Mini-Prehistoric project: 1 Cavegirls and cavemen

A few days ago I was putting my painted Neanderthals away in one of my completed figures file boxes (they are resident in the Bronze Age box at present as I don't have a prehistoric one yet) and I found these five cavegirls.  These are Copplestone Castings figures, except the one on the right who is a slightly converted Founrdy Valkyrie. 

 Copplestone only do four cavegirl poses (Why? I would buy as many as he can sculpt!) so, back in 2010, I slightly converted the Valkyrie, added some longer hair to one of the others and bent some of the arms of the rest to add a bit of variety.  This was my first, very tentative use of Greenstuff.  Anyway, they sat in the box for five and a half years ignored and unloved (rather like this blog).

Feeling sorry for the ladies, when I put my Neanderthals away I got them out and undercoated them earlier this month. I realised they would need some weapons and soon discovered that Baueda do some Stone Age weapons.  I ordered the axes and clubs rather than the rather tree trunk like spears.  They arrived pretty quickly so I was able to arm the cavegirls and start putting some paint on them.

Actually, I discovered that I had some Copplestone weapons left over (they used to include slightly more weapons than figures in the packs) but I will need to use a couple of them for two of the three cavemen which I also found in the box and added to the workbench.

Yesterday, I put some more paint on these and hope to get some more done on them this week.  I am going to take this on as a mini project and see if I can get them finished before a probable two week business trip next month.  I have just realised, while looking at the Copplestone Castings page, that there is a set of these figures I don't have - cavemen characters.  So I have just bunged off an order to North Star.  Of course this will now give me 12 not eight figures to paint!

Neanderthals

April 2014

I bought my first Lucid Eye Neanderthals at Salute in 2014.  They are some of the heaviest 28mm figures I have ever owned and the leader (available separately) is a strapping 34mm tall.  I based and undercoated them as soon as I got them home. 

May 2014

At the time I was concentrating on Alamo period Mexicans but they did get some initial paint on them by the first week in May.

May 2015

After this promising start nothing very much happened.  They sat on the paint table for a year and then at Salute 2015 I bought the second pack of Neanderthals which are really Neanderthals in cold weather clothing.  I based and undercoated these and the Cro Magnon leader,

September 2016

I had finished the skin on the first four figures but stopped as I was having trouble doing their eyes.  In September 2015 I started work on them again and also got some paint onto the final three figures.

March 2016

Things slowed down again but by early March 2016 the first four were nearly finished and I was getting on with the last three.

March 2016

I completed the first four in mid March and posed them in front of my Lost World backdrop.  You can read my post on them here and discover the ins and outs of Neanderthal.human/sex too.

May 2016

My focus could now switch to the last three figures and, just after a year after I bought them they started to come together and passed that tipping point I reach when I know that it is all downhill to finishing them.

I finished them on 24th May and they make a very nice raiding party.  Somewhere I have another pack of the first three Neanderthals and I am hoping to arm them with some different weapons which I got from Baueda.  All I have to do is find them!  Next I need to acquire the Cro Magnons! 

Ice Age mammals - A wasted opportunity...

Horrible!

As I carry on working on my Lucid Eye Neanderthals I have been thinking about some appropriate Ice Age period creatures to go with them.  I have already painted a Reaper Smilodon but would really like some more mammals.  I'm more thinking about a Lost World scenario than anything (pre) historic.

The key animal, of course would be the woolly mammoth but no-one makes a good one scaled for 28mm figures.  There is a new kickstarter for Ice-Age mammals but unfortunately the models are horrible Disneyfied caricatures deigned for a fantasy game called Doggerland.  What a shame.  If they had been accurate I would have bought them all!

Quick comparison: Copplestone Castings cavemen and Lucid Eye Miniatures Neanderthals

I started work on my Lucid Eye Neanderthals (part painted figures above) today.  As you can see they are a bit bigger than the Copplestone cavemen (painted figures above).

The leader, in particular is a massive figure; 33mm foot to eye. Interestingly the two Copplestone figures are also slightly different sizes with the red head a bit larger so that he matches the smaller Lucid Eye figure.

The key thing is that the styles, head sizes and weapon size are a very similar.  I would (will) happily mix them together and I am very fussy about non-matching sized figures.

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.

http://www.reapermini.com/store/customer/product.php?productid=5327&cat=0&page=1

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.