"New Pics - latest masters 1/500, 4mm Nappy Inf & Horse" Topic

Great modelling, as ever; the horse/rider has a real sense of vitality/movement, and in my view puts many a larger-scaled figure to shame (agree with earlier comments re. its rather swollen forequarters, but of course that may be slimmed-down). The saddle/holsters/shabraque &c are beautifully and cleanly cast, which certainly would make painting much easier (tho' that will be a real challenge, especially once you move on to Personality figures and Aides-de-Camp; and wouldn't these have to be handled singly, or as groups of two/three? So, the "Serre-file" figures on the single, straight, strip for cutting and positioning seems the best idea; you could surely include in the projected "battalion pack" a printed diagram of the appropriate positioning, like the very clear and useful material provided by "blucher" (what are you doing with a nom-de-guerre, or "krieg", like that, mon brave?).
Like also the idea of a "busy" battery, but recognise the difficulty of something as fiddly as a cannon in this scale. Like everyone else, longing for these figures to become available.

Ive been thinking about how im going to base my first battalion of these. Im thinking card is the best way to go because they will require thin bases and can afford to be quite weak due to their weight.

THen i am thinking ill spear polly filler over it and use that as a kind of cement/glue and just push them in. After this ill use runny bastex to run in between all the cracks etc. To finish off some fine flock and a little paint.

Normally filler wouldnt be strong enough to hold minatures but with these little guys + bastex i might get away with it.

It is good stuff to use if you want to hide the bases completely and make it look like your guys are walking on ground.

Another option would be to miss out the card and just base them striaght on to magnetic sheet! ive done this with 15s but only on small bases (4 figs) It does end up flexing a little but thats not really a problem cos it just bends back. Its also nice becaue it can be mounted direcly onto a steel paper movement tray.

Hey Robert Le D! How ya been? I like the idea about including a card with a proper layout..I actually have a printer working on some ideas now. I figured something like a quick and dirty painting guide, a bttln layout, and a small catalog would be good to start.. Any other ideas though?

Bluch.. Your basing idea sounds interesting. I added little platforms under the shoes/feet of the figures so that they'll be a little elevated off of their bases (also helps vary the heights of the figures more easily). You can see it in some of the pics. This way they won't be buried up to their knees in flocking material (like my poor old H&R troops are!).

oh and btw id suggest you dont make lead flags like OG do on their 10mm. I myself would prefer to use oversized flags so they are easier to see. best stick with paper.

Hey Bluch,

Yeah I've just started worrying about that.. I was going to try and do something with either an etched or raised design to make painting easier.. but it may not be so easy to cast unless made a bit thicker than needed.. Or I can make seperate ones on a sprue (with and without flags attached), and folks can just snip them and use them as desired and stick in the hands of the flagbearers and sgts… What do you think about that?

I doubt at this size its worth painting a banner. Some can do it in 6mm but not me anyway. Ive just tried tonight with my 10mm and dont like them much. I guess its fine to give people the option though.

I wouldnt bother with the sprue. I can easily cut off a banner myself and add a paper one as can anyone else with a knife :)

PS good idea with the platform shoes ;)

Oh. here's a few painted pics from my first run at trying these guys out.. Not the best job at all, however it'll give some idea as to how they'll look with color..

picture
picture
picture

This was with a heavier mix than I settled on..too thick really to get much detail. I'm finding a few very thin layers of paint work better so far..

Those are quite simply fantastic. Comparing them to my 2mm Nappys, (Thats napoleonics…not huggies diapers), they are stunning.

Wow! Incredible. No time to comment properly, must get back to my student…

Hi Quintus :)

Oh, Tommiatkins; for you 2mm guys here's a fun fact: The size of a strip of a 2mm 8x3rank (24 figures) block is just under 12mm long, and about 5mm wide. The size of a line of 9 of these indivudual 4mm figures x3 ranks (27 figures)is 11.5mm long, and 6mm wide. I didn't plan that, but when you mentioned 2mm it got me curious and I dug up some of my old Irregular blocks (still a blast to game with, sorry 15mm guys!) and checked it out. :-)

By all accounts the guys at "Irregular" are fine fellows, but you could have just dealt their 2mm figures a death blow!

