Journey to Middle-earth: Sculpting Armour for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3
- Steve at Mind Magic Studios
- Aug 11
- 5 min read
Steve Braund, Mind Magic Studios
During 2025, I had the privilege of working as part of the sculpting team creating armour and helmets for Season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime's television adaptation of Tolkien's world. With the first public reveals now underway, I can finally talk about a project that occupied a great deal of clay.
Years at the sculpting bench
I've been a full-time sculptor for many years now. In that time I've sculpted for productions that picked up awards on the festival circuit, including Fluxx (Best Feature, Malibu Film Festival) and ManFish (Best Feature, Sci-Fi London and Romford Horror), made a giant deer head for Bambi: The Reckoning, and built masks and prosthetics for a run of independent features - most recent to air being Man Baby starring Divian Ladwa (The Detectorists).
Early on, I had the privilege to train under sculptors whose work I'd admired for years, such as Hollywood creature sculptor Don Lanning, British sculpting legend Gary Pollard, and likeness expert Richard Martin. None of that makes The Rings of Power any less of a milestone. It's the largest production I've worked on to date, sitting alongside many years of craft and training rather than replacing it. I've loved watching it from Season One, for which 2,000 costumes were created alone - check out these season one costume facts for more details.
My role on the production was focused entirely on sculpting. Working from the production's incredible designs, my job was to translate ideas into physical forms that could eventually become part of the world audiences see on screen, such as armour and helmets.
It's work that demands accuracy, patience, and a fair amount of three-dimensional problem-solving. A drawing can look spectacular on paper, but as a three-dimensional piece it has to read from every angle, sit properly with the rest of the costume, and hold up to the scrutiny of the camera.
A lifelong fascination with fantasy
I work across genres, but fantasy has always been a particular love of mine. Like many of us, it started with Tolkien. I've lost count of how many times I've read The Lord of the Rings, which led me on to many more fantastic authors. My shelves are full of David Gemmell, Robin Hobb, Philip Pullman, and more recently Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. These are all writers who lose me in their worlds of incredibly detailed cultures and histories.
That's probably why costume, masks, and armour have always been a real draw for me. Good fantasy costume is not decoration. It communicates who made it, what tools and materials they had access to, what experiences they'd lived through. My job as a sculptor is to make a piece feel like it belongs to its world, and working inside Tolkien's world felt like stepping into familiar territory and being trusted with somewhere I already knew well.
Live at San Diego Comic-Con
Some of that armour has now been revealed. At San Diego Comic-Con's Hall H, in front of more than 6,500 fans, the Season 3 panel was interrupted by four Nazgnagôl, Sauron's ring-servants, and the Second Age forerunners of the Nazgûl, striding out in full armour. I had no idea this was coming, and seeing pieces I sculpted walk out on one of fandom's biggest stages, alongside the debut of the new Season 3 teaser trailer, isn't something I'll forget. Until that point, the work had existed only inside the studio. Watching it become part of a public conversation was a genuinely strange and wonderful feeling.
Armour in the pages of Empire
The timing lined up well: Empire Magazine's Rings of Power Season 3 issue landed on newsstands shortly afterwards, built around a world-exclusive first look at the new season. Some of my sculpting work features in the issue's coverage.
Why practical sculpting will always matter
Some people assume productions at this scale are built almost entirely on a screen. The reality is more interesting than that. Digital and practical work complement each other - physical sculpture brings texture, weight, and a kind of believability that actors can actually interact with and a camera can't fake. The tooling that comes from a hand-built piece is frequently the very thing that convinces an audience an object is real.
Practical, hands-on sculpting is still very much part of modern filmmaking, and I'm glad to be one of the craftsmen and women keeping that particular skill set alive. Everything I make still starts the same way it always has: reference material spread across the bench, a block of clay, a handful of tools, and a conversation about what the finished piece needs to say. The scale of the production changes, but the process mostly doesn't.
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us"
Film is a collaborative endeavour at every level. Over six months, I worked alongside sculptors, designers, and makers whose skill was genuinely humbling, and I made friends I hope to work alongside again. Productions of this size only happen because of people like that, and I was thrilled to be part of the team.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I'm 52 years young, and I didn't come to this through art school or a conventional route in. I started sculpting at home, in whatever hours I could find, about seventeen years ago, and built up to this through training and a lot of practice in between. This is a slower road into the industry than most, but one that's held up everything since.
That's a large part of why, since 2023, I've represented independent sculptors at the Pinewood Futures Festival, Europe's biggest free careers event for anyone considering a future in film and television. Standing on a stall alongside studios like Industrial Light and Magic and independent experts like armourer Terry English, talking to students and career-changers about getting into sculpting and practical effects, is one of my favourite things I do all year. I know what it's like to wonder whether a career like this is even open to you, and getting to work on something like The Rings of Power hasn't changed how I feel about that. If anything, it's made me more determined to keep showing up and telling people to follow their dreams and that it's never too late.
"Even the smallest person can change the course of the future"
Mind Magic Studios has always been about making tangible things that tell a story, whether it's a creature mask, a piece of armour, a private commission for a cosplayer, LARP fan, or work destined for the screen. If you're a fellow fan, a collector, or someone who'd like a piece of your own, I take on private and custom sculpting commissions alongside my film and TV work. You're welcome to get in touch with your ideas.
My thanks
Last but by no means least, I'd like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to every one of Mind Magic Studios' clients over the years who have supported my work and enabled the business and my love of sculpture to continue. You all rock!
I'll be sharing more as and when I'm able to. For now, if you want to see what else comes out of the workshop, from creature sculpts to custom armour commissions, you can follow along on the blog, Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, or contact me about a custom piece of your own.
This one means a lot.
Steve
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