TOLKIEN AND THE JOY OF PLASTICS
If you’re a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) fan, you’ll appreciate the work of Jake Hallam. He’s been painting on and off since the ‘80s, beginning with Citadel’s original LOTR range. “I am a big fan of the late Victor Ambrus’s art, which I first encountered in David Day’s Tolkien Bestiary” Jake tells us. “His vision of elves, and especially of the Noldor elves has stuck with me. Once in a while I’ve tried to replicate them with Normans from various sources, but it’s never quite worked.”
Thankfully that all changed due to three things, which he explains as being “the arrival of the fantastic Victrix plastic Dark Age sets; some inspiration from the excellent conversions to be found on Lead Adventure Forum and the Wargaming in Middle Earth Facebook group (I can thoroughly recommend the latter! Ed.) plus a lot of spare time due to lockdown.”
“These figures are all based on Victrix Saxons or Vikings. One of the great things about the sets is how interchangeable they are, both by design and by experiment: legs and bodies can be chopped up and repositioned, heads can be cut in half to be given different helmets: you can be quite liberal with the chopping and changing. The figure in the is a great example of that. He is based on Victor Ambrus’s picture of Feanor. He’s made up of a Viking helmet stuck to the bottom of a Saxon head, stuck to the top half of a Viking body, stuck to the bottom half of a Saxon body, stuck to some Saxon legs! They all have helmet feathers and crests from the Gallic Warriors set. The spear-carrier has a Wargames Atlantic Irish cloak.”
As for the paints themselves, Jake used a mix of Vallejo, Foundry and GW paints, and used variations on the star of Feanor as the symbol for their shields. And as for what’s next? Well, Jake’s looking forward to adding to their number when Victrix release their Norman infantry set.