MU 29 - Yateem, Smart Max, Smog, 1:35

posted by roman, jarhead, kong



Aloa folks and welcome to another Miniature Unpacked (MU).
This time it is number 29. If you are interested in the earlier MUs go check them here.

This MU is about Yateem, a figure by Smart Max, from the game SMOG, a Victorian Fantasy in Scale 1:35 (50 mm), sculpted by Allan Carrasco.

The figure arrives in a cool box, shown above.
Some information about the figures background that I took from the company's homepage:

"The Black Pharaoh founded this elite battalion for those who could not become Necromancers but were more useful alive than as zombies. These fanatical warriors wear an ibis mask and are totally devoted to their master. Each Guard is given a war Mandrill, raised to kill. In combat, the monkey’s fierce attacks perturb the opponent before the warrior can give the fatal stroke. The Guard always takes one of his victim’s organs as a reward for the Mandrill."

Like always, let's open up that box and look inside ...

... where we find a base, one plastic ziplog with the Mandrill and one ziplock with Yateem himself, all cast in high quality resin and when I say high quality resin I don't mean strange Finecast quality, I mean high quality resin. Everything in this box makes me happy on the first impression, except the base as it is kind of too simple. I know it is for gaming but in my eyes it is a bit too simple.

Yateem consists of the following parts:
- 1 main body
- 3 pieces for the head
- 2 arms

His Mandrill consists of the following parts:
- 1 main body
- 1 head
- 2 arms

Taking a closer look on the sculpts I can say the first impression was right. The cast is truely in high quality and fits together pretty well. Here and there I had to cut with my hobby knife to make it fit easily but this work was not that hard.

On both of the figures you can find small mouldlines that have to be cut away or filled with some sculpey. Maybe sanding the areas afterwards is a good idea. One bad thing though is Yateem's left arm in bandages which is a horror to clean from the mouldlines. What I really like is the pose of the figure and together with the Mandrill the figure has a lot of power and dynamic, even Yateem stands calm. The Mandrill who wants to charge and yells is just gorgeous. A good team on a base I think.

A closer view on both the sculpts follows now, showing what I described above:

After cleaning the parts from the mouldlines I recommend to you to clean the figures with soap. The Resin that arrives is still a bit shiny from the casting and I want to avoid problems while priming with washing the figure. It is also good to get rid of small remains from your cleaning process.

The build up was pretty easy as the parts fit very well - as said before just here and there a little cutting was needed but the resin used on the figures is pretty easy to handle. Both together look very cool I think.

I did start to prepare the figures for single painting. Not on a base, just straight figure painting each of them. Therefore I pinned the figures to a wooden WIP socket, which was pretty easy for Yateem due his simple stance. The Mandrill only recieved one pin to his leg. At this point I cleaned the figures finally with the mentioned soap before I primed them, so sorry that this picture still shows the dirty version.

You can really feel the sculpting power of Allan Carrasco, like in mainly all of his sculpts. So I wasn't able to not start the figure after I primed it. Just an early WIP, but truely a great team in the end as I already have a vision.

Hope you enjoyed this MU.
Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman