Hama & Gamling Join the Anglo-Saxons!

I managed to pick up a Hama & Gamling from the GW Lord of the Rings range of miniatures via eBay. They were relatively inexpensive as they are among the more common sculpts, some of the rarer figures really are rather expensive. I thought these figures would be ideal to convert for my Anglo-Saxon collection.

It was easy enough to bend the left arms and give them shields , (I picked up a pack of spare shields from Gripping Beast a while back) - they even received suitably equine decals from Little Big Men Studios.
I left the armour on the arms, painting it as leather, it would have been too much hassle to file it away & re-sculpt. I did however shorten the length of the hauberk & simplified the legs & boots - a combination of cutting, filing & green-stuff.

As in my previous conversion of a Rohan Royal Guard, I shortened the length of the cloaks. The long cloaks were fine if riding horses only, but not practical for fighting on foot.

The original slotta bases were discarded in favour of 3mm mdf, the feet were drilled and pinned into the base.

I would like to get hold of some more of the Rohan metal figures, and the Dunlendings - but only if I can find them at the right price :-)

All the best,

John.

Converting Thor......

A while back I received a couple of free miniatures with the "Painting War Dark Ages Special" book, one of which was a miniature that appeared to represent Thor. I thought that miniature was too much into the "realms of fantasy" for my Dark Ages collection, so I set about converting it.

In the first picture (below), you can see another person's painted version of the original figure inset to the left. To the right is my completed conversion.

So, here's what did I to the original:

• As there is no integral base with this figure, I first drilled & pinned it to a mdf base.

• Removed metal plates from chest.

• Hand & Hammer were a separate piece, so I had to carefully cut away hammer from hand & drill hand out so as to fit spear.

• Left arm was bent around to take a shield.

• Thin layers of green-stuff were sculpted to create trousers and tunic to go under the mail shirt.

• Extra green-stuff was added to the beard to bulk it out a bit - hey if he's going for the "hairy barbarian" look, may as well give more facial hair :-)

• Mail shirt was sculpted on - my first go at sculpting a full mail shirt - being careful to leave the belt exposed.

• Added a green-stuff pouch to the belt.

• Did a press-mould of a very simple sword, to which I then added straps with thin pieces of masking tape, plus extra decoration with green-stuff to give the impression of knot-work.

• Stuck shield to left arm
• Painted the miniature & did the basing.

I hope you found the post interesting. I must say, I quite enjoyed this conversion lark, hopefully I will be doing a bit more and getting some sculpting practice.

All the best,
John.