Winston Smith | 30 Jul 2015 9:24 a.m. PST |
I have NEVER seen this done well. I am talking about two piece riders with torso and legs separate. First were cavalry by Grenadier back in the 70s. (Yes children. Grenadier had historical ranges once upon a time.) The legs were cast into the horse. There were huge gaps that had to be filled in. Then Old Glory had similar Plains Indians. I note they have not repeated that experiment. The final straw is Foundry Sarmatians. These have horse, lower body and torso separate. Three pieces! To make things worse, this is a lancer, holding lance in two hands, level and horizontal. There are sword hilts and now cases sticking up from the legs waist piece. It gets worse. The peg on the lower body part is huge. And the upper body has no hole to insert the peg! You have to drill it out completely! And then line up the body parts on the horse and maneuver the upper WITH THE LANCE IN HANDS while you glue things in place. Hey genius figure designers. KNOCK IT OFF!!!! IT DOESN'T WORK!!! It never has. |
Editor in Chief Bill | 30 Jul 2015 9:47 a.m. PST |
I think it is done for casting reasons. |
Winston Smith | 30 Jul 2015 10:08 a.m. PST |
There is nothing unique about any of these poses that mandate casting that way. Particularly those Sarmatians. |
Doms Decals | 30 Jul 2015 10:14 a.m. PST |
It *can* work in offering more posing flexibility for horse archers, but that's the only use I can think of – generally it's just a blooming nuisance. |
Frederick | 30 Jul 2015 10:19 a.m. PST |
Agreed Separate rider, fine Rider split in half, not cool |
79thPA | 30 Jul 2015 10:39 a.m. PST |
I think the idea is to provide more figure variety. But no, I hate 'em and won't buy them. |
photocrinch | 30 Jul 2015 11:05 a.m. PST |
I actually prefer them to poorly sculpted legs of separate riders that don't fit snugly on the horse. |
BelgianRay | 30 Jul 2015 11:29 a.m. PST |
Personally I found that the Old Glory Plains Indians worked fine and allowed me to get a lot of different poses without any problem whatsoever. |
Winston Smith | 30 Jul 2015 12:09 p.m. PST |
Different poses? Yes. I suppose. But a human being does not have a circular cross section at the waist. It's elliptical. Sort of. So there is really one way the sections can line up without a mess. |
zippyfusenet | 30 Jul 2015 12:51 p.m. PST |
I wish my mid-section was still eliptical. There's a reason no one produces split-torso figures. If you dig crafty modeling it can be an advantage, but for most wargamers it's just a nuisance. Disclaimer: I'm getting ready to put together 3 bags of Old Glory Sac & Fox mixed with a bag of their Buffalo Hats, and I intend to make the most of the figures. But I know it will take a lot of epoxy, a fair amount of wire and some putty to get the job done. Funny thing. I'm actually a more productive modeler than i am a painter. You'd be appalled at how many models I have all put together, but waiting years for the paint brush. |
JSchutt | 30 Jul 2015 2:50 p.m. PST |
Better yet why is the saddle part if the horse and not the man? It is much easier to fill is around a saddlecloth than around a backside and dangling legs! |
Yesthatphil | 30 Jul 2015 2:50 p.m. PST |
I'm quite happy with the ones I have bought over the years .. Phil |
Atomic Floozy | 30 Jul 2015 7:19 p.m. PST |
In addition of being a nuisance, I found that many of the torsos of the Old Glory Plains Indians were out of scale with the legs of the foot models & required a good amount of putty & green stuff to assemble. |
zippyfusenet | 31 Jul 2015 3:18 a.m. PST |
Thanks for the warning Elaine. I'm also planning to replace most of those silly little hatchet tomahawks that so many of the Old Glory Sacs are swinging. Who could fight from horseback with a weapon only 18 inches long? (The Romans couldn't; their spatha horseman's sword was much longer than their gladius.) But. No one else makes Plains figures with those roach head-dresses, and you don't see too many buffalo hats, either. So I'm committed. Three bags of mounted, 1 bag of foot, 30 figures of each, total. Weigh hey, I'm bound away, across the wide Missouri… |
DrSkull | 31 Jul 2015 4:25 a.m. PST |
The Old Glory plains Indians on foot were also split into two parts at the waist. I imagine that the upper halves for foot and mounted were the same so that OG could'll d produce two sets with one set of uppers. |
zippyfusenet | 31 Jul 2015 7:07 a.m. PST |
It's more planned than that, DrSkull. There is one set of 10 X lower bodies and one set of 10 X ponies with asses and legs molded on for the whole WarPaint line. Also just one set of 5 shields. You get three sets of the same 10 X lower bodies in every dismounted Plains Indian bag, also 15 shields, and the same set of 10 X ponies in every mounted bag, also 5 shields. There are four different types of upper bodies, 10 poses in each: feather head, bonnet head, buffalo head and roach head (Sac). You get the same 10 upper poses in every bag of each head type, mounted and dismounted. There are some differences in the poses and weapons between the head types – I notice the roach heads have no firearms, while the bonnet heads have a crooked lance or two. Most manufacturers would have matched up the upper and lower bodies to make their masters and sold single-piece figures. This two-part approach does allow more creativity in asssembling the pieces and more variety of pose, but not all the body halves match up well, and most gamers would rather not bother. |
