The BIGGEST wargaming board in YouTube History! ELVEN Lord of the Rings Warhammer Scenery

I cannot stress how big of a video this is I don't even know what to call it everything just feels like YouTube nonsense but this is the biggest moment of my career I've even driven all the way out to the Edis filming location just to have a nice background for this intro ever since I was 8 years old I have been obsessed with crafting little Di armas and wargaming scenery from The Lord of the Rings mostly because of seeing the w a workshop team working on the massive biges made for the films these Miniatures were just just incredible 72 massive models of a bunch of locations from the 7 m tall Min TI at 172 scale to a fully watertight third scale grey Haven Elven ship I can still remember marry mlau and pressing those little foam bricks into Helms Deep and then asking my mom for some foam so I could try and do the same and it did not look the same Mary and look there's Helms Deep ever since I was a kid it's been a fantasy of mine to see these bigotes to walk among them the old ultimate reference for my own stupidly massive middlee scenery today we take a step towards that fantasy but first we need to get out of the windy Southern elps and hop on a plane because we are deep in the highlands right now why did I drive out here just for three lines of dialogue from the capital of Rohan in South Canterbury I rode my Noble Steed North to Eisen Gard wait no Christ church and then jumped on middlee Airways Over the Misty Mountains waving down to all the little goblins below and landed in Wellington the heart of Middle Earth in Al Row in New Zealand and headed back once again to the folks at wther Workshop now these amazingly talented Crafters obviously worked on the original biges on the Lord of the Rings and in the years since they have been releasing a huge range of stunning Collectibles of Middle Earth envirment last year we hung out with Leonard as Helm's Deep came together and he chattered to me about the joys of being able to have access to the original biges to reference as he assembled the digital mockup of the Fortress try and match the rock with work in the actual P down to the actual Cliffs as best we can yeah cuz you can't have some sheer Cliff where there was none yeah yeah yeah now the wther workshop team having access to the original biges is pretty special they've previously been able to take measurements and photos which makes their environments incredibly screen accurate and a wonderful reference for Crafters like me but with their newest model they've taken that reference to a whole new level and they're going to share it with me so that while they make their environment in super small scale we can make the exact same location nearly 12 times bigger at Warhammer scale so what is this new bigger to reference and what is the location well today is the day that zoror finally enters the land of the elves the gry Havens or mithlond is the capital of Lyon a vital Port City ruled by the great kyodan the ship right and is of course the key in which the Elven ships Bound for valanor set forth as we see in the final moments of the Return of the King in a scene that just makes me cry every single time I watch it real quick in the comments which scene is a more guaranteed tear jerk a Frodo sailing away or boromir's death my K man that is killer so finally some Elven scenery on zoror although ironically this particular Elven location is quite complex to bring together working in that set was one of the most rewarding of all the sequences that we did and I think one of the reasons for that is that it represented all that we learned to make their Collectibles as screen accurate as possible the team at wther Workshop have actually taken a 3D scan from the original grey Havens Biga and then use that scan data as the beginning reference for their own Digital model of the environment this model is then digitally resculpted and 3D printed in 12K highquality resin so this little piece of the gry Havens has come just off the printer and then goes through an insane process of hyper detailing and texturing when we start doing it at the this early stage then we can also see do we need to reprint something and do do any adjustments take things a little bit out of scale at a texture level in the print and bring it up so we can see it and then work it now I'm always trying to get my own builds as screen accurate as possible and film footage only gets you so far so for my own zor aor grey Haven diarama where a workshop have shared their draft digital models to be able to manipulate these 3D models in space and explore them as if I was standing on the very location is a mindboggling tool to up my sleeve but insane as those 3D files are wther Workshop aren't stopping there wther are going to upscale their digital sculps and print them for me at Warhammer scale so we can have the most screen accurate amazing Warhammer diaramas since the original bigotes now this doesn't mean we've got an easy job ahead of us this is going to be a huge task just like Leonard and Shanty on the wther workshop Collectibles I will need to do a huge pass of hyper detailing on the 3D prints except at 12 times the scale and a lot of the parts of the diarama like the cliff work and the foundations of buildings I'm going to need to rec carve out of foam and plaster and then of course