'First Look' Carthaginian pics!

[Techno]

Hi Meirion.

Plan just at the moment is to finish this one off with just a rider and a chap on the back with a spear....Then do some conversions.....Including one with a howdah and crew...another with just a rider......And possibly one that's completely 'plain'.

Could ask that nice Mr Leon if maybe I can make one into a mammoth too  .....But the tusks would be an absolute swine to get out of the mould at this scale, unless they're done as separate pieces.

Cheers - Phil.

[O Dinas Powys]

Hi Meirion.

Plan just at the moment is to finish this one off with just a rider and a chap on the back with a spear....Then do some conversions.....Including one with a howdah and crew...another with just a rider......And possibly one that's completely 'plain'.

Could ask that nice Mr Leon if maybe I can make one into a mammoth too  .....But the tusks would be an absolute swine to get out of the mould at this scale, unless they're done as separate pieces.

Cheers - Phil.

Hi Phil,

Yeah, I can see the tusks could be a pain, although the existing mammoths come with separate ones. 

I'd be happy with a naked elephant - plenty of non-hirsute proboscideans (no longer) out there.  Inter-glacial megafauna hunting is almost as much fun as the wooly variety!   

Cheers,

Meirion

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice one!

[Techno]

Thanks Lemmy !

The finished article will be betterer (sic)......(Look... look...points mouse at desk like Basil Faulty with the phone when talking to Sybil.)

Cheers - Phil

[Dunnadd]

Really like the elephant - it's meant to be an African forest elephant for Carthaginians so it doesn't matter that it looks different from African Bush elephants and Indian elephants, because it's meant to look different from them.

I don't think the figures look Dark Age at all - their style of dress and equipment is clearly ancient, though i agree with some of the posters that they could be made to look a bit more like a mixture of North Africans and Phoenicians (maybe e.g by putting their beards and hair in ringlets and giving some scale corselets - though hair in ringlets would be tricky work on 10mm)

Painting them with bright coloured fringes or patterns on their tunics and using transfers for their shields plus some designs painted on standards should make them look Carthaginian though.

The Numidian archer standing and firing is my favourite - very nice figure.

My only complaint is that the spears look a bit thick for the size of the figures - i think they'd look better if they were a bit thinner - though obviously if they're made too thin they'll bend, which is less than ideal.

Old Glory solve the problem by using very thin 10mm steel spears that are separate from the figure and glued into it's hand and that works pretty well, though obviously increases the price a bit.

[Leon]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.  We're hoping to get these all moulded up and sorted for a release in either Jan or Feb, along with the Repub Riomans.

My only complaint is that the spears look a bit thick for the size of the figures - i think they'd look better if they were a bit thinner - though obviously if they're made too thin they'll bend, which is less than ideal.

The spears have to be oversized on the master figures, as the moulding process thins them down.  Too thin on the master, and it won't cast properly by the time it gets to the production mould.  They'll look a lot more proportional by the time they're released.

[O Dinas Powys]

Really like the elephant - it's meant to be an African forest elephant for Carthaginians so it doesn't matter that it looks different from African Bush elephants and Indian elephants, because it's meant to look different from them.

Well, not really.  Since they're regarded as being Loxodonta africana pharaoensis, so a sub-species of the bush elephant Loxodonta africana and given that the Congolese forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis doesn't differ that much in appearance from the bush elephant I think there's a definite blueprint there to work from.

Anyway, I'm sure Phil will do a great job and as long as it has bigger ears than the current version I'm sure the morphologically OCD biologists among us will be happy   

[Techno]

Ooer !

Now I am getting a bit confused !

From the 'tomes' I've been consulting I was under the impression that the elephants used were the now extinct (?) 'forest' elephants and then more commonly the Indian Elephant.. The Indian elephant was the one that I was using as a basis for the model....
If I've got this bit right.....Hannibal rode the last surviving elephant "that may be identified as the Indian elephant Cato called Surus"

I'll post a piccy up later !.....It's almost finished now. ('Fraid the ears are only a tiny bit bigger tho' Meirion.)

