Since I saw the movie, I wanted to build Amon Sûl. I bought the Wethertop minitures and moreover I built the ruined tower with the mold of Bruce Hirst. Unfortunately Bruce designed the tower in oder to look good, not in order to fit the necessarities of the scenario weathertop. When I played the scenario with the ruined tower it usually ended with the Hobbits hiding behind Aragorn on a stairway. Frodo was save on a gallery.
In my early tabletop day I built scenery which was almost impossible to play in. The model on the picture above is just hard to play in, but it looks very good. You need at least some space to play the weathertop scenarios in, so I decided to make a new one.
Years later "The Fellowship" hobby book was published, so once more I planned to build Amon Sûl. By chance a friend just molded his Weathertop and lucky me - I could get hands on one of the models. Moreover Dargorlad published an really outstanding article on Amon Sûl at www.one-ring.co.uk. This article was a prefect inspiration. Thanks a lot Dargorlad for your great article and expecially your excellent painting technic!
The carcass
First of all I considered wether I should build the model in a modular way or not. Having some parts of a circle to put on the table separatly could be very nice.
I spent some hours with experiments with my pecil on the insulation foam, but later on I recognized, that there would be far to much agreements to the initial plan if I made it modular. I wanted to make lots of debris and natural cover.
Therefore I decided to build a single piece. I drawed several circles on my insulation foam hill and I cut one piece of the tower in the hill in order to make the model looking taller. I used a hot wire cutter by Proxxon. After that I cut some gaps between the stones it the wall. With a nice structured stone I pressed some stone structure in the foam.
The floor
The most beautiful floor for Amon Sûl I have seen is that one by Beboom. Geboom´s Amon Sûl was built with Hirst Arts stones. I wanted to achieve a similar look, but I wanted it far more weathered and covered with debris.
Every stone was modivied with my pliers, some were broken, which made up very nice.
The stones on the picture are terra cotta coloured, but this is just the plastercolor. The whole model was primed in black.
I used some dental mould material in order to make some copies of the ruins of middle earth. Some original plastic pieces were used in the model, too.
The composition
Beneath EBOBs models I did not want to use Hirst Arts stones, which are cumbersome to cast in big amounts. I used some sandwich cardboard in order to get on the same height than the stones.
After that I glued EBOBs excellent models with wood glue on the hill. I just want to mention that I modified the models. First of all I used the Games Workshop statues, then I modified one segment to represent the stairs of the tower.
Then I glued big rocks and debris hills on the model.
Modifications
The archs were cast in a way that there was no structure on the top. Therefore I cut some structure with a cutter in it and used a modelling tool for carving. With some additinal stones I added some mor ruined charme to it.
Watching the unpainted model made already much fun. I was shure that this model will be very nice.
Although I did not model the segments by myself it took me at least 16 hours of work to get to this result. As usual I underestimated the time I needed. Moulding and casting took a big part of the time.
The shoe polish method
During the painting I followed the tips by Dargorlad and Bruce Hirst. First of all I primed with black, then I drybrushed with Earth. After that I inked with Brown by using brown shoe polish, which was thinned with water. I used a product by Erdal a funny german brand with a famous frog on it.
Lateron I again drybrushed the model with Earth followed by Vallejo Iraqui Sand. If I had to redo the model I would start with white primer with an additional black ink step. Afterwards everybody is a little bit smarter.
Foliage
I used two kinds of long grass by Noch. Currently they have different colors which you can mix to match your desired color - this is really a brilliant idea. The short grass is a mix with really really green grass and some other manufactureres, nothing special.
Then I used rubberised horse hair and birch samen (Antenociti´s Workshop) a fine green foliage by Noch and some organic tree material.
After I remade all my small wood models I again did the foliage of the weathertop model. I used some metal plants as well, which looks really cool.
All green material was sprayed with thinned down wood glue. This is working perfect as it is invisible afterwards and you can repeat the step until everythings is fixed.
Conclusion
The model took ages to finish although I did not make the modellings itself. But now I do have a wonderful piece and it is one of my first Models which shows a special part of Middle Earth.
Yours Tankred
