One of the units I'm prepping the another belonging to Yufes ibn Tashfin's army. These being Sudanese spearmen using
Artizan's Arfican Spearmen from the 'Moors' range. One thing I noticed with some dismay when painting up the
Black Guard unit was the very annoying habit of the Artizan miniatures holding their spears angled about 45 degrees to the right side. This made it quite painful at times to base the Black Guard unit as the spears tended to be pointing at the exact space where I would have ideally liked to place the next mini! I had no such problem with the Saxon Miniatures Black Guard (now sold by Warlord) where the spears were perfectly positioned.
My solution? I have carefully cut the hands off a quarter the miniatures, allowing some to still have the angle for variation, filed the arms to get a nice soft edge then pinned the hands back on! It is a bit of a pain but the end results are worth it.
Here's a quick snap to illustrate what I mean. The figure on the left has the hand in it's original position, the three figures to the right have all had the hands removed and pinned.
Just another 12 to go. The rest of the unit being made up of Gripping Beast
Nubian Spearmen in Padded Coats
Now that you point it, that is the problem! I have a bunch that I have to rank up just so to get them to fit in their tray.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it looks really unnatural. A lot of Mike Owen's sculpts are like that. The Viking range is the same, which is a real shame as otherwise they are lovely miniatures.
DeleteNicely done and a neat solution, sometime figures designs just don’t think about the actual practicality of the figures🤔
ReplyDeleteHi Matt, I suspect that the origin of the angles spear, that has been such a pain for me, was originally to address the way miniatures rank up in say WAB units where mini's were often on single bases. I'm certainly giving Mike Owen the benefit of the doubt. :)
DeleteOne of the beautiful properties of lead is its malleability. I often grab an appendage with a pair of pliers and give it a tweak. If you're careful not to go past the breaking point you can re-position figures often without cutting and pinning. Nice modification.
ReplyDeleteHi Allan, I tried that to start with and even with a slight amount of pressure the hand broke off. That's what brought me around to the idea of just sawing the hands off and repositioning them.
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