So, I have embarked on my first proper figure. I have hitherto tried fiddling about with Airfix 1/32nd scale multipose parts but they were far too small and annoying and I don’t find it satisfying to use someone else’s work, so they don't count. 
First of all I must apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. I don’t know one end of a camera from the other.
The Subject
This will (fingers crossed) be a rendition in 1/10th scale of a Roman soldier; Cnaeus Musius, eagle bearer of the 14th legion, at about the time of the reign of Claudius. His portrait tombstone is in the Landesmuseum in Mainz, where his legion was stationed from 9 AD until they moved to take part in the invasion of Britannia in 43 (before being recalled with indecent haste to the continent for the civil war of the year 69). This stone dates to before the move to Britain.
He is in some kind of (what I’ll for argument’s sake here call) “parade dress”, posing as if in attendance at one of the dedicatory ceremonies and rituals that were regularly performed for the standards. The Dies natalis aquilae “birthday of the eagle” was celebrated each year so we’ll assume he’s in attendance at something like that.
He is supporting the decorated eagle standard with one hand and he is leaning on a curved oval shield with the other. The eagle is holding a crown around its wings and has an acorn in its beak. His dagger is worn horizontally on his right hip (apparently with a hilt like the dagger carried by the soldier whose remains were found at Herculaneum). He is not wearing a sword (which would be worn on the opposite side to the dagger). The weapon on his right is definitely a dagger, as a sword would be hellish awkward to wear horizontally like this, and there is other evidence for the practice of wearing daggers horizontally like this. The shape of the scabbard (what little there is of it visible) curves in like a dagger too.
He is wearing an under-armour garment with some kind of fabric [?] garment on top of that. An open work harness supports his military decorations (medals and Celtic torques bracelets worn as ornaments). He also wears a bracelet on his right wrist which is also a military decoration (in the Roman world of the 1st century AD only ladies and badass soldiers wore bracelets). Cnaeus must have seen some action in his 15 years of service out on the frontiers, and performed with gallantry.
His dagger belt is plated, presumably in silver, and has a split-tongued arrangement with weighted strap ends.
He is wearing typical Roman openwork hobnailed boots and [most likely] has bare legs.
He is bare headed, as was typical for legionary eagle and flag bearers (eagle bearers wearing lion pelts is purely an invention of 19th century antiquarians).
Why 1/10th scale?
I chose 1/10th scale as it produces figures which are large enough to get a decent amount of detail into but are not too large (the big 1/6th scale I tend to think of as a doll scale, not a miniature figure scale). 1/10th also makes converting sizes to scale much easier; you find out the scale of the real thing in centimetres then just read that as millimetres. A sword 55cm long becomes a model sword 55mm long. Easy! (even for me). It also means I’ll be obliged to build it all myself as I won’t be able to buy in ready made parts like heads, hands, weapons and so on. These tend to be in those awkward traditional “inch scales” 1/12th, 1/16th and so on. I prefer it like that.
The Armature
I started by preparing some anatomical references to scale and had these professionally laminated.
These represent a man 5 feet 9 inches tall imperial [5 feet 11 inches Roman] in 1/10th scale. I have made some for other heights and in 1/20th scale too (in case I want to try something smaller sometime). 5’11” Roman fits the height requirements for soldiers as recommended in Vegetius’ De re militari. I could fine tune these a bit for other figures in future by altering the length of the legs, as this is what accounts for a large range (though not all) of the variation in height in humans.
Not being confident that I can sculpt a human in proportion from blobs of clay I first made a somewhat stylized skull, ribcage and pelvis to scale to use as an armature. These were made in plasticine (after many false starts and deformed monstrosities). Then I stuck them in the fridge for a day or two to stiffen the plasticine up.
I then rolled out a thin sheet of Magic Sculp[t] (what is the proper name for that stuff, anyway?) and pressed it carefully over the refrigerated plasticine. Once this had cured, I sawed the hard packages in pieces to make push moulds.
