MAKING THE WATCHER IN THE WATER
Inspired and directed by the fantastic bonus features on the extended DVDs for The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring, Dave Taylor spent hours in front of his TV, a large image of the Watcher maquette frozen on the screen in order.
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Dave's finished Watcher bursts forth from the murky waters. |
THE BODY
Dave quickly realized, as he started to build the body of the fearsome beast, it would be more effective to build a skeleton first. This shell, built from curved strips of plasticard, provided a great structure for him to add texture to.
Building slowly, from the outside in, Dave began with the 'hair' found in between the expanding ridges of bone and cartilage. He followed this with the bumpy texture on the ridges. Due to the size of the beast Dave had to sculpt it over several sessions, allowing plenty of time for the putty to dry.
After slowy building the layers, Dave spent a bit more time on the toothy maw (the teeth were cut from small slivers of plasticard) and the eyes, attempting to imbue them with a vicious malevolence.
When the final putty had dried, he trimmed the plasticard base and primed the entire model.
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The development of the Watcher's head - Click for larger images. |
THE TENTACLES
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Making the Tentacles
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From the start, Dave knew he wanted to convert a dangling Frodo suspended from one of the tentacles. The prone Pippin (from the blister with Merry and Grishnákh) was ideal. A bit of trimming and some more putty work, and the Ringbearer was ready to hang from one of the tentacles.
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Frodo Caught in Tentacle
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Both the Watcher and the tentacles were primed black and then drybrushed with a mix of Chaos Black and Bubonic Brown (70/30 mix). More Bubonic Brown was added to the mix for the final drybrush. The underside of the tentacles and the mouth of the Watcher were basecoated with the same original mix of Chaos Black and Bubonic Brown. Successive highlights were wetbrushed on adding small amounts of Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh to the mix.
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