Rudysnelson | 31 Jul 2015 7:44 a.m. PST |
I remember in the early 1980s getting some Sassanid Persians from battlehonors in 15mm. They had split waists. Iirc. There was one company that cast the bottom half of the rider on the horse. The top half was separate. I have been in the business a long time and have seen a number of split waist castings in both 15 and 25 mm. I asked a few companies why and got different answers. The two most common answers were variety in the poses and ease of sculpting to mould making production. As with separate heads especially in 15 mm it was a hassle to keep track of at the store. Time portal In business since 1983. |
Winston Smith | 31 Jul 2015 8:02 a.m. PST |
The intent with the Old Glory Plains Indians is obvious. Sadly it didn't work. As Zippy pointed out, not all halves matched and you could have some leftover pieces that needed a LOT of work and still didn't look good. But the Foundry Sarmatian really puzzles me. With the horse's neck, the bowcase and sword pommel there is only one way to line up the pieces. And there is no variety. And no slot in the top half to line up. Bad work. |
clibinarium | 01 Aug 2015 4:06 p.m. PST |
Splitting figures at the waist is usually done for practical reasons. Figures are 3d objects but they have to be placed in moulds that come in halves, so they have to to be 2d to an extent. That means they work best if they have a single axis or plane, for instance a man standing straight with arms by his sides has a single lateral axis, i.e. you can picture how he can lie flat in a mould. If the same man holds him arms out in front of himself horizontally, then he has two axes, one lateral, and one ventral, which are at rough right angles to each other, so placed in the mould the arms will project into one half of the mould and that can give rise to casting issues. This can be partially solved by putting him on his side in the mould, but the space between his arms will give an undercut which won't mould well. You can push the boundary on these issues (this was an extreme example) to give the figure more dynamism, but if you look at any figure you have you'll be able to spot a rough single axis, likely you've seen it hundreds of times, its the mould line. That shows you at least where the caster decided the best orientation of the the figure in the mould would be. If you consider the rider, his bottom half is usually static, it straddles the horses back, and there's not much movement (weight can be shifted of course but leg position doesn't change a great deal). This largely dictates the axis of most cavalry figures is lateral; that's why nearly all sword wielding horsemen hold their weapons above the head or to the side or upwards, almost never out to the front (which is natural) as that would cause moulding problems as you'd then have two axes at right angles, and a figure that wouldn't i.e. relatively flat in a mould. There are solutions to this; make the arms separate so they can be glued in, or as the Perries have been doing, make the horse and rider one and have the sword arms separate. Or there's always the split waist as that frees the axes of the arms and the hips from having to be the same. It works well for horse archers, as otherwise they all loose out to the side, you can't easily do them shooting forward with a single piece figure. I think that particular Samaritan cataphract figure is split because his lance is obviously held to the front horizontally. The way he holds his hands would not be castable as a single figure; he has turned his shoulders so that their axis is more forward, not parallel with his hips. In such a case its likely that he's only supposed to fit one way and not be rotated for variation. Actually split waists can give rise to a false hope for variation that may not have been intended by the sculptor; as has been pointed out the waist is not a circle, its an ellipse, so you can't just rotate the torso (we'll you can to a certain degree before it looks unnatural) One also has to consider whether garments or armour begin to look incongruous (eg does the central split in an over garment match up above and below the belt which covers up the split), but there's a degree of personal taste in that sort of thing. Figures on foot that are spilt aren't a great idea as in contrast to riders (whose hips and feet are relatively static) their foot and hip positions vary a lot, which dictates the position of the torso and arms to a great extent, as there has to be either static or dynamic balance, otherwise you just fall over. If you mix up torsos and legs that weren't intended for each other, some will be right by chance others will look "off" because they'll be out of balance, for example a walking man with both his right leg forward and right arm swung forward looks weird because that's not how the body works, the legs and arms go forward on opposite sides of the body to maintain balance. Clever design of figures can get round these issues if the design is harmonious, which is necessary when doing multipart plastics, etc. |