we need our trees and our nature and not to mention the possibility of a massive resin P just like my huge osgiliath board so this build should be an absolute monster hybrid of traditional scenery crafting and terrain making combined with a Sprinkle of 3D printing to give the build a lovely skeleton Lucky from the future here I just finished building everything you're about to see and I'm so happy with it and you are going to see the entire build journey start to finish in this video this is going to be a good one many of the biges w a workshop made for Rings didn't have a fixed layout the pieces will often be moved around into different configurations for each shot so we chanted to Simon the lead conceptual designer on the new collectible about the challenges of locking down the cannon layout of the location for both their collectible and my zoror big do you guys simply use those 3D scans for reference or do you build the digital models from that scan data we use them for reference primarily for placement the resolution of the scan gives us you know great stuff at say building level and then you can go in and create really solid sound digital structures in the right place okay most of the digital files that were built on this scan data was sculpted by Charlotte key who actually worked on the original Biga over 20 years ago between Charlotte's hands and the scans it's no wonder that this collectible is so incredibly screen accurate do you see any challenges in upscaling like these buildings do you think they they'd hold up at like a bigger format or oh yeah I think they totally would that'll be fantastic so with the blessings of the creative team I hassled the amazing barwell the head of digital modeling and took over his desk and set about working out how we're going to take this wetter Workshop collectible at roughly 1600th scale and get it up towards warhamer scale which for the Middle Earth range fluctuates between 172nd and 156th and the level of detail in the sculpts was just staggering it's beautiful it's going to be amazing but when you're dealing with it with your day-to-day it's such a huge technical challenge yeah I bet it is I'm going to be because it means they're printing it in a larger scale it's going to look incredible exactly the STL files a wetter Workshop proprietary property I do not have them and they are not for sale hence why I'm using barble station to do my blender work and for this collectible they're broken down into a bunch of parts a few huge foundations and then smaller structures that fit into the mountainous Cliff sides like a big jigsaw puzzle I decided a really fantastic starting point for our build was the departure lounge and dock that Frodo sets forth from it's the perfect microcosm of the workflow pipeline that we need to test great buildings to upscale and print Cliff work Scenic foliage foam carved stonework and resin water our first decision is our scaling factor I grabbed a bunch of our files and slapped in a 25 mm base the size of our standard infantry model and did a bunch of testing against stairwells and doors and windows and decided to scale the files up by 12 times this diarama might even be a smaller scale than I had realized now the sheer cost to print this amount of scenery in resin would be astronomical and with the amount of work I'm going to do to the upscale prints to kind of get them working I'm hoping that I can actually get away with fdm plastic as my base material so I threw a simple Tower structure on the fdm prototyping printers at w a workshop and then jumped on the plane back to Christ Church and a few days later our first two prints arrived in the mail so I've just pulled off all the supports and done some light cleanup and I'm shocked by how good this looks already there's definitely 3D printed texture we need to sort out and of course some of these things are a bit out of scale going from super small to quite large so there's some work to be done but what a beginning I gave the prince a quick blast with my butane torch to zap away any stringing filament and then applied an automotive filler primer which will help my paint layers bond to the tricky plastic and it helps to smooth out some of the layer lines from 3D printing next we need to deal with the super exaggerated recess details from upscaling our tiny textures so I grabbed some water-based filler and essentially grouted all of the stone work the easiest method I found was to just slam it on pretty heavily with my fingers and then pull it back where it was clogging up important details with a damp brush and some sculpting tools I glued the two halves together with some Liquid Nails for some impact resistance strength and thick super glue to get a fast Bond and then filled in the joins with valo acrylic putty I let all of that dry and did one final cleanup pass and then applied a big Prime in Rustoleum dark gray and then a zenial with light gray so this is working the grout looks fantastic and the prints underneath all those paint layers are coming up great but before we dive into the full painting Journey it's time to make him some friends the departure Lounge making is actually all one large digital file in the collectible that first little Tower we just made is the tower at the end of the northern Dock and now I need to prepare all of the other buildings the next time I was up in Wellington I jumped into blender and slowly cut out each little piece this time hollowing out a lot of the structures so we can add internal Floors open out windows and leave some space for LED lighting I added all of these little pieces to the print queue and then flew home and went on a month's leave as my new baby girl was born just before Christmas and a few weeks into January a big care package arrived from bwell and the printing team cleanup was a massive job on these as I'd used a lot of supports to make sure we got good prints and then I gave them as up with the butane torch and I mean a a valuable lesson was learned do not wield open Flames while watching the cricket Steve Smith Nicks wanton a second slip and I stopped paying attention and accidentally set everything on fire excellent I suppose I'll be resculpting those details by hand but in the meantime I just gave the whole lot of Prince their pass with Philip primer and then did a quick mockup on my desk and my goodness this is getting way bigger than I thought I started construction on the south side with the big tall bridge and slapped on a heap of filler to grout all of the brick work Across The Archers and glued the sections together and then started on the southern Tower this guy is a clone of our first Tower but built into the Cliffside and hollowed I grabbed a simple flagstone textur roller to put in a floating foam floor in the upper level and then carved a simple lower foundation so I can eventually add an internal stairwell swapping to a more ornate rounded pavement roller I created a lovely textured floor for the top of the bridges and then glued in a little foam trim All Around the top for our ballustrade then our final detail is a little Gate House where the dock section meets the main archers which actually doesn't feature in the Digital model but was added later during the physical sculpting so I just upscaled a different Tower and then cut the footprint into the ballustrades to get that meshing perfectly with the structure now of course this piece that you guys are about to watch me make is also the latest part of our massive Middle Earth Mega board and it's our first location in the northwest of Middle Earth this thing is truly going to be the biggest wargaming board in YouTube history our next structure is the first big building which I'd broken down into a bunch of pieces to fit on the wther workshop printers so I applied my grout to all of the various stonework and then glued the three Foundation pieces together but I had deliberately not printed part of the roof so that I could remake it out of foam and use a roller to get some more flagstone texture into the building rather than just the smooth surface from the Digital model and then I glued on a bunch of 3D printed details to that foam plinth as well as the upper structure and threw it all down next to the southern Tower the third building is another bits and pieces large structure this time with three parts that needed some grouting with some really finicky stonework here that needed quite a lot of cleanup I glued the three lower elements and an upper tower all together before building a another upper Foundation from foam again with texture as well as a lot more little detail works and ballustrades and a few raised plants for a couple of smaller 3D printed towers with various levels and roofs and smashed it down next to the rest and what an impressive spectacle already and now the most important building of all the departure Lounge a series of terraces colonades and towers that lead to the ship that carries Frodo to valanor first I glue the top of the Terrace onto this amazing lower level just look at all that detail then I knocked up a foam plinth to elevate our Tower base and then with that at the perfect height I glued all of those pieces in place our first Tower gets a few extra levels and then the upper structure is done and now we move onto the important lower section this outer circular Courtyard I once again didn't print so that I could recar it in foam so I grabbed a pot lid the perfect diameter and then carved in A really lovely pattern copying the Digital model close clely but applying some lovely curved pavement with my rollers and it is just so satisfying blending these foam and printed elements together I threw these buildings down into our layout and then plunked down one final tower that joins our new additions to the larger buildings so that's all the 3D prints assembled and it's looking great but now the real work begins I am so excited for this next phase this is where things get way more interesting up first though we need our actual dock so a massive sheet of phone goes down on the desk and then with some very careful planning and measuring I got the perfect curved key side once this was very carefully cut out I textured the sides of the platforms with stonework and marked up where all of my Cliffs will need to go and then follow the same approach for the second half of the dock I'm going to keep the board in two halves for transport and storage and also for some crazy modularity I'll show you guys at the end next I carved up the jetty 4H our Elven ship the art Novo curved stairs and brick work really add to the high Elven Vibes of our Waterfront I threw this guy down in front of the departure lounge and then added a curved bridge to join the Northern end of our dock to that very first