"Then he saw that they were indeed shaped and fashioned: the craft and power of old had wrought upon them, and they still preserved through the suns and rains of forgotten years the mighty likenesses in which they had been hewn." -JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.
You'd think that after building, rebuilding and occasionally breaking The King of the Eastern Shore (http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/311576 ) that creating the companion figure would be easier. As it turns out, the left hand ws the only part of the original design that ported over directly. The left foot was similar, but not exact and the head had to be explicitly reworked from scratch as there's not a lot of detail there and they keep looking like twins with one of them wearing a fake beard.
I'm still not entirely happy with the beard. I've lost track of how many times I've torn off his head and rebuilt it, but I figure sooner or later you just need to step back and take in the whole thing rather than fixate on a dozen or so bricks. (But I reserve the right to rip his head off and try again later...)
Like its companion piece, the King of the Eastern Shore stands roughly two feet tall. I've totally lost track of the piece count at this point but despite being mostly hollow, it weighs more than Olie the Dragon but less than the Statue of LIberty so I'd guess it would break into several thousand parts were I to drop it.
The hilt and right hand proved particularly tricky. I had one prototype that I really liked, but them I realized that the hand was bigger than my own and if I'd kept going at that scale the statue would stand over eight feet tall, so I had to think smaller. In the end I had to sacrifice a lot of detail (and fill it with more SNOT than a kindergarten class in cold season) but I think it hit the essential forms.
I'd imagine that this must be what it would be like to sail past this monolith in the early morning with the rising sun gleaming on the hewn and polished stone.
Now that I've got this one done I think I'll be reworking the first one (again) to make them look a hair more like a set. Once that's done, I'll post some fresh photos of the two of them together to get the full effect. In the mean time, if you like what you see and would like TLG to produce Ultimate Collectors Series kits along these lines, please support my proposal over on Cuusoo ( http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/10944 ).
Thanks.
