Attercops. I had the Vendel dwarves in the back of my mind and after doing some research I settled on them. They have a hunched, limbs withdrawn look that would work well for cocooning. I really like them and part of me hated hacking them up...



I cut off the bases and did some moving of limbs in a few cases. To wrap the dwarves I went with my tried and true 'toilet tissue' method. Using a generous amount of watered down glue and gloss acrylic medium I coated the dwarves and wrapped them up, using a brush to push the soggy tissue around. I tried using thread as well but it didn't work well, so I scrapped the idea.

After a couple layers, I let them dry fully, and used a coat of gloss gel medium to get the 'wrapped thread' feel... I used a wretched brush with splayed bristles to rake through the medium. It holds its texture and worked pretty good.



I painted them by priming white, and giving them a wash of blue-grey followed by a yellow tone. Then highlight up to off-white. I knew I was going to be using a low shutter speed to get the gloomy Mirkwood feel, so I didn't highlight up to white as it would glare too much. I painted the exposed parts like I do anything else, with a combo of blending, washes, and triads.



Here's the pic I wanted to use, because of the gloom, but my wife advised against it as being too dark. Probably good advice



Here's a shot I took of my rigging method. This shoot was a genuine pain in the ass. Besides the difficulty of stringing them up, any movement would get the dwarves swaying, and therefore blurry. At a shutter speed of 5 seconds, even slight movement caused blur. The reason why the main photo has the dwarves on the forest floor for the detail shot is that I couldn't get a good group shot of them otherwise



You can probably make out some Halloween artificial spiderweb on the left... that idea sucked too As I prepared to do the photo shoot, I came up with an idea on how to rig them so I can game this scene- so I went with the temporary hanging method you see here. I'll be upgrading later

Lastly, a slightly overexposed Bilbo for your viewing pleasure.



Thanks for looking!

[Captain Blood]

Brilliant modelling. Brilliant idea.

[DFlynSqrl]

One of my favorites for this season.  Thanks for showing us how you did it.

[Thantsants]

Absolutely superb - what ingenuity and dedication! 

[Blue in vt]

Agreed...absolute genius...you really thought outside the norm and recreated one of the most memorable moments from the hobbit.

Well done sir.

Blue

[Mason]

Fantastic concept and execution!
 

I really did sit there with a great big silly grin, muttering 'Genius!' when I first saw it.
Superb!

[oxiana]

Utterly brilliant. Thanks for showing the behind-the-scenes photos, they give an extra insight to a really well thought-out diorama.

 

[B. Basiliscus]

This is positively delightful!
Why, I can hear calls of lazylob and crazycob

[Admiral Benbow]

Great show - creativity and dedication for the perfect shooting ...
 

[Quendil]

Outstanding 

[Wirelizard]

Great stuff, your scene was one of the very best in that LPL round, straight from the book and instantly recognizable.

Could we get a better look at the really big trees, like the one Bilbo is against?

[syrinx0]

That was a great scene. It brought to mind the book immediately.

[Funghy-Fipps]

Woah!  Very nice indeed. 

[Faust23]

Utterly terrifying!     Great work!

[Dr Mathias]

Thanks for the comments everyone, appreciated.

Could we get a better look at the really big trees, like the one Bilbo is against?

Sorry it took  a while to respond- I waited until my Round 7 entry was ready so I could shoot the trees at the same time. I made three large trees specifically for the Flies and Spiders scene, plus some little detail bases. Without further ado here they are:











The following bases weren't very prominent in the scene. They're basically detritus from earlier spider meals. I channeled Hammers a bit when I made these, often asking myself 'WWHD, or What Would Hammers Do?'

I used Insta-Mold and Sculpy to make them. I pressed some skeletal parts from the bits box into the Insta-mold, and then used Sculpey to make the castings, which then had to be baked. You can see the unpainted larger base in an earlier pic with the dwarves.



Thanks for the interest, they were pretty fun to make and destroy my early attempts at trees. These use actual tree branches for the trunks with some putty work and tissue to blend my additions into the natural texture. I'm not happy with the physical transition of the trunk to foliage, its too abrupt- but I knew that when I made them.

If there is interest I'd be happy to make a tree tutorial, once the LPL is over of course