I recently painted a box of games workshop lord of the rings plastic middle earth rangers for a client.
I have painted many lord of the rings figures (10 years worth for this chap alone!), but this is my first time with these rangers.
Unfortunately I was was less than impressed, so thought I would document it.
Three main things concern me involving all aspects of their production. Sculpting, moulding, casting. I'll tackle them in reverse order:
Casting- The issue here was, as I had seen before with other plastics, including other GWs, is thin vein like channels that run over the surface of the figures. I suspect they are either from excess mould release agent or the plastic cooling to fast when injected. Either way, on these particular figs, the lines were still visible after painting.
Moulding- The issue here is the size of the figures. I suspect they were meant to be a millimeter or two smaller, as all the details appear a bit chunky in comparison to other GW LOTR figures. I am not sure if they were sculpted of computer engineered, or if either contributed to this. The detail of some other LOTR plastics was not there.
Sculpting- The issue here is the biggest of all. All the 12 figures have capes. Big flapping capes! On figures produced in a 2 part steel mould! Hence all of the space under the capes needs filling to be mouldable. You end up with figures that have huge blocks of blank excess plastic.
Plastic has its issues with this at the best of times, detailed hair that is flat on the sides, arm detail lost when a figure pulls back his bow, so on. But these figures take the cake. Worse yet, 11 are one piece, 1 is 2 piece. Weird. I feel it would have been best for them to have had the capes separate. This would have solved the issue nicely and made them much better figures to paint. I just painted them, but what do you do? Cut out all the excess plastic? Needless to say (as usual) the studio pics are all neatly posed so that the mould lines run along the page. I guess they just painted them also?
I really like some of the other GW LOTR plastics. The haradrim perhaps most of all. The early metals were "Ace! Professor"
A few words there, I know. I just hope GW and other manufacturers see it and take note.