Cheers - Phil

[Dunnadd]

On elephants -

I'm not an expert on this but from googling according to the wiki entry for North African forest elephants it's not certain whether the North African Forest elephant was a sub-species of African bush elephant or a separate species.

It was thought until recently that other surviving varieties of African forest elephants in Africa were just sub-species  of Bush elephantsbut recently they found out they're a separate species - their scientific name is Loxodonta cyclotis - though they do look pretty like a smaller version of a Bush elephant.

The differences are that "Forest elephants have straighter tusks and more rounded ears than African savannah elephants. They have five toes on the forefeet and four toes on the hindfeet, as Asian elephants do."

The forest elephants apparently also vary far more genetically than Bush elephants, but another article says there's hybridisation between the two, which would support them being just sub-species (i thought that if two animals could interbreed and have children that could have children themselves that made them the same species and not a different species?).

I think there's a theory that Hannibal might have been given some elephants by one of the successors, but whether it's true and what species they'd be if he was, i'm not sure.

There are also people who claim that African Bush/Savanna elephants could have been used by the Carthaginians as some have been domesticated/trained today - don't know if there's any ancient evidence from written sources or coins to back that up though.
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On spears - ah right - thanks for the info Leon - glad to hear it

[Techno]

Her we are then.



For ease of casting, I'm only going to give the chap on the back a spear/javelin......Nothing over long, or it would be a complete swine for Dave and Leon to cast and/or get out of the mould.
I haven't even tried for toes/toenails at this scale....They'd look too big however fine a skin of putty I put on.

Going back a tad....I think one of the reasons some of the infantry look a bit 'dark ages; is that I tried to give them a very fine putty beard, and those have come out a little bit on the hirsute side..A bit 'Vikingy' perhaps...Perhaps I should have left that off...A fine beard could always be portrayed with just paint perhaps ?
Believe it or not....I did try and give some pf them 'ringlets too....Be interesting to see how those come out in the metals.

I'm keeping right out of the elephant species discussion 

As I've said before....Hopefully at least a couple of conversions to do on this piece once it's finished off.

Spears ?....Think Leon's answered that....My own 'two - pees' worth is that I'd much prefer to use .5mm brass rod rather than the .75(ish)mm that's really necessary for models of this size....Looks much more aesthetically pleasing, as well as 'nearer the mark'.
In another life, I've even made separate 'add ons' using the finer rod.....Didn't really work sadly.....and a lot of people found them too fiddly to attach to the models.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess !

Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Looking good. Are the riders going to be separate?

[Techno]

No Fred...Sorry.

Too much of a pain to do them as separate pieces that fit really snugly....To a certain extent, that's why there'll be conversions.

Cheers - Phil

[Dunnadd]

Techno wrote

Going back a tad....I think one of the reasons some of the infantry look a bit 'dark ages; is that I tried to give them a very fine putty beard, and those have come out a little bit on the hirsute side..A bit 'Vikingy' perhaps...Perhaps I should have left that off...A fine beard could always be portrayed with just paint perhaps ?

Maybe, but i think if you were a Liby-Phoenician spearmen stuck in Sicily or Italy or Spain for a decade fighting seemingly endless hordes of dirty feckin Romans you'd probably end up not trimming your beard as often, so hirsute might not always be inaccurate.

Believe it or not....I did try and give some pf them 'ringlets too....Be interesting to see how those come out in the metals.

Nice - look forward to seeing the final figures.

[Techno]

Maybe, but i think if you were a Liby-Phoenician spearmen stuck in Sicily or Italy or Spain for a decade fighting seemingly endless hordes of dirty feckin Romans you'd probably end up not trimming your beard as often, so hirsute might not always be inaccurate.

Nice - look forward to seeing the final figures.

