New Masters

Back at the end of January I was feeling inspired by the Minden Miniatures blog, Making Miniatures blog, and a recent article in HMG Magazine to get working on some new masters. I then promptly shelved them, as I had more pressing projects, but now that the wargames Weekend is over it’s time to carry on with the Game Plan 08’s Project Schedule!

Since all the cool kids are doing it I thought I’d document my progress. This is a new process for me – at some point I should try and show you how I made my previous masters – through half made masters collecting dust in the unfinished, abandoned masters box…

As I mentioned in the January Post, I am again experimenting with the use of armatures. I had tried them in the past and they hadn’t worked so well… I was using miliput at the time and that might have had something to do with it. It also might have had to do with how I assembled the armatures. I’ll have to take pictures next time I’m assembling them so you can see how I did it. This Picture is from the previous post and shows what they armatures looked like before I started working on them this evening.

Here’s what I’ve done so far (this evening):

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


For once I actually considered human proportion and decided to do these guys seven heads high. At 28mm to the top of the head that means 4mm per head, 12mm for the torso and 12mm for legs. These measured out I cut the wire at the top at 28mm and bend the wire at the feet at the appropriate location.


Then I bent the legs at the knees and got the bodies into the general form or gesture or pose I wanted – advancing – muskets at the ready! Then I stuck the excess wire on the bottom into some little blocks of wood that I will be able to hold onto. This is also something new and is turning out to be much better than trying to hold onto the base of the figure itself – smushing feet and legs with my fat clumsy fingers…


Tonight I added thighs and asses.


I had tried sticking an armature to a base earlier (see January Post) but looking at it this evening the legs were much too long. I didn’t want to push my luck and do any more work on the three good ones but I really wanted to try out some “brown stuff” and practice faces so I took the old armature and did a little experimenting. Not too bad… looks kind of screwy right now, but wait ‘til I get a hat and some hair on it! I like the “brown stuff” I handles nicely.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More work on the new series of masters!