MOC: Dain II Ironfoot

 Good mornings. What we have here today is Dain II Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills, King under the Mountain of Erebor and that Billy Connoly dwarf boss who rode the pig. Yes, pig included. Couldn't resist, always liked them pigs.

Dain has been the hardest dwarf to build because the riding stance with the pig. I began with the head, as usual, and helmet, as unusual, as Dain is the only dwarf so far with one. It came out rather nicely, even though my pearl silver collection is limited. I'm especially happy with the gold details around the face slit.

After the head I built the upper torso and the arms, though I had to rebuild it few times as it was too wide. The big dark brown fur cape (I'd like to think it's bear skin, just because) covers most of the armor and upper arms anyway, so it wasn't that hard. I had fortunately quite good array of dark brown plates (1x2 and 2x6 mostly) from last years LUGBULK so it wasn't a problem.

The lower arms had similar grey and pearl gold color scheme than the helmet (which was dark bley at the beginning). The fingers of Dain's leather gloves should actually be dark red, but they have big knuckle armors, so I just simply made them pearl silver; Sole dark red thumb wouldn't have looked that good. The arms have pretty good poseability, the hammer arm having a small ball joint and the harness arm having a t-bar joint. The hammer is similar to Thrain's but has two edges instead. The beard didn't have any surprised, it came out just as planned, if probably bit shorter in the end. Clip-bars made a nice, edgy beard jewellery.

Before finishing the dwarf itself, I built the pig armor. At first I didn't think 1x4 plate hinges could work on the nape plates, but I was wrong; The angled armor looked a lot better than a flat one. The there was the T-piece, what ever it is called, knob or something, some spike-like armor to slice orcs with, and the saddle; Basic stuff. Getting Dain to sit there was harder, as all of my dwarves have been standing still before this. The armor skirt with grey plates,dark red leather and some chain mail took few tries, as it turned out too big at first. The cape saved me again as I didn't have to bother the back of the skirt. The legs are very thing to go between the saddle and the skirt and they have two small ball joints. Dain can stand but looks ridiculous, as the skirt is rather stiff. The pig, however, work fine on it's own, as you can see at the end of this post.

The pig caused some problems as I had already built the armor and I had to fit it under it. Well, I always used to build most of the houses and other building from roof to floor so had some experiences... Well, I made the face first, despite having a little reference material; the pig design changed a lot from the concept art on Weta's Chronicles books. The face come out rather expressive. There are some crazy SNOT inside as the whole pig had to be odd studs wide due to the armor, which had one-stud wide base. There were some illegal connections at some point, caused by 1/4 plate offset or something, but I fixed it. Otherwise the shaping was quite fun. I used dark bley and old dark grey pieces mixed carelessly, as the pig definitely isn't very clean fellow. Then there had to be the pigtail, curvy as it should be, and as the animal had some nasty tusks I though it as male.

So, this is Dain and the pig. Now I have a few WIPs left waiting to be finished. Of course there are some, or several, but it somehow feels like starting fresh on new projects. We'll see for that, I'm not promising anything. I'm still having two moths of work on the civilian service, but after that, plenty of time for building (and less money).

-Eero

Let's give these bastards a good hammering!