Hi Sam,

The 2mm blocks are, to my mind, pretty darned fun to game with. Plus, they have a dedicated, existing demographic, and I'm just a one man show, lol. I assume I'd be no more than a little blip on Irregular's or any manufacturers, radar. I still need to get quotes for the actual production costs of the figures, figure out marketing & advertising, set up an e-commerce site, find decent packaging, and maintain my GPA at school (obviously my #1 priority). I've always felt that each figure line out there has it's own brand of charm/draw/etc..that will attract a particular gamer, so if I can just fill that one little niche' I've personally always wanted to see in gaming, then I'm happy! :)

Indeed, I will be happy to see the 2mm range and your figures both flourish. I was probably getting over-excited from a personal perspective. As much as I love the 2mm stuff, after seeing your figures, well, I just can't go back! I've always been a "mass-effect" guy, but still having that hankering for detail in even the tiniest figures (I'm a very weird guy – in wargaming terms, to be frank).

So, in short, I wish well to both scales. A case in point – if I were wanting to buy figures to match 1/1200 American Civil War ships, obviously the 2mm stuff would be more appropriate.

Anyway, I should have e-mailed you a while ago, but things haven't been going so well recently, but that's for outside this board! See you later.

Sam.

You ain't that weird, Q.V. I want to see a 1:1 battalion where the figures have a variety of hair-lengths, nose-shapes, clay-pipes, sabots stuck under their knapsack-straps, mugs and bottles hanging from their gibernes, patches on their clothes, wee bits of straw in their hair, occasional scampering pet dogs, visible facial scars and different eye colors. You ain't that weird.

Yeah Sam, Robert is right.. makes perfect sense to me lol. :o) Sorry to hear things haven't been anything but perfect far ya, you big ole' Scottsman – you have my best wishes.

Little ole' Scotsman, really! Only five feet, three and a half inches in height. :)

"Imprimis, then, for tallness I
Am five feet, fower inches high…."

(Anither Scotch Poet; any takers?)

"Och, aye! Hoots mon, the noo, the noo!" …and other things that Scotsmen never really say! Aye, Robert, you're a bigger man than I'll ever be! ;)

By the way, we're getting dangerously off-topic here – one step away from getting "stifled", I fear!

So, talking about 4mm figures…

Guys quick.. the little pennants French Sgt's carried to mark the pace of the bttln… were they square of triangular???

er.. square OR triangular?

According to Elton's "Swords around the Throne", pages 350 – 351, "Their design and colors were as varied as human imagination could make them, but grenadier companies usually had at least one flaming grenade, the voltigeurs a hunting horn, and the center companies anything else that took their colonel's fancy."

Unfortunately, he doesn't say if they were, rectangular or triangular.

In pictures I've seen they were rectangular, almost square.

Ah, excellent, donlowry! Now we're getting somewhere!

BigDan…thanks for the idea (posted 9/09 on this thread) for packaging the figures. From everything I've been looking at this seems to be the best/easiest/most economical solution to supplying different troop ratios.

So much great input here.. Without attempting to sound too corny – I sure do love this site lol.

Hi Bob
Just wondered how the 4mm are progressing? I'm debating buying 10mm for a Napoleonic project…but I might just wait :D

Hi Squeaky,

Thanks for the query. I've been hoping to be able to post some updates, but I'm still sitting on my thumbs waiting on the final version of the master casts to come back. Also still waiting for information as to the costs to commercially produce the figures from several casting companies. The biggest reason the casts require so much time to make is because multiple trials are needed to get a high quality master strip without breaking a single 1/4mm thick musket barrel. It's absolutely feasible to do, as evidenced by the pics on this thread, but it just takes a little extra time, unfortunately. Casting a commercial run of such tiny figures entails the creation of a large number of these masters because the final figures would probably be purchased in volume by collectors interested in this scale – no sense in having a puny 24-man battalion of 1/500 scale figures (unless you're gaming on a chess board, of course). I have had the image of these little s in my head for so long now..been working on this project almost a full year straight.. and it has taken a large portion of that time for me just to get down the fine-motor control needed to carve them. This week I have been finishing up the basic British infantry (Belgic & Stovepipe simultaneously), by the way, so things are still moving along.

