Project diary: 1177 B.C. - 01

Hey all,

welcome to the first actual, substantive entry of my project diary. If you're wondering what this is, please check the announcement post, in which I explain the motivation and general goals of the diary. At the bottom of that post, you will find a link to all parts of this series (constantly updated as soon as new articles are published).

In this article, I briefly reflect on selecting a suitable mini for the project

Maybe it sounds strange that the selection of the miniature would require much thought. Often, it is the miniature that comes first, which inspires a project idea, and from which all else followes. As noted in the prologue, however, in this particular project, it was the other way around: my idea started with the project's title, "1177 B.C" and all other considerations followed. Pretty much right away from the moment the idea popped up in my head, I knew that I wanted to use one of the minis from the Caesar set "Sea Peoples". And as is usually the case with the 1/72 soft plastic sets, you get a lot of different poses and individual sculpts in each package - so, the first task was picking a mini that would best portray the story.

As noted in the prologue, I envisioned the warrior arriving at the beach, moving forward, inland where they would hope for rich plunder and some serious pillaging. So, I wanted a miniature that was dynamic, in kind of a moving action, brandishing his weapon, while ideally being a nice and realistic sculpt. While waiting for the set of Sea Peoples to arrive, I took a quick look at the set roster over at Plastic Soldier Review (PSR) to see what would be "in the box". Looking at the pictures, I decided that, in addition to the general pose, I wanted the miniature to be bare-chested (I wanted to paint some skin in this project) and to wield a sword. So, based on the pics, I made a quick pre-selection of three different poses that would fit my idea:

Picture courtesy of Plastic Soldier Review

Picture courtesy of Plastic Soldier Review

Once I had the set in my hands, I checked all poses again - seeing the minis "live" often gives a different impression than the pics on a website - and now had to decide which to choose. While I liked all three minis, pose No 3 was particularly suitable for what I had in mind:

• based on the pics on PSR, I would have chosen No 1. The mini has a nice dynamic pose and I like his headdress. However, once I had the mini in hand, I did not like the way he holds his sword and shield. I very much would have liked him to hold both closer to his body, the shield covering parts of his body and the sword pointing towards the front. I could change this by cutting off and reattaching the arms, of course, but this was supposed to be a quick and fun project. So: no resculpting this time!


• figure No 2 is nice; it's sufficiently dynamic and I like the threatening pose, especially the sword-arm, even though for my taste, I would have liked it better if - analogous to No 1, above - the shield covered (parts of) his body. However, I didn't like the headdress particularly much, and to me the pose, in general, felt a bit more like immediately before engagement in melée. I didn't see him at the beach, just coming off the boat. So, two gone, one left.


• this leaves No 3. To me this mini is the most dynamic of the three, with his broad stance that, yet, looked like coming directly out of movement, the slight twist in his torso, his head turned side/backwards and his the sword held high, as if he was one of the first guys on the beach, encouraging and motivating his fellow raiders to follow him. I decided this would fit the overall story I wanted to tell best. In addition, I thought that the pose would work well with the basing concept I had in mind...

But for now, thanks for following this first part of my project diary. In the next article I will talk a bit about the concept of the base.

As always, let me know, in the comments, if you have questions. See you in a bit!

Best, D.