Saturday 8 January 2011

Cavegirls by Reaper Miniatures



Reaper Miniatures have recently brought out a couple of cavegirl models. They aren't exactly up to Copplestone standards but the one on the right is quite Raquel-like and might be worth getting if I see them. The one on the left looks like it was done by a different sculptor and has rather fat legs! They sell Reaper Miniatures in Orc's Nest so they might get them, I suppose. They are usually a bit bigger than 28mm but the Copplestone figures are quite large so it shouldn't matter too much.

Sunday 2 January 2011

Smilodon




Here is the Reaper Miniatures Smilodon painted up with Copplestone Cavegirl.

Now, of course, most of the Smilodon fossils have been from North and South America where it lived from about 3 million years ago until about 10,000 years ago. So our cavegirl would have been from some time between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. Sabre tooth cats in Europe died out much earlier, so a blonde with a Sabre tooth would be historically very inaccurate unless she had managed somehow to cross to the Americas 9,000 years before Leif Ericsson.





Our cavegirls are probably from a Lost World, somewhere in South America, where they interact with Dinosaurs and other species preserved on an inaccessible mountain plateau.




Although they used to be called sabre tooth tigers Smilodon was, in reality, related to true cats and mongooses (mongeese?). They probably weren't as big as this, as they were slightly smaller than a modern lion, although they weighed twice as much. But then girls were no doubt a lot smaller and in our Lost World plateau who knows?

I have gone for a patterned coat, like many modern big cats, based on the Smilodon from the BBC series Walking with Beasts.



Grrrr!

Reaper Miniatures Sabre Tooth




When I was in Orc's Nest on Friday buying my cavegirls I just happened to see this Reaper Miniatures Sabertooth Tiger (American Spelling).
I have looked at Reapers figures quite often and some of them are very nice but they are big 30mm figures and so not much use to me in the normal course of things. For a creature, however, of course, it doesn't matter. This is from their Dark Heaven Legends range and is number 2480.

It's actually a pretty good representation of a Smilodon, although rather on the large side.

There was a lot of heavy moulding attached to two of the legs which I had to carve and file away but now it's ready to paint.