I then used these moulds to make rough castings of skull, ribcage and pelvis in Fimo polymer clay and baked them hard. I made several of these and put the others aside for future figures.
Wanting to be able to sculpt the arms, legs, hands and feet separately. I drilled out holes in appropriate places and inserted lengths of brass capillary tube into which I can fit aluminium rods to articulate the limbs.
I have cut more capillary tube to size for the forearms and shins so I can slot in the hands and feet once these have been done. The capillary tube will also mean that I won’t get elbow or knee joints misplaced when I come to bend them. These tubes are slid onto more bent aluminium rod to represent the upper arms and legs.
I have posed the body and head into the desired attitude (head looking slightly to one side and standing contraposto on his right leg) and fixed them in place with some more baked polymer clay. The head pose is fixed in place and I’ll use the body as a handhold while I sculpt that.
In parallel, I started working on the accoutrements. So far, the eagle, shield, shield boss, medals and dagger parts are in progress, with belt buckle, dagger frogs, belt plates and torques decorations to follow later.
The Eagle
The eagle is built up of Magic Sculp[t] on paperclip wire. The head is based on the silver one in the “Marengo horde” which is often said to be (but almost certainly isn’t really) a fragment of a legionary eagle. This is just a “plucked” version so far. I will be adding the feathers and details in polymer clay. Polymer clay is very forgiving. If I make a pig’s ear of it, I can easily scrape it all off and try again. I anticipate I’ll be doing quite a lot of that.
The pedestal is being shaped in Magic Sculp[t] on a length of aluminium rod (with styrene sheet inserts to guide the sizing). I also have half a thunderbolt in progress (the eagle sits grasping this). I’ll cast this so I have two identical sides. The sparks flying off the thunderbolt will probably have to be cut from styrene sheet. That’ll be very fiddly.
The plan is to complete and mount all the eagle parts on the pedestal then drop cast it in resin and remount it on an aluminium rod. I can then have a few eagles ready for the inevitable disasters with painting and finishing. I also plan to reuse parts of the eagle for another figure later.
A 3mm dowel is drilled out ready (I concocted a centring jig for this) for the eventually finished eagle on its pedestal to be slotted into the top. The handle and ferrule will be made and added later along with the leaf crown and the acorn twig.
The Shield
The shield shape on the stone is clearly a curved oval, with a very good depiction of the design on the face.
I made some convex and concave jigs in Magic Sculp[t] to help keep the curvature of the shield consistent while I build it. I am making the core of the shield by laminating sheets of spray-glued tracing paper (the full-size original was very likely made of plywood) until I build it up to the correct scale thickness.
A Roman shield in this era should be no more than about 8mm thick at the rim (so 0.8mm on the model). Shields on commercial model figures (due to unavoidable casting limitations) always appear far too thick and I definitely want to avoid that.
One of the convex jigs will be used as a support for building up the wings, thunderbolt and sparks of the shield design. I am interested in the thesis of Dr Boris Burandt [of Burg Linn Museum, Krefeld] who suggests that the designs were at least sometimes built up in low relief with painted leather appliques. If these copied the construction method of later medieval shields then the leather appliques would have been covered in a mix of chalk and animal glue and then painted while in place on the shield face. Some surviving wooden fragments of Roman shields have traces of a “chalk” layer on them which might support this.
I drew the shield design in Gimp, basing it closely on the one on the stone (BTW if there were legion-specific shield designs in this era - which is not known for certain - then this would without any argument be the one for the 14th legion). I added extra guidelines to help accurately position everything, such as the central cut-out for the hand grip and the horizontal and vertical bracing frame on the back. Then I scaled it to size and printed out several of these on paper.
I’ll use this as a guide as I build up the parts of the low relief design (in paper or Magic Sculp[t] – I haven’t decided yet). Then I’ll planish foil over that and fix the foil to the face of the tracing paper laminate shield and that’ll be the face of the shield ready for painting.
