The Shire:

Isengard:

Eriador

Rivendell

The Mines of Moria:

Mirkwood

The Anduin

Rohan

Morgul Vale:

Mordor:

The Sawdust of the Past

The Making of...

Scenery Workshop:

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BRINGING THE LEGEND TO LIFE:

The Making of the Argonath

© Lotrscenerybuilder 2008




More cardboard was added to produce the decorations of the crown. The pictures on the Appendices-discs were a great help since the movie frames do not by a long way reveal all secrets of these statues.



When the helmet was finished, we switched to the face and helmet of Isildur - we just wanted to make sure that we could build both statues of the Argonath. But of course the face of Isildur was much easier to sculpt since his beard is covering much of his features…



… and his helmet was just less of the same.

Sadly, in a later stage, we had to redefine the stern image of this king of old.
"Not the beard! Not the beard!"



It's their left hands, raised in a gesture of warning, which draws first attention when one looks upon the statues. We didn't want to sculpt anatomical correct hands, we only wanted to make bits of MDF look like real hands. Now if you watch your own hand it's easy to see what gives it its characteristic shape: four fingers, more or less of the same length but connected at gradual 'positions' to the palm; they are bent slightly and the ring finger and little finger a bit more than the others; the thumb isn't placed next to the forefinger, but halfway in front of it. Also, if you study the movie frames carefully you can see that both hands are not raised dead straight but a bit 'on the slant'.



With these data at hand it wasn't all too difficult to produce two near identical hands. The 'wrist' was used to glue the hand into the right position. Filler was used to mask the joints and to re-model small flaws.

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