Been away for a while but started collecting and painting my WE army at last (thanks to everyone who helped with the Fallen Leaves army list from months ago). However, when it came to buying the treeman for my army I discovered that I really, really don't like the GW model and that whilst the treebeard model was better it was out of scale and still not what I wanted. So I decided to build my own (a daunting thought as I've only just started this painting and modelling shindig).
My first thought was how big should this thing be? I read the stuff in the WE army book saying how these things are huge 'behemoth' I think the word is they use, plus they are the size of trees and yet the modelled versions are only 6m according to the scale (as is the warhammer giant, being 3 standard models high). Seeing as how a lot of trees can grow 25m+ this seemed a little on the short side so I thought I'd go for something Big (with a capital B) to represent Orthyn guardian of the Hill of Amrith. So here he is (prior to painting, though he has been undercoated), oh and he is about the size of a Necron Monolith from 40k:
I would appreciate the views of the wise members of the meadow , what do you think?
It's a great first try, but i have a few things....
his body is completely wonkers in scale to his legs. Generally in Bipedal creatures, the leg/torso ratio is about equal (sometimes with added length to legs)
speaking of legs, i think it may help if you define the joints on them, as it seems currently that he is using big wads of spaghetti to stand on...
last thing, you may want to revise the hands and feet into more "roots", he doesn't have enough....
Hate me if you wish....
P.S: what did you use to sculpt him?
Atlarge wrote: It's not GW if you're not scraping off a dozen nonsensical skulls from each model.
Thanks for commenting - no hate here! He is sculpted out of milliputt (I had to use two kinds; terracotta and normal hence the different colours as the shop was all out of normal) its wrapped around a body made of 6 corks and 4 paper clips (cut in half for 8 bits) modelled in a 'man' shape (with no head). In total he took me about three hours to sculpt - except for the plastic bits which had to be glued on the next day when the putty had set.
Regarding the points you raise - his legs are meant to be at that scale compared to his body, the inspiration for him came from walking near my house where two large tree trunks sit either side of the pavement. I was stood in the middle of them wondering what it would be like if the tree(s) came to life and I imagined these two huge trunks ripping up out of the concrete - so the long legs are meant to represent that - with his (smallish) body being hidden amongst the canopy above until he decides to move.
I see what you mean about the joints, but you can certainly see more of a distinct bend in real life than the camera seems to make out - I'll try to highlight this with the paint job.
I agree regarding the hands, I'm going to expand his left hand to be more root like and 'grasping', though I want to retain the potential for a gnarled fist as mentioned in the army book. His broken stump right arm will be full of vegetation and extra roots (and probably an owl) when I've finished.
The base is going to be littered with moss, twigs, leaves etc and I'll build more roots into that as you're right he needs more!
I've finished painting my treeman, I've posted a picture below. Two things - 1. I took the picture with my camera straight after finishing and before I realised that the glue for the foliage was still drying and gloopy - it has all disappeared/been removed now. 2. The date on my rubbish camera is wrong; this was done earlier today . To make matters worse my camera has now packed in entirely meaning that I can't take any non-glue pictures . Anyhow:
Also, I messed around with extending the left hand fingers but couldn't get it to look right so decided to leave it in the end.
i assume you were going for the "glowing eyes" effect? if so, i have a little tip, to make it more realistic, try painting (or drybrushing) around the eyes (or wherever you think the light would touch) with a dark green, paint the same green in the eyes, then highlight with a lighter green, this time leaving some of the darker colour underneath. If you highlight to the middle of the eye, it works well too.
, what do you think?
. Anyhow:
