Beorn!

Beorn is a skin changer , a man of great stature, capable of transforming himself at will into a bear form (rather than being forced to by full moons like a werewolf). He is a somewhat aloof character, looking after himself, and not necessarily being on anyone's 'side', much as the Ents started off in LOTR... but he hates orcs so that at least has him leaning towards the good side! 

His pose here is as he is confronted by Gandalf and Bilbo as they leave his house, having over stayed there for the night, seeking shelter from a large black bear-like beast, Beorn himself!

If you haven't managed to see the Ext Ed of The Hobbit - Desolation of Smaug, try and do so , as this is a charming scene that pays credit rather nicely to the novel.

He is quite literally a great bear of a man, and must stand about seven or eight feet tall...

As we find later in the story, Beorn and his skin changer brethren have been hunted down, captured and tortured by Azog and his orcs, in the past, and Beorn bears the scars to show this. The model itself has vivid scars on his rear upper torso, and bears a manacle upon his wrist...

Just to get an idea of scale, Beorn is scaled at 28mm like the rest of GW LOTR/Hobbit range and is mounted on a standard 25mm round base. But when put adjacent a regular orc, you can see how tall he really is!

In the movie he is played by Mikael Persbrandt, a Scandanavian actor, who is a big man which matches the height requirements for the part, and his accent is an excellent touch I think, giving him that 'other worldly feel' in the Middle Earth setting. The additional scenes in the Ext Ed of Hobbit DOS I greatly enjoyed, and found the "Making of" info on the additional disks, very interesting. 

Mikael Persbrandt, as Beorn.

On to the model of Beorn as a Great Bear!

The model, is again, a multi-piece resin model, but went together rather well, with minimal trim required. I think I am getting used to these resin models!

Painting was fairly easy, but I really wanted to try and get the hair tone to match the dark brown, but with high light streaks of grey and blond... I hope I have done him justice.

Back to the Bear, and this was clearly CGI, but various sources were used as inspiration, including looking at prehistoric bears for the shape and bulk... The model itself was an easy job. It was in several pieces that required gluing together and joint filling with greenstuff. 

Then a simple black paint job, drybrushed with dark grey then washed black again. Its produced very subtle contrast which sadly doesn't photograph too well... The claws and facial features were then added, and after varnish, base decoration effected. Oh, that base is a 60mm round, so its quite a big model, towering over a regular man-sized 28mm figure.

He's 28mm scale but about 60mm tall. For all that, the painting was easy.

In the game, he is brute strength nastiness, but at a substantial points costs. I look forward to trying him out and tearing orcs limb from limb...

And to further give an idea of scale, here's Beorn with a rather unlucky orc, who's likely to become lunch very shortly...

These models have been part of my submissions to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and they must appear there before I can show them on my own blog, hence the delay in them showing here.