Samwise The Brave

 

The terrain is fully painted and Samwise installed in the near corner.

Terrain Painting

For this scene, the film depicts the region as dark with a green hue and there is nothing I noticed in the book to suggest otherwise.  The green hue could be achieved with light or paint and since I would like to use white LEDs for starlight in the foreground, I chose to give the scene a green wash in a final step.

The first step was to use black paint to touch-up the original sealer and to be certain that all visible spaces were covered with no pink or white foam showing.

Next I brushed on a Dark Gray craft paint which did not quite reach into all of the crevasses.  this was followed by a dry brushing of Light Gray.

Then I mixed up a wash using a few browns and a good bit of green.  These craft paints were added to water with a bit of hand soap to break the surface tension of the water during application.  the result is as shown.

The green wash stained the whole piece green

Installing Samwise

Then I glued Samwise into the empty corner and filled the cracks with PVA glue and sand.

From this angle it looks perfect

To make the paint match, I repeated the steps of sealer, black paint, Dark Gray, Light Gray and Green Wash.  This took several iterations to get right and I should have waited to wash the piece until I had everything installed.  The final wash brings everything together and I thought this would be easy considering I saved the wash and it was just a few days later.  I was wrong.

Paint match and small cut-out for the LED wire.

Wiring

The LED wires were routed on the bottom of the piece.  Now I just need to solder on the resistor and bring the wires to the back where the controller will be.

Wiring channels in the foam

Next Steps

• Tower Silhouette installation
• Scene lighting
• Wood case
• Frodo and Shelob installation
• Momentary switch installation (variable light settings)
• Arduino Programming