LOTR Structures & Locations References Help

[nemik]

Hello everyone, its been a while, I took a sabbatical on all things art for a quite a while...

I am looking for help finding good references to all the different Lord of the Rings structures, like the notable locations & structures. Internet searches have found a few references and I have quite a few books on the lord of the rings movies that have helped with this but I am looking to see if anyone has anything out there they are willing or able to share for a project I am working on.

What am I doing?
I am recreating a walk though Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings via dioramas so I want to recreate the iconic scenes from the movies and books in diorama form. these will all be miniature much smaller than any movie production studio scale models would be, much, much smaller. Though I want to find as much information and references that I can in recreating these scenes as I want my viewer to have a walk through middle earth and feel the feeling of being there. My plan is to start with all the major iconic locations and then eventually move to the lesser known sites and recreate them. I have a plan in mind of how I wish to accomplish this goal and achieve this though I really can't say more at this moment other than that. I hope to create something epic and kool in the end that will make me proud and others to be lord of the rings fans.

What I'm Looking for?
As I said I am looking for as much reference as I can find, I want to recreate these notable locations first then move to others, also suggestions are welcome in what to add or discuss maybe approaches to look and design as well.
I am looking to recreate not just the building and structures but some of the surrounding landscapes as well. I also plan to grab some references to the artworks and paintings as well as book descriptions, the idea is really to recreate the mood and feeling of these scenes.

Locations
Isengard - Sarumon's Tower
Barad-dûr - Sauron's Tower
The Black Gates
Moria
Helms Deep
Minas Tirith
Minas Morgul
Rivendell
Lothrien
Hobbiton
Edoras

I know there's a lot more locations and structures but this is a start I feel and its been ages since I read any Lord of the Rings anything or seen any of the movies.

I am planning to start with the two towers and mount doom, then maybe Moria, Helms Deep Rivendell, Minas Tirith & Minas Morgul and I dont know from there where I will go from there. The goal is to eventually create all the locations but who knows where this will end up.
I have been looking up references online and in books but some of the places Im having a hard time finding good references of. places like Rivendell have a lot of detail in them I want to capture a lot of that but I also know there will sacrifices for my scale as well.

Anyways any help that you guys can provide to help this fan project happen would be awesome.
Thanks in advance and let the journey begin!

 

[Pyramidrep]

Nemik, welcome to the RPF.
Sounds like a great project. Haven’t seen too much model projects on the buildings and environments of Lord of the Rings here.
Games Workshop have an extensive range of figures and other accessories for dioramas. and they also used to produce some great manuals on creating environments / building to scale with their figures. My kids were obsessed with them years ago and we still have a lot of their treasured models here even though they,re grown adults now. There has always been a scarcity of good reference in recreating the buildings( Minas Tirith, Rivendell, etc.). Some of the galleries on the behind the scene documentaries are a good starting point. My kids used to harass me to the point of distraction to build stuff for them ( Helms Deep) . It’s a great pity Weta didn’t publish some books on the models and blueprints similar to the Star Wars artefacts. Still , may happen at some time In the future.
Good luck on the project.

 

[Pyramidrep]

Following on from yesterday, I was intrigued and wondered did we still have some of the Games Workshop/ Lord of the rings books and magazines in the house. So I had a quick search and found them. Images attached below. As far as I am aware, these were probably the best( despite the lack of reference images) if you wanted to recreate the buildings/ environments/ scenes from LOTR. The magazines and books can still be found on eBay. Hope that is of some help.

 

[David3]

there's also this site 'LOTR scenery builder' with a few construction step by steps eg. Orthanc and Barad dur and others

LOTR Scenery building: Hobbiton, Orthanc, etc.

This website contains lots of scenery of Middle-earth, modelled after from Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings trilogy. Just to give you some ideas and some help as well.

www.lotrscenerybuilder.org

 

[nemik]

Wow! thanks guys for everything so far this is great, I really appreciate it. this helps a lot.