Friday, November 29, 2013

Old stuff: 1/72 Centaurs!

Since I'm currently occupied with other projects, I've been thinking of posts I should feature until I have time to begin hobbying again. One idea is Old Stuff: cheap fantasy mini projects I completed before I started this blog, which I may have featured elsewhere but not here. And since the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale at Miniature Market means their already fantastic prices on Arcane Legions are even lower this weekend, I thought my centaurs would be a good place to start.

These guys are of course Arcane Legions figures. The archers and the spearman in the middle are Egyptian Boosters, while the other figures are Egyptian Cavalry. Apart from the sable centaur ("Achilles," apparently), these aren't the original heads, which wore Classical-style crested helmets, like these:
Photo credit to Men in Boxes.
Clever idea for a sculpt, but I decided I liked the wilder look of the more classic, uncivilized centaurs I remember reading about from Hercules and other legends. The solution was a bunch of head swaps with Esci/Italeri's out-of-production barbarian figures, complemented with a generous coiffure of fabulous Milliput-sculpted hair. I don't have many WIP photos of these, but this shot might give some idea of what the process was like:
Note the Milliput beard on the "wizard" centaur on the left. Apart from Achilles on the right, that's what all these minis' hair looked like before priming.
Finally, some lineup shots with Sven the comparison viking, looking somewhat out of place but nonetheless in scale with all the horse-dudes.

You can see how I was limited by the small number of poses available, but I think the shot at the top of the article shows how the headswaps combined with the variegated paintjobs lend more variety than one might expect.

4 comments:

  1. They look way better converted.
    Have you seen the new Fantasy undead from dark alliance?
    http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15261&p=171517#p171517

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    1. Thanks! And that's awesome news! It's especially cool to see that Red Box/Alliance are still making 1/72 fantasy stuff, as that shows there's still a market for it.

      (Aside: I read an old rumor ages ago that Caesar Miniatures was considering a classic raggedy-zombie set, but nothing has come of it as far as I know.)

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  2. The conversions look good. I'm still a little leery of trying too much converting myself. I'm off to check on these Dark Alliance figures.

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  3. Thanks Sean!

    With the right tools, simple conversions are fairly easy. The nice thing about 1/72 plastic mini conversions is that you don't have to worry too much about making mistakes as you learn, as any individual figure is not a significant investment. Here's my guide to zombie headswaps, in case you haven't seen it yet, which could be helpful.

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