From ScottB: 28mm Goblins from 'The Hobbit' (180 points)

From Scott:

I burned a bit of the midnight oil last night and finished off the 36 goblins I have been working on, off and on, since the beginning of the challenge.

The quality of the plastic sculpts was very good, and the amount of mould line to scrape away was minimal. As for painting them up I was in a slight dilemma as to what colour to paint them. They were not going to be classic 'green' as the majority of the Moria goblins are.

In the movie they come across as having a yellowish hue, yet a lot of stock pictures show them with a pale grey skin colour. I can only assume the lighting effect in the movie from the flaming torch-lit caverns of GoblinTown would have cast a yellow colour to their actual pale grey skin.

So I went with the pale grey base tone.

After this they had shading washes and heavy drybrushing to set the flesh tones. The loin cloths and equipment were painted up, and finally the disgusting spotty lumps and bumps were given red and purple washes and the yellow spot heads added, just ripe for popping! An adolescent kid would have a field day on these buggers! ;-)

Finally facial features were added, including eyes and teeth/mouths.

I have to confess to the eyes not being the best - normally I do the eyes at the mid point of the models, but with so many washes and dry brushing going on they would probably have got messed up, so I left them to the end. Typically by which point my fine detail brush had given up the ghost! So with nothing good to hand to dot the pupils I resorted to trimming a cocktail stick to a sharp point and used that! Not the most accurate way of doing things and some of the eyes went a little off centre, but in the end I think it actually added to the character of the mis-shaped limbs and general ungainly poses. Bases were PVA sand textured and painted and drybrushed.

So I am rather happy with the way they turned out. Suitably loathsome!

So now I need to finish off the Goblin King, his throne, 2 Goblin Captains and the scribe. Then the 13 dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf who are all undercoated... And there is still an LOTR Groblog Goblin King (that's 2 goblins kings on my table at the same time!) and a Victorian EotD police inspector to finish off!

Hopefully I'll get these done before the deadline!

Wow, you've done a superb job on these, Scott. I really like the blue/grey skin tone and I love the disgusting buboes - they really are quite zit-tastic! Painting eyes with sharpened cocktail sticks?!! Awesome. This 'technique' reminds me of my first efforts at 14 with fabric pins and testors oil paints - though my results were, ahem, rather less successful than yours!

This mob of acned goblins will give Scott 180 points. Well done!