Tower we made and we finally have our full layout mocked out and in true zoror style this small test build has ended up being over 3 m long that's bloody typical locky right there some sexy modeling compound went down on the dock for an even nicer curvaceous pavement texture and then I glued all our buildings down onto the board making a foam plint for the Center building to give it an elevated handcarved flagstone texture as well as beginning on some interior details including a lovely Nice Slice and Slot Archway to access our stairwell and now we finally come to the biggest job of the build so far the cliffs and The Rock work last week my mate James and I combined our shared pool of rock molds and made about 100 plaster casts of various Cliffs and outcropping so I am well armed with an arsenal of Rockery if if we look closely at the wther workshop diarama all of these buildings are built into the coastal Cliffs of the Havens so I grabbed some big chunks of foam to start building up the land forming and act as mounting points for my casts and began to layer and stagger the various cliff and outcrop molds to try and get a naturalistic finish guiding my placement by the cliff edges that are printed on my buildings then with the Lower Rock faces in place I blended them all together to make one homogeneous rock face with a heap of modeling compound before I continued the cliff up and around these structures I needed some supports behind the buildings and I just went crazy with more interior details adding stairs Terraces and some more slice and Slot archers and then with my roof panels strong and in place I set about repeating the process but building up my Cliffs and outcrops so I could break them down into three removable panels to allow access to the rooms beneath for fully interiored functional gameplay then with my first half of the board all cliffed up and looking fantastic I smashed out the second one using the same methods but adding a few extra features like an Alleyway behind the courtyard and a little extra Tower to improve the gameplay on this board as well and then our final step before painting is just to grab some tile grout and work it gently into all the seams and grooves around our modeling compound flagstones in our buildings and then sealing all of that compound in with matte Scenic sealant then it's finally time to start painting I sprayed all of our ston work with the same dark gray Prime and light gray zenial but used a bunch of masks to protect our plaster Rock molds so that we can use the absorbency of the plaster to help us achieve a naturalistic rocky tone using leopard spotting I mixed up a bunch of diluted washes in natural Hues and flicked on a speckle of color onto the rocky surface varying the tones to build up the many Hues of a natural rock formation gave it a large all over wash in diluted black and then aggressively over brush the entire Cliff face with a dry brush to knock the color back off the raised details for a nice quarty highlight the stonework then got hit with a series of oil washers black for some recess details in the brick work and then some brown oils around the buildings to show a little bit of grime and dirt in our Elven City I'll do a more complex paint job when we add the next section of the board but that's a nice Foundation shout out to Andy Tucker for saving a glossy oil with a great varnish recommendation then the Final Touch for our gray Havens is our scenic this location is really very green so a whole bunch of foam flocks and Clump foliage as well as some trees were dressed into the Cliffside to bring nature within the city there is still a bunch of small details to add around the board especially the dock more detailed paintwork on the buildings and of course a massive resin por but for now she is finished before I show you guys the final board two quick notes for me first of all if you're as excited by this whole premise as I am go and check out the weather Workshop web store it's linked down in the description and have a look at all the other environments they've got available and just think of the possibilities and if you really want to support this feel free to grab some of their goodies as well there's heaps of great stuff there and of course the grey Havens limited edition diarama is on sale right now it's only available for 2 weeks from the 26th of January and it's it's gorgeous it's it's absolutely beautiful so do not miss out and secondly just a huge thank you to wer for letting me work work with these prints it's just an absolute privilege and this is probably my favorite piece that I have ever made and I cannot wait to add all of the other elements of the gray Havens and eventually add this massive board to my Middle Earth Mega board as we continue to make the biggest wargaming board in YouTube history

Channel: Zorpazorp

Views: 70,693

Keywords: helms deep, weta workshop, richard taylor, peter jackson, weta, environment, diorama, bigature, miniature, minas tirith, foam terrain, carving foam walls, foam brickwork, real stone, making a castle, foam castle, gondor, games workshop, lord of the rings, sbg, zorpazorp gaming, zorpazorp, warhammer, lord of the rings warhammer, terrain, how to make, how to paint, dungeon, the lord of the rings, weta warhammer, grey havens, elven scenery

Id: KcEYUn5tR6g

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024