After all this time converting, it was time to paint them up. I looked around for historical colour schemes, and while they did not have proper uniforms yet in the early 16th century, some colour combinations were connected to specific city states of families. For my first units, I thought that red, white and blue would look nice. The first unit I painted were my archers. These were mainly head swaps, but some of teh extra stuff I added showed up pretty nice, like the puffy sleeves. My first personal victory of this project was to paint up eight minis where two heads were scratch built, and having them NOT stand out as immediately weird in comparison. Feeling encouraged, it was time to paint up some of the more heavily converted units. The rodeleros got blue stripes to to tie the unit together. The gambesons took up so much space on these short-legged fellows that they completely dominated the painting scheme after all. But I like how they turned out, they look suitably rag-tag for light infantry. While heavily converted, the men-at-arms turned out to be quick to paint since it's mostly metal! I added some gold-tinted parts to make them more interesting from the front. These heavily armoured members of the halfling elite are ready to charge into the densest of fights, cutting through kneecaps and shins alike with fearsome fervour. I have not yet decided on what flags to use, but I'm slightly leaning towards them being from northern Italy. So I might up ending using a combination of both Milan and some princely families from there (like the Sforza), as well as condotteri (sort of mercenary captains) employed by them. The coloured flagpoles were chosen to emphasize the red and white scheme, as so much of the minis are covered in metal. The musicians got horns. Later on I'll try to make some pipe and drums, as those seemed very common, often depicted in pairs. And finally, some commanders. I used the chains as a sign of their status. They can either lead units, or be relegated to further back if I end up making better looking ones.
The close combat hobbits were more heavily converted than my archers, and it was fun to see them painted. Basically all metal armour except the leg guards were converted, and on some of them the entire arms and heads were converted as well. Next up will be some more "vanilla" troops, in that the spearmen are mostly head swaps. But there are some surprises in there as well. :)
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By Jonas Well this is a little side project that has completely derailed my hobby time, but in a good way. It all started with the idea of making a small contingent that could fight as an ally to any of the other growing Italian Wars/Fantasy armies. By picking up a box of Wargames Atlantic's new halflings, I would get 40 men, enough for a small unit of archers and some spearmen. A nice, small, self-contained side project. These plastic halflings are fine and all, but looking at early renaissance pictures it was clear to me that most of the helmet styles were unsuitable for the Italian Wars. Switching the heads sounded like a cool idea and would make my halfling troopers a bit different than halflings built straight out of the box. Would Perry heads fit? Since we were doing a big order of plastics at the club, let's see if the War of the Roses and Foot Knight kits are compatible. Bingo! I was happily surprised by how well they fit. The green stuff was added to hide the neck gaps, but also as I've seen many pictures of early Italian Wars soldiers wearing large cloth or mail collars. Archers worked well too. I got a bit more confident with the green stuff and tried adding some puffy sleeves, a very obvious way to make the minis look more at home in the early 16th century than generic medieval fantasy. But 16th century also means a lot of plate cuirasses and armour in general. I could not find many good options for plate wearing halflings, so again I turned to the green stuff. Was it possible to sculpt armour onto the plastic bodies? To my surprise, it turned out to both be relatively easy, and a lot of fun! By now the scope of the entire project was clearly expanding, as I started to imagine a few units, including armour-plated pint-sized men-at-arms hacking away at some unfortunate French invader's kneecaps. But to make the two-handed arms from the perry foot knights kit fit, I needed to sculpt new arms, as they were far too long. Sometimes I could get away with just cutting off half an arm, sometimes I had to cut off everything. At this point I was approaching a level where it was easier to actually re-make the arms instead of trying to keep too much plastic, but I had not realized it yet. For example, the arms on these command groups turned out a bit wonky, mainly because I tried to keep too much of the perry plastic and I had yet realized I needed to make armatures for sculpting these arms. S o they drooped a bit while curing. But on the other hand it was really fun to sculpt them, and I got the idea from some pictures of Italian gendarmes to use a chain of the the chest to denote the leader's status. I think I'll use it for more champions in this growing army. My armour spree continued by making rodeleros, a type of lighter infantry armed with swords and shields that got really popular. Initially mainly in Spanish armies, the idea spread all over Europe, including to Sweden, with "imitation" troops borrowing both the tactics and dress styles. I made small adarga shields, a type of hide shield invented by the Berbers and then brought to the Iberian peninsula by the Islamic conquest. It ended up being used by both Muslim and Christian soldiers there, and then spread across Europe, including through Italy where large numbers of Spanish soldiers fought in the Italian Wars. The addition of these shields were another way I planned to make them more grouned in the Renaissance than in generic fantasy. After all these armour plates, I was ready to try something more difficult - heads and faces. It did not take long before I had used up the Perry heads I had, so it was kind of an important point. But I also decided that the project had turned from a tiny head-swapped ally unit into me learning how to sculpt. So at some point, there'd have to be a completely scratch built hobbit in this force, and a big hurdle would be the head. To practice this I ended up doing many, many heads. At first all of them were bad, but after two dozen or so I started to get some that were not hideous. And as I sculpted more and more heads, the ratio of OK heads increased. I am not yet at a point where I'm confident, but by now I would say that there's maybe a 50-50 chance that each head will be usable. Above are some of the earlier attempts, and below are some of the more recent: These last three were the most involved sculpts, as the arms are completely hand sculpted using wire armatures, and the heads are also sculpted. So there's just the stock torsos, weapons and two plastic hands.
At this point I had used up all 40 bodies. I ordered more, but I've also ordered corks and bette wire to attempt some scratch sculpting. Next up will probably be some pictures of these painted! |
The Renaissance BlogWhat started as a blog about Renaissance gaming in general quickly turned into a blog about samurai miniatures. Archives
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