Well I promised some work-in-progress (WIP) pics of the 1/32 (54mm) Gladiators so here they are. First of all some photos as they came out of the boxes. This first photo shows the Italeri Gladiators; there are two identical sprues in the box, and the photo shows one of them. On the one hand it seems a bit of a waste to have two identical bears and lions, but I figured, I'll use one of each with my 40mm greeks as giant/legendary examples of their breed, so I'm not too disappointed. I'll just have to get the knife to the identical gladiators.
Next up is the single sprue contained in Pegasus Hobbies Gladiators set 1. For some reason, Pegasus have decided to make their figures seperate from their bases. So I happily used my normal glue for plastics - Revell 'Contacta Professional' - only to find that it doesn't seem to work on these figures! This was a real shock as it's worked a treat on both Wargames Factory's Zombies and Mantic Games Ghouls, as well as the Amera plastic buildings that I had ... I guess it's a different kind of plastic! Anyway, here is the sprue:
And here is the sprue of bases and weapons for this set:
Finally for the sets this is the contents of Pegasus Hobbies Gladiators set 2. As you can see, some of the gladiators had seperated from the sprue before they got to me - no damage though.
And again the seperate bases and weapons.
Each of the boxes had photos on the back showing how the figures should be assembled, so I've kept those and binned the rest of the boxes.
I got the figures from modelhobbies.co.uk, placing my order about 8pm last tuesday and was pleasantly surpised when they arrived on friday morning! No fuss or quibbles - the boxes were listed as being in stock, and given the speed of delivery they must have been! When I order stuff in future I shall be sure to check their site. I had done some research on price, and if they weren't the lowest, they were definitely close.
So over the long weekend we've just had, I got the figures washed and assembled and have stuck them all on 60x60mm MDF bases that I had in 'stock' from an abandoned Polemos project. Adding some metal bases I had to add a bit of weight to the bases, I used DAS modelling clay to hide the weights and smooth out the figures bases. Then I painted them all 'Sand'. When finished I intend to give them a couat of diluted PVA, stick some real sand to them and then varnish. For the real sand, I was in Tesco's the other day and saw they do 10kg bags of playpit sand for £2 so I bought one of them - beats sivving (sp?) out sharp sand which is what I had been intending!
With the clay dry and painted, I started on the figures themselves, adopting a production line technique - i.e. the same colour on all the figs using it, then doing the next colour and so on. Sometimes though, I find that disheartening as it seems that you're not making any progress, so I'm going to switch to one figure at a time.
Here is an overhead group shot of the progress so far. One thing to note - I undercoated them with my ususal spray paint of choice - Halford's matt grey primer paint - but given the size fo the figures I found this too dark, some colours (e.g. white and tanned flesh) needing 2-3 coats to stop the grey showing. I now have some Halford's white plastic primer for the rest!
And the same group from a lower angle. I'll post individual pics as I make more progress.
