Saturday, 19 October 2013

Testing an Idea: Celtiberians

I've finished well over half of the Celtiberians for my Ancient Spanish army - mostly the commands and guys with patterned cloaks.  The rest need different tunic colours to mix in, and also to look different from the Scutarii and Caetrati, even though they are very similar figures:
These are three test shots to see how they are turning out. The problem with Celtiberians is the decorated stripes running down the short tunics.  On many of the figures these will simply be boring white stripes, but I've made some of them a bit wider to accommodate designs.  I'm not very good at free hand painting these, so I've tried a different solution, which I hope you can see on the guys in these photos: chopped up Veni Vidi Vici 15mm transfers.  I think they are clearest on the guy second from the left.
There are loads of different designs, and they come in various colours.  For the sake of simplicity and clarity I've used black on white.  They take a bit of time, but I quite like the effect, and they have come out a lot better than my painting alone.  I will probably do something similar with some Thracians I'll be painting for Willie at one point.
This is how they look from the front, with Little Big Men transfers on Gripping Beast Celtic shields.  May they smite Romans mightily...
Posted by Caliban at 12:07:00
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13 comments:

  1. BigRedBat19 October 2013 at 12:47

    Very interesting. Perhaps you could ask Steve if he could produce sheets of them? One sheet would do a whole army!

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  2. El Grego19 October 2013 at 15:18

    Very interesting indeed.

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  3. Caliban19 October 2013 at 15:22

    Hi Simon, I think I see where you're coming from with this idea, since you have some of the Companion Miniatures Spanish as well. I have seen some decals manufacturers recently making things like sabretache numbers and horse blanket decorations for 28mm Napoleonics - it would be good to see something similar for tunics and cloaks in the ancients period. I'd certainly buy them if we could persuade Steve!

    Cheers
    Paul

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  4. BigRedBat19 October 2013 at 15:26

    I'd imagine they would be very quick for him to design, just "s"s in a strip. Were they easy to apply? I'd give some a go!

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  5. Anibal Invictus19 October 2013 at 17:25

    Very smart solution!

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  6. Phil19 October 2013 at 17:44

    A good idea, clever and great!

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  7. Caliban19 October 2013 at 18:41

    Thanks for looking, everyone. They were a bit fiddly, but no more so than Little Big Men transfers. The trick was cutting them to the right size.

    Simon is right about the Iberian designs being mostly S shaped, at least that's the most common one if you look on the web. It would be a relatively simple matter to have a strip of these in transfer form that you could just cut as you like.

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  8. peter19 October 2013 at 19:29

    They look excellent to me! You did a great job on those decals!

    Greetings
    Peter

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  9. Caliban19 October 2013 at 20:52

    Hi Peter, thanks for looking at the recent posts.

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  10. Monty19 October 2013 at 20:59

    So clever and the results are superb. I love to paint Iberians in 28mm one day and I'm filing this tip away. Thanks for sharing!

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  11. Caliban19 October 2013 at 21:45

    Cheers, Monty - we must be online at the same time, because I've just left a comment on your Byzantines!

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  12. Tarty21 October 2013 at 12:45

    I like the idea nicely done they look great. Did you try using decal softening solution ? I find this helps a lot with VVV it really helps them bed down. Good job.

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  13. Caliban21 October 2013 at 13:23

    Hi Richard, as it happens I didn't, mainly because the pieces are quite small. It was next on my list to help with the idea, though, if needed. I'll maybe wait and see how long they last on the tabletop - if they start falling off I'll do what you suggest (thanks!).

    Paul

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