Iron Mask Miniatures

Iron Mask Miniatures
...and one for all!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Proof-of-Concept




[Above: some assembled proof-of-concept figures painted by the talented Terry Matheny of Sword and Palette. They are wearing the colors of my Free Cantons dwarf army. The figures are armed with cinquedea swords and daggers. The First Wave production figures will have rapiers and main gauche daggers with a variety of 17th Century-style hilts and guards.]

The proof-of-concept figures consisted of one dwarf with a separate head, sporting a trimmed 17th Century style beard, and the other with an integral head with "traditional" dwarfy hair and beard. I had originally imagined all the bodies would have separate heads, but poshgoblin pointed out that this would not be optimal for heads with long hair and full "dwarfy" beards. Separates heads were a practical option for fairly static core-troop poses. For dynamic dueling poses, however, the hair and beard would have to conform to the pose and flow with the costume of the figure. This pretty much meant one head per body. Swapping heads across different dynamic poses would require a lot of filing and filling unless the hair and beard were relatively short.

My solution was to plan the initial figures with short hair and trimmed beards. Once these were completed, the full hair and beards would he added as conversions of the headless bodies.

Initially, the Musketeer swords and daggers were based on the cinquedea, a 15th Century Italian dueling weapon. This type of blade was not uncommon among the old Citadel dwarves of the 1980s and has a decidedly dwarfy look. I have since moved to more traditional 17th Century rapier and main gauche dagger. The cinquedea will not go away -- they will reappear later in the range.

The complete set of proof-of-concept components looked like this:



The different types of hands worked well and the variations possible by rotating the gauntlets on the arm was pretty remarkable.



The difference in the sword positions (one thrusting, one holding the weapon at about 45 degrees)may seem too subtle initially. It becomes more obvious once the gauntlets are attached to the arms.

The separate head fit well. While it did not permit a full 180 degrees of rotation, a range of positions was possible.




 
One of the goals was to make the figures compatible with the White Knight Renaissance dwarves. This makes them roughly the same size as the old Marauder and Citadel figures. Below, from left to right:  a White Knight spearman, an old Citadel Imperial dwarf, a Battleforge spearman (with the base ground down to paper thinness), an old Citadel Norse dwarf, an Iron Mask duelist, and a Marauder spearman.
 

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