Oh.. and if you do have an interest in 10mm I have been kinda secretly working on a 1/200 scale range of Napoleonics, and Ancients. I'm keeping with the main theme of the 1/500 scale representation for every officer, NCO, and rank and file present, as well as proper anatomical proportions, and muliple poses, heights, etc. At 1/200 scale figure heights range from roughly 8.25mm for a typical Voltigeur, on up to about 9.9mm for a big 'ole Imperial Guardsmen. They are also significantly easier to detail. I have only recently gotten the facial features and proportions down.. eyes, nose, brows, mouth, ears, and I am currently trying ways to carve out pupils so that the eye detail will just pop out with a slight brown wash. Due to their larger stature they are more properly proportioned/scaled than the 4mm are, and they will not take more than 1 run to cast well. I have the first master headed out next week for a test run, actually. Be happy to post the pics when I get them back. I'm hoping to release the 1/200 scale Ancients Line nearly simultaneously with the 1/500 scale Napoleonic Line as the Ancients are quite a bit easier to work with than the Naps for now (a shield, spear, some armor, and we're good lol). The 1/500 Naps will probably be the last of the planned lines I work on as the detail needed to do justice to the figures will be excessive and I simply am not good enough right now…

Phew.. got a bit long winded here..sorry. :)

Thanks again, Squeaky, for checking in. Always a pleasure to hear from someone interested in the project.

Best,
Bob

"The 1/500 Naps will probably be the last of the planned lines I work on…"

Yeah I meant the 1/200 scale Naps will be the last.. the 1/500 I'm still plugging away at! :)

Inkbiz

Have you got an estimate of when i can purchase my first infantry battalion?

Hi Bluch,

How are you doing? How did the painting go on the strip?

I've been aiming at getting the figures done and ready to ship just before Xmas, but it's getting rather close. Up until now I've been sending only a few test strips at a time, as I completed them, and I could not begin working on all the other poses/ranks without seeing just what kind of result I should expect. The version pictured in the first post of this thread proved to be the smallest diameter size I could use for the casting of the muskets, so once I saw we had clean, castable barrels I went ahead and did the remaining edits needed and finished the remaining poses (finished them just last week, in fact). So now every single position/rank of a French Battalion, from the mounted Chef, right down to each NCO, corporals on the flanks of 1st and 3rd ranks of each section, Guide Generals, Caporal d'Encadrement, and all Adjutant ranks are represented in a selection of poses (actually lots of poses – I made 8 alone for the sergeants so you can mix and match say, a sergeant marching ramrod straight, with one looking to his right or left, with a sergeant using the butt of his musket to cajole a reluctant recruit, with one doing the – "look over there" thing, etc..). Actually I still need to do the pioneers, but I was saving them for when I do skirmishing poses. They just are never pictured in any damned diagrams I have found, either, and I don't know where they stood, how they stood, and what the hell they did when …pioneering. But I'll get to 'em very soon. I'd just rather not hold off production of everything else because of a single figure type.
I was waiting to send the final batches of the French until I completed a few test sculpts of the British (the Belgic is going to be a pain to cast, btw) and this big ole' 1/200 scale Spartan Hoplite (all 8.5mm of him, lol, but he looks HUGE to me) …This way I can get a single, big order to the caster I've been using, and hopefully have them all back by early December. Then it's a matter of having them all sent out to be cast commercially. I hope it can be done before Xmas, as I said, but I honestly do not know for sure. This is a hobby driven business with very few skilled, full-time, and serious casters, and it all comes down to the schedules of these talented, work-laden guys, really. Either way I promise you it'll be worth the wait .. :)

P.S. – Excellent concepts for the rules you mentioned in your last email.. I've been meaning to get back to you regarding them, sorry for the delay.

I didnt do the best job on the test strip actually. I think i need some kind of magnification to do it properly.

As i mentioned a new scale is always tricky on your first try though.

Considerid im going to be painting hundreds, well thousands of these probably i doubt ill be that fussy anyway. To me the key to making it look good will be in the basing and the terrain and the figures themselves.

The benefit of these guys was always going to be the battlefield as a whole not fancy pancy painting styles. At least thats my excuse :)