I'll do a series of posts detailing the process of modeling this 1st Corps mahout in the hope it offers some help and advice to others thinking of doing the same.
As you can see from the photo below, I've 'amputated' a large portion of the right leg and the left foot in order to get it to fit behind the ears.
It now fits a lot better but looking at the photos, I can see I could probably try and take a little more off here and there to make it an even better fit. It will still need substantial use of 'green stuff', though.
This next shot shows how the leg now fits behind the ear. The foot will need re-modeling with 'green stuff'.
Because I will have to use quite a lot of 'green stuff' around the connections of the mahout and the elephant I'm considering doing all this work and then undercoating and painting the mahout and elephant with them being glued together. Good idea/bad idea?
Next up: a look at what the assembled elephant will look like.
5 comments:
That's your safest bet; I had to something similar with a Magister Militum elephant and mahout. The rider actually came with just the torso, but I wanted his feet showing right behind the ears of the elephant, so I molded some feet from Green Stuff. Should come out fine. Dean
The Mahout is something 1st Corps will definitely have to modify. It seems the elephant was designed seperately and some crew designed, seemingly without seeing the elephant! It's a bit of a shame. I'm not really looking forward to all this extra modeling I'm going to have to do - particularly on all the 1st Corps cavalry I've bought (I'll post some photos later in the week). Eek!
That reminds me, I need to buy a better file and a drill...
It shouldn't be too hard to paint the mahout whilst glued to the elephant as there's lots of room around the two to get the brush in. Only question is, which to paint first?!
I looked at their website for images of this and other similar models. None of them looked like the mahout was mounted - shall we say comfortably. Shame because the guy's legs & boots were sculpted well. Interesting to hear what their official reply will be. Dean
Oh, and for your last question - I would paint the beast first - lots of sweeping brush strokes which could get on the figure. When the elie's done, just imagine the mahout is mounted on a temp base to assist painting him (but, try not to get stuff on the completed elephant). You may want to do the tower before the rider too. Dean
I agree, when I saw the images of their mahouts before I purchased I thought they had just placed them roughly on top for the photo and had only painted them for show. There was a doubt in my mind having previously experienced their cavalry and I was right!
I do rather like their sculpting. Although the faces and hands aren't as detailed as say, Foundry, their models do have a certain charm I really like plus they 'dip' VERY well! As you can see from my Spanish on the Roman blog.
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