Hot damn !......I hadn't thought of that ! Curse those artists in the books that paint the warriors all neat and  cleanly dressed....and looking as tho' they'd just been to the barbers !!    ......Might have to use that as an excuse in the future.

Cheers - Phil.

[O Dinas Powys]

Ooer !

Now I am getting a bit confused !

From the 'tomes' I've been consulting I was under the impression that the elephants used were the now extinct (?) 'forest' elephants and then more commonly the Indian Elephant.. The Indian elephant was the one that I was using as a basis for the model....
If I've got this bit right.....Hannibal rode the last surviving elephant "that may be identified as the Indian elephant Cato called Surus"

I'll post a piccy up later !.....It's almost finished now. ('Fraid the ears are only a tiny bit bigger tho' Meirion.)

Cheers - Phil

Boo, hiss!  

...although small ears would make the conversion to woolly mammoth easier    

Anyway, last word on elephants - especially since I'm not the target audience for the range - there's a nice coin image on the Hannibal wikipedia page:



...and a bust and fresco on the North African Elephant page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_Elephant

Obviously all this evidence is highly weighted to support my own large eared bias    

[Techno]

Look...
Will one of you clever b*ggers hurry up and invent a time machine, so I can go and take some definitive piccies.

We could then find out whether
a) The ancient historians were either wrong or simply guessing.
b) The 'artiste' who did the obverse of the coin had never seen an Indian 'hefferlump' and used a 'big eared' one as inspiration.
c) The 'artiste' was worse than me at sculpting (actually I think that's rather impressive on the coin)....and didn't do ears properly. (I doubt this mad theory...but I thought I'd put it in)
c) The Carthaginian mint were too stingy to make a new stamp to go on the back of the coin, and re-used an old stamp.

'Nellie' can be classed as either an Indian elephant who has ears that are a tad too big....or 'the other type' whose ears are a little on the small side......
How's that for a cop out !

Cheers - Phil 

[Dunnadd]

Techno wrote

Will one of you clever b*ggers hurry up and invent a time machine, so I can go and take some definitive piccies.

We could then find out whether
a) The ancient historians were either wrong or simply guessing.
b) The 'artiste' who did the obverse of the coin had never seen an Indian 'hefferlump' and used a 'big eared' one as inspiration.
c) The 'artiste' was worse than me at sculpting (actually I think that's rather impressive on the coin)....and didn't do ears properly. (I doubt this mad theory...but I thought I'd put it in)
c) The Carthaginian mint were too stingy to make a new stamp to go on the back of the coin, and re-used an old stamp.

Fair point Phil. Historians often disagree on whether ancient sources are reliable on this point or that (especially as some were writing decades - or even sometimes centuries - after the events they were describing ; and were in the pay of certain families who wanted their ancestors to look good)

Having said that some sources that were thought to be just poetic or myth rather than fact have been shown by archaeology to be accurate - e.g Homer's description of the armour and weapons used by ancient Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad; the city of Troy itself

[Techno]

Exactly what I was trying to put across Dunnadd 

I hope humourously.... I wasn't having an artistic hissy fit...I promise !....That's not me at all !

For many of the ancient 'ranges'....I don't believe we'll ever know the absolutely true and definitive answer.
If I may paraphrase...."History is written by the winners"

Some of the photos I've looked at of statues/statuettes from 'ancient' times are basically 'poop'....And even the experts can't agree what they actually portray....I reckon I could do better sculpting with my feet.
Others......Oh...I'm so in awe of the skill of the sculptors.....THE SWINE !

Cheers - Phil.

[OldenBUA]

in the pay of certain families who wanted their ancestors to look good

Yeah, if I were an ancient hefferlump (or slon or whathaveyou) I wouldn't like it if someone said my greatgreatgranddad had big ears! 

[Sandinista]

Yeah, if I were an ancient hefferlump (or slon or whathaveyou) I wouldn't like it if someone said my greatgreatgranddad had big ears! 

Too right, we all know Noddy had him