Allrighty, I've finally gotten this blasted camera to working condition. Ish. So, I thought I'd show you my the first little step on the way in this project. To the right, you can see the first "draft" sculpt of my first Praetorian Private. So far it's not much to look at, and some of those who've dabbled with fotographing miniatures should know how painfully well a photograph can show the flaws on a miniature. It also has some minor flaws and less-than-satisfacory areas that are going to be removed and redone. There is no room for a bleeding heart in the savage world of miniature scultping. Or something.
All that aside, as far as a first step goes, I think this is a rather good one. Those familiar with the Praetorian models from the GW line may notice a subtle diffrence in that the "skirt" is a fair bit longer than on those models. This is delibirate. Honestly. I've decided that since I'm going to be building my own models anyhow I might as well take some liberties with the concept. Rather than letting my praetorians remain as Mordian Iron Guard with headswaps, I intend to take this concept closer to the source, so to speak. For those who don't know Praetorians were originally made by Games Workshop because someone had watched the film "Zulu" and decided that mordians with Pith Helmets, painted red, were the coolest thing ever. Or something like that. Now, I belive the film Zulu is about the Battle of Rorke's Drift, a battle which was fought in the Anglo-Zulu War. The war in itself is rather interesting, but I won't go into details here. Indeed, the only reason I brought it up was so that I could point out that although the Games Workshop Praetorian models aren't very alike the original british uniforms, apart from the colours and the pith helmets. Apart from the obvious shortage of lasguns and Imperial Iconography, british soldiers didn't have epaulettes, and they didn't wear double-breasted jackets. They did, however, have some other smart details on their sleeves and some nice belts, straps and bayonette sheaths/scabbards and a lot of pouches(for reasons I haven't quite figured out yet).
Now, I like to model details. To me the obvious approach to this is to use everything I can, and refer to artistic licence if anyone complains. So, my models are going to have epaulettes, imperial iconography, double-breasted uniforms, belts, pouches, bayonette sheaths and anything else that I might come up with. This is going to be great! Will it be better than the original paetorians? No clue!
Oh, and while we're talking about modelling details in semi-accordance with the historical british gear, here's a little thing I made the other day, and boy am I proud of it. This is what's going to be my Praetoria Pattern Lasgun. The reason it's so long in comparison to other lasguns is actually due to a mistake on my part. When I started making them I had only found one or two pictures of the guns used by the british soldiers in the Anglo-Zulu war, and those pictures were dramatic paintings in which their rifles looked like a cross-breed between a gun and a spear. Since then I've found some pictures of the acctual guns and concluded that that was just Artistic Licence and that in reality their guns were about lagun-length, bayonettes notwithstanding. I have, however, grown too attached to my longer versions to consider butchering it for historcal quasi-accuracy. So, now I've proven that I actually have something to show for this project apart from a lot of fancy ideas. I'll throw in another update as soon as I have something new to show.
Taah!
