Michael's Bridge of Sorrows



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Orcs coming from behind the Dragon
Close up of woman in the clutches of the Dragon
Close up of the Fighters
From behind the Dragon

Hi there,
on special demand (well, Craig asked me to do that) here are some words on my work on the Bridge of Sorrows.
First of all I have to say that I made this diorama in 1991, which is quite a while ago. Please excuse, that I do not remember everything, due to the time gone by...

If you know the content of the original box, you will recognize that I do not use the Centaur miniature. When I was planning the diorama I thought of something epic and in my opinion the Centaur would not fit into the scene. Perhaps I was a little bit inspired by the battle of Khazad Dum of the LOTR. This might have been the reason for putting some Ral Partha AD&D Orcs creeping towards the bridge.

One main point of building the diorama was the problem, that the original bridge was not complete (just ¾) and that the bridge had no structure on its underside. I was very lucky to get an additional end piece for completing the bridge. Well, there are other ways to complete the bridge, but this might lead you into copyright problems. I think you know what I am talking of. I had to put the (now) 4 parts of the bridge together. This was done by using superglue and by pinning the pieces together. Pinning is essential here, otherwise the bridge will break otherwise. A good way to get the holes for the pins at the right places is the following: Drill some holes into one of the parts to be connected and put the pins without glue into the holes as far as possible and cut them very short. Now dry-press the two parts together and the pins will leave some tiny marks on the other piece where you have to drill the holes into. If you keep the pins very short looking outside the first holes you made you have much more control when pressing the pieces together. Take out the pins, glue in some new pins (longer ones) and you are ready to connect the pieces with superglue...

The underside of the bridge was sculpted with Milliput and green stuff.

After the bridge was completed I started to build the base. I did not make any concept sketches for this, but there is always one main rule, when I am building the base: Avoid parallels to the edges of the base and the result will look much more dynamic.

So, I had the bridge and now I needed a river, quite obvious. For making water in most cases I use clear resin and there you have the next problem. When not set resin is like water and it is running through every hole. To avoid ending up in a mess on my working table I did the following: After building up the rough shape of the base I glued in a piece of plastic foil onto the area where the resin would be poured into. Just think of building a small pond in your garden. Then I made the rest of the ground work by using ready made plaster, fine sand mixed with water and white glue, etc.
Then the whole thing was painted (a lot of drybrushes, washes, drybrushes again. After completing the painting job the resin was poured into the river bed.

Up to now I have not talked about the focal piece of the diorama, the dragon. Well, this was easy to assemble (use the pinning as described above), but there is one big problem, which came out after some years of travelling to conventions with the diorama. You have to fix the dragon onto the bridge with a plate which is sculpted at the end of the tail and this is no problem at all. But just above this you have the weakest part of the dragon. It is the small tail section between the plate and the tail wings which tends to break due to the weight of the dragon. In fact my dragon broke two or three times. Okay, you can pin the broken part, but this might not be steady enough. I ended up in supporting the dragon at one of the wings by a model tree (have a close look at the right hand wing of the dragon). By the way, the tree is a model kit from the German company Haberl and Partner. These trees are the best value for money I have seen. I payed about $ 20 for a set of three trees.

A last word on the other miniatures. Most of them had a cast on base. Perhaps you want to know how to get this off fast and easy. I use a circular grinding machine, but be careful...

Now get your hands on the Bridge of Sorrows.
Good luck,
Michael