When we think of fantasy miniatures from the 80s I imagine many of us will have images from the Fantasy Miniatures series of books in mind.
These three volumes (1988, 1989 and 1990) are packed full of photos of Golden Demon miniatures and staff offerings from those years and exhibit the very best in that era of modelling. There are extensive conversions, vivid and chaotic paint schemes, texture galore and that sense of humour that seems to have been so absent from the hobby since. Anyone who looks through the books will spot a common thread running through them... Nick Bibby's Great Spined Dragon!
Of course being a large model with rather fragile wings the best function for this dragon is as the focal point of a diorama rather than fielding in an army. Dioramas are something I love making but they just take up so much space that I feel if I am going to make one it's going to have to be special, and they don't get much more special than working on a Spiny.
Now a Great Spined Dragon is something of a holy grail miniature these days. They regularly command £100+ on eBay and with the rise in all vintage miniature prices over the last couple of years I wouldn't be surprised to see people paying £200 for one in good condition. I had resigned to not having one in my collection and instead opted to sculpt a tribute model to fill the hole in my own (any anyone else's) collection.
As has proven to be the way sculpting a tribute calls to the original miniature and shortly after receiving the first castings I was contacted by a friend in the Oldhammer Community who had 'brokered' a deal with another contact of his to get me a genuine Spiny for a very reasonable sum. I immediately set about cleaning it up (I actually quite liked the paint scheme, but this was a model I needed to work on from the lead up, so in the dip it went!), made fabric wings and got it primed ready for painting... and then we moved house and it sat in a cabinet for three years during which time lead fatigue claimed one of the wings. But no more! Definitely time to get it the love it deserves!
I've had in mind for a few years what I want to do with the diorama. In addition to the actual Spiny and my tribute I want to have the "Horned Young Dragon" (which looks far more like a young spined dragon to me, perhaps they got the labels the wrong way around) as a baby, making a family outing. The parents will be teaching the youngster to hunt, boiling a pool of water and forcing out a Waterleaper (from Oakbound) for its dinner. The title will be "A Family Picnic". Inspired by Aghast's diorama I also want to have some human adventurers creeping up inadvisably... I'd love to use the Heroes of the Known World for this but they seem to be a rather elusive and expensive set at the moment so I will be using three other Citadel adventurers that I already have and don't have another use for. I think they'll represent a gung-ho but not terribly bright band pretty well. Ideally they'll be positioned creeping up on baby, thinking that the little dragon is all they will have to worry about!
So that's my plan for Easter this year, make some good progress on this diorama and take a break from armies. Of course I will have my RoC army to finish, but that's just a couple of units of beastmen so should be able to get them done alongside. Stay tuned for groundwork...
Ohhh nice and yes, atleast the covers of Fantasy Miniatures are soo well known from the time. Back with the fun and humour of the time.. they take themselves far too serious now..
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see how this turns out.
Exciting! I look forward to following this project. What fabric did you use for the wings?
ReplyDeleteIt's loose weave muslin coated in layers of latex, I'll find some photos for a future post.
DeleteI just noticed... looking at the Plague dragon.. The rider... The same 'sorcerer' you painted with your first batch of Chaos Warriors? No horns and sword is a staff but that's not very hard work.. but.. they really looks like the same figure..
ReplyDeleteActually not, the other variant. One of those cases where the same body was used to convert a second model. Pretty common back then to be able to produce more sculpts faster and something I enjoy doing too. http://www.solegends.com/citcat1991b/cat1991bp274rcchaossorcerors-02.htm
DeleteAh, fair enough. I know about reuses. No problem and quite a good idea at times (OH, and if I just talked about the reuses in my G1 transformer collection... 70s and 80s toys were HUGE on reusing molds and parts for new figures).
Deletelooking at a closer shot of them figures, they did some nice chances to suit the one as a plague priest.. his head is more of a open mouth, make the cape a bit more raggy.. and i'm kinda not suprised at the credits on that page saying there are designed by the Citadel Design team with Jess Goodwin..
Yep, if it's a great sculpt there's a very strong chance it's a Goodwin. Not to downplay other amazing sculptors but based on my favourite figures I have to say Jes is probably top of my list.
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