A bit of pre-post note: If you would like up to the minute updates on my projects, please feel free to follow me @GMMStudios on twitter. Thanks! :)
Hey everyone! I have made a good deal of progress on the throne over the past two days, so let's catch up with that and also give a bit of history of the parts involved. This project won't be as intellectually stimulating as the egg, but I think it will be more fun in ways, as I love to build fantasy terrain, and I think it will still be just as over the top as the egg. But let's get started.
The image above I took last summer. While I have just now started, I owned both the skeleton and the throne for a little while. The throne itself I have owned for a couple of years. It is a legitimate antique - a prop from a play of Henry VIII - from the 1930's or so. Although this story is word of mouth, it is from original owner to antique dealer to me. The antique dealer is more of a very large curiosity shop who has had real Warhol's, enormous walls from monasteries, and furniture from every century so I do trust his word. I did not buy the egg chair from him, but I definitely looked.
This is the skeleton in it's natural habitat taken right before I bought him. He looks so happy! But I had plans for him.
Time to go to your new home! And so he sat in the throne in the garage until now, where he gets a more fitting and permanent seat.
So time to get started! I cleaned up the throne, took the skeleton off, and took the back pad off. While I am obviously going to be "destroying" it as an antique, I would like to keep the throne relatively intact. Other than removing the pad and adding wheels, I do not want to alter the chair much. It doesn't really matter, it's just sort of a personal OCD respect for antiques thing. I have to add wheels to get it around, and I have to remove the pad to secure the skeleton.
First things first - off with his head! The skeleton has a MASSIVE amount of hardware. This giant rod runs all the way from the top....
...to the bottom. But it also makes a good giant pin to secure it.
Here I used cords to secure him in the pose I wanted. From here I could simply drill the heck out of the skeleton and put pins in wherever I want.
Pins in the back of the head going to the chair will secure it in place. There will be many more things that will secure the skeleton in even better, but this is to hold it for now.
This would hurt!
Here the leg is in place and I am eyeballing the arms which are not secure. I know this is what I want for the left arm, but I am still working out the right. I do like this pose for it's "Jack Skellington-ness."
Here is a view of the terrain I will be using. I basically bought everything from tabletop-world since it is just so dang amazing and it would take me a month if not more to make something as good. I will be magnetizing these so that they can be painted separately and used for gaming.
Here are a couple images of me goofing around trying to figure out the best looking and efficient placement of everything. This takes a bit of time each year, but it is one of the things I look forward to. It's a small thing but it's like a puzzle you have to solve. Each one of my armies has a LOT of thought put into layout and placement.
I decided to add tiers to the city street. Small enough that it doesn't look silly with chariots, but large enough to make a visual difference - 1/2"
I made a decision, glued and pinned the foam. I decided to have the foam cover the seat, and I will add trim to the outside of the sit to make it flush. Although I still need to go buy that..
No problem! Also, a plug for ziterdes.de - amazing terrain, and great for things like this since it is foam!
Now I am starting to try and wrap my head around the top part. It is going to look a lot worse before it gets better!
Working out how to place the castle took a lot of brain wrestling. I pinned it to hold it up temporarily.
My solution for the biggest problem - the visual exit to the back of the city and entrance of the army - is a GW castle face.
And here we have a LOT of blocking in. This is basically just throwing in a ton of putty and foam and then coming back and adding and somewhat subtracting later. This is all about filling holes and giving stability and support.
So hopefully next time I will have some more refined work done on the mountain. Stay tuned!
