Project diary: 1177 B.C. - 03

Hey all,

welcome to the third page 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).

Today's post will be about preparing the mini for painting. Since I have talked about this in extended detail in the past, I will only briefly summarize what I did!

Same same... but different?

As usual, the Caesar set included a few of the same pose, so the first thing I had to do was pick the mini that I liked best. Normally, I would choose the best-cast version (the least undercuts, casting mistakes, flash/moldlines), but in this case, all three were pretty much the same. However, probably due to the rather soft plastic Caesar uses for their casts, the three versions differed a bit in the angles (legs to ground, sword to arm, etc.). So I just picked the version I liked best (in this case, the first from the left). The actual preparation went very smoothly as there were no undercuts, very little flash - just a bit around the shield, and nothing much in terms of moldlines. Very well done, Caesar!

Very little for me to do!

Just a little bit of flash along the lower shield-rim

So, ultimately, all I had to do was to cut away the little plastic base, clean up the shield a little and make sure the figure was really clean of moldlines.

The tools of the trade...

As usual, when I am done with the knifework on those soft-plastic miniatures, I treat the mini with some soft-plastic primer, which (I feel) smoothes out tiny micro-imperfections in the plastic.

After that was done, I drilled holes into the mini's feet with a .4 mm drill. In the step after the next, I will insert acupuncture needles as pins, which will fix the mini to the base. Why not pin them now, you ask? It'll all become clear in the next installment...

Thanks for reading. In the next part of the project diary, I will address the first steps of building the base.

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

Best, D.