Hey borosphere- nowt wrong with stirring things up every once in a while. It's very easy to overlook obvious things. And present company can only do so much!
I had a dream last night and I had this huge black ring binder folder. In it was apparently the contents of this project. Then it was outside in the street on the road and I thought to myself hmm really should bring that in...then I saw the binder empty and I was walking past what looked like a school yard, and there were white pieces of paper everywhere, thw wind was blowing and ocassional pieces would float high in the air past me. Strangely however most of the pieces were all bundled in small stacks which I found could be scooped up intact. I figured it would take half an hour to gather them. That's when I woke up. LOL
The overlays is a good idea. Skystrider (jeremey) is the person to speak to about that as he does the online map, but for its implementation it would need some..ermm...buildings. Things are a bit slow here at the moment but don't let that fool ya...we've had many periods of transition. I'm currently learning 3DS Max- hence why the next terrain release has been temporarily put on hold. I'll have the skills soon to start preparing the sites from map resources, and modelling buildings. The idea is to first block out really basic sites (probably via extrusion of a topo map in Max) and then folks will have a much better idea of what's needed.
"As to a database of references for descriptions of places, an excellent idea as it will keep things consistent."
I think Haerengil has a very good starting point for it. Maybe he'd be interested in helping us out, collating and curating this stuff?
http://worlds.outercraft.com/forum/index.php/topic,20.msg98.html#new Building styles is an important one...I dismantled into architectural components a building model donated to us. I think the guy who modelled it based his MT on the films.
Yes, I've got a couple of books on Tolkien's art. I don't have all of the HOME series though- I only bought 3 of them which I knew I needed for some reading into a subject I was doing. Vol 8 ordered now :-D There is another possibility for Orthanc. There's an article on the old me-dem boards but it's no longer accessable- but I can stll get to it from the admin login. Here's the entry:
Isengard and Orthanc
To the centre all the roads ran between their chains. There stood a tower of marvellous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was. black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns. their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain. This was Orthanc, the citadel of Saruman, the name of which had (by design or chance) a twofold meaning; for in the Elvish speech orthanc signifies Mount Fang, but in the language of the Mark of old the Cunning Mind.
The drawings which most closely resemble the final conception in the text are Isengard & Orthanc, plate 164, p 168 J.R.R Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. And of course the illustration on the dust jacket designs for The Two Towers.
Isengard’s black rocks and topography suggest that it is a huge volcanic crater [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_crater]; Orthanc itself could have been an aiguille (a column of solidified felsic (felsic is a term used in geology to refer to silicate minerals, magmas, and rocks which are enriched in the lighter elements such as silica, oxygen, aluminium, sodium, and potassium.) lava expelled from the vent [http://www.decadevolcano.net/photos/keywords/vent.htm]during the last eruptions) [http://www.terragalleria.com/mountain/mountain-image.alps3514.html]. This was found by the Numenoreans and shaped by hands or magic into the tower of Orthanc.
Tolkien’s description is reminiscent of the volcanic spire produced during the eruption in the Etang Sec crater of Mont Pelee, [http://www.mount-pelee.com/index.php/content/view/22/30/1/2/lang,en/
]Martinique [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pelee]
In October [1902], a lava dome began to rise out of the crater floor. It grew for a solid year into a gigantic shaft in the form of an obelisk. It has been described by many as the most spectacular lava dome produced in historic times. It was 350 to 500 feet thick at its base and it soared to over 1000 feet above the base of the crater floor. It sometimes rose at a remarkable rate, up to 50 ft/day. The huge spine of lava became known as the "Tower of Pelée." At night the sides of this magnificent monolith was marked by traces of red incandescent cracks from the still hot lava in its interior.
At its maximum size, the Tower of Pelée was twice the height of the Washington Monument and equal in volume to the Great Pyramid (Cheops) of Egypt. It finally became unstable and collapsed into a pile of rubble in March 1903, after 11 months of growth. No geologist had ever witnessed the emergence of such an object before.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkx984yOFz1qzs3iqo1_500.jpgMaybe the Numenoreans crafted Orthanc from what was already there....
monks
