Thursday, December 16, 2010

Prepping a Plateful of Prehistorics


After a bunch of World War II tanks, a saucer-full of aliens, and who knows what else, I thought I'd stick to the trend of keeping everyone guessing on the genre of my next project; Prehistorics. I picked up most of these at Fall-In! and a couple more additions made their way into the herd post-con. I spent a good part of the morning with my coffee (black), some gesso (white), toothpicks (to finish off the metal washers I used for bases), glue (for pinning down spears), and my craft knife (for trimming flash).


The Smilodon and wolf pack are from Reaper. This Smilodon is a great sculpt, saber-toothed tigers were built more like agile bears and less like actual tigers and this fig captures that very well. This isn't the first time I've owned this figure either, it's just a cool sculpt. The wolves are wolves, they get the job done. I'll use these probably just as a feral pack, and the couple tame looking ones I'll use as semi-domestics with the Neandertals. Alternatively these could be painted up, tails clipped, to act as Cave Hyenas, which is something I've considered, especially if I focus on Eurasia. These may just end up being Gray Wolves however.

It doesn't snow a whole lot in these parts, even though the winters are cold enough, but the weekend I photographed these there actually was snow! I guess taking pics of all of these Ice Age period critters in the snow is very apropos! This isn't the first time the Valhallan Snow Gods of Winter have converged on a miniatures project either!


These are all from Acheson Creations, and this Woolly Mammoth is just awesome, and huge! The trick is I'd like to put him on a base, but I have no idea what to use. He's too big for washers or whatever, and not quite big enough for a CD, so I'll keep thinking of something. He's the largest mammoth they offer, but they do have others.

Another pair of great figs from Acheson, the Irish Elk put the "mega" in megafauna! These figures are huge as well, and rightly so since they are the largest deer that have ever lived at any time on planet Earth. A single elk has enough meat to feed a good dozen humans, but those twelve foot wide antlers could easily spell a hunter's doom.


Speaking of hunters, here's a tribe of Neandertals. I bought both 'hunter' packs offered by Acheson, and overall I'm very happy with them. There's a couple of figs in the packs I'm not crazy about, but there's a couple in there that are way cooler than average too, so it all balances out. The other two "caveman" packs they offer have more mundane 'camp peeps' that include females, children, firewood collectors, and the like. Not bad, but a kneeling figure scraping/cleaning an animal skin with a levallois tool doesn't scream "caveman battles". Shown above is one of those docile Reaper wolves I mentioned that'll be their proto-dog, man's best friend going on 50,000 years now.


Our last batch of hunters, as before all are armed with flint spears. There's enough variety from both packs I picked up to make two distinct looking tribes if I wanted to, or two competing bands. These bands could be competing directly against one another, or possibly both bands are competing for the same food source. I don't know really, all I know is now that they're based I need to get cracking and get them painted them up! Enjoy!

12 comments:

  1. Nice job summoning a snowstorm for your photo shoot, these guys really do look good in their wintry environment. That woolly mammoth is awesome, thanks for the links as I've been interested in painting some cavemen as well. Cool stuff!

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  2. Awesome stuff. Be sure to save some of that snow for their bases! ;-)

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  3. Awesome figs dude .... what is the game plan for these folks ???

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  4. You can get small CDs. Sometimes AOL send their spam out on them, or if you're really desperate, Nintendo Gamecube discs are the same size, so you may be able to find a damaged or unwanted game and use that.

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  5. Awesome. I can't wait to see these painted. I've had that same Reaper smilodon for years. I have Pulp Figure's cavemen, but I've been admiring the Acheson Creations models. Check out the old Marx mammoth and megatherium I painted last year.

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  6. @Papa JJ: Well, the Snow Gods still owe me a favor or two from that time back in '88! There's tons of prehistoric stuff out, jump on board!

    @Sons of Taurus: I will! I'll probably do a mix of snow and some greenery/tundra type basing. I don't any more excuses, they're ready for primer!

    @Joe: Great question! They'll immediately be used for an older game called "Tusk", but back in college I wrote a set of Neandertal skirmish rules in place of a paper for a graduate Anthropology class...and the department head was the one grading it!

    @ACGeneral: Thanks! I was thinking of painting him up in greys, kind of like the old venerable mammoth. Maybe even break off one of the tusks.

    @KGreen: Nice to hear from you! Small cd's are a great idea, and might be perfect. I'll pop in at the local game store and see if they have something scratched they can give me.

    @Andrew: I can't believe I haven't been following your blog until now, you've got some great stuff on there! Thanks for chiming in!

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  7. Those look pretty dam cool. Love the contrast between the elks body and antlers.

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  8. Hi Mik

    You might want to check out Dragon Forge Designs. Jeff has a bunch of different round and oval bases in different styles which might work for you. He also sells blanks of some of the larger bases too, just shoot him an email.

    http://dragonforge.com

    Cheers
    Dave

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  9. Really nice selection of stuff - especially the mammoth. Looking forward to seeing some paint on them.

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