The shield boss
The shield seems to have originally had an ornamented boss, although that part of the stone is now very worn. I am working on a rendition based on the boss from Blaricum in the Netherlands. This shows a gorgon’s face. These had an apotropaic symbolism to the Romans. I actually suspect, from the style, that the Blaricum boss is at least 2nd century in date, so I might simplify the elaborate embossing on it a bit to make it look more period appropriate.
The dagger
I made the dagger’s guard and pommel in Magic Sculp[t] with the shape of the one from Herculaneum in mind while observing the one shown on the stone. I made a two-part push mould out of the Magic sculp[t] parts in the same way as I made the body part armatures. I will then use these to press out castings in ivory effect polymer clay and bake them hard. These will then polish up nicely. I’ll make a few as I will inevitably drill the fixing holes through them all wonky on the first few tries, unless I jury rig some kind of jig for it. The grip itself is being carved down from cured superfine-white Milliput (meant to represent bone).
The dagger in its scabbard is being built up of Magic Sculp[t] on an ice lolly [popsicle] stick.
I am basing it on the dagger found at Velsen (Netherlands) as this is of the same approximate date and rough geographic area. Making the elaborately inlaid face will be a huge challenge.
Photo by Jona Lendering CCO 1.0 Universal
For all the accoutrements, dimensioned illustrations from archaeological papers [for preference] are scanned and resized to 1/10th scale so I can use dividers to make sure I am keeping to scale.
I have now gathered all the materials I think I’ll need for the rest of the figure and I’ve also been experimenting with various concoctions for turning brown paper into convincing miniature leather. His belt at least will be red leather, as there is good evidence for this.
I will post more when I have made more progress. I only have a very short time in the evenings on weekdays to work on this, with real progress having to wait until the weekends.
(Please let me know if this is not the right way to post a vBench)
-- Harry
First of all I must apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. I don’t know one end of a camera from the other.
The Subject
This will (fingers crossed) be a rendition in 1/10th scale of a Roman soldier; Cnaeus Musius, eagle bearer of the 14th legion, at about the time of the reign of Claudius. His portrait tombstone is in the Landesmuseum in Mainz, where his legion was stationed from 9 AD until they moved to take part in the invasion of Britannia in 43 (before being recalled with indecent haste to the continent for the civil war of the year 69). This stone dates to before the move to Britain.
He is in some kind of (what I’ll for argument’s sake here call) “parade dress”, posing as if in attendance at one of the dedicatory ceremonies and rituals that were regularly performed for the standards. The Dies natalis aquilae “birthday of the eagle” was celebrated each year so we’ll assume he’s in attendance at something like that.
He is supporting the decorated eagle standard with one hand and he is leaning on a curved oval shield with the other. The eagle is holding a crown around its wings and has an acorn in its beak. His dagger is worn horizontally on his right hip (apparently with a hilt like the dagger carried by the soldier whose remains were found at Herculaneum). He is not wearing a sword (which would be worn on the opposite side to the dagger). The weapon on his right is definitely a dagger, as a sword would be hellish awkward to wear horizontally like this, and there is other evidence for the practice of wearing daggers horizontally like this. The shape of the scabbard (what little there is of it visible) curves in like a dagger too.
He is wearing an under-armour garment with some kind of fabric [?] garment on top of that. An open work harness supports his military decorations (medals and Celtic torques bracelets worn as ornaments). He also wears a bracelet on his right wrist which is also a military decoration (in the Roman world of the 1st century AD only ladies and badass soldiers wore bracelets). Cnaeus must have seen some action in his 15 years of service out on the frontiers, and performed with gallantry.
His dagger belt is plated, presumably in silver, and has a split-tongued arrangement with weighted strap ends.
He is wearing typical Roman openwork hobnailed boots and [most likely] has bare legs.
He is bare headed, as was typical for legionary eagle and flag bearers (eagle bearers wearing lion pelts is purely an invention of 19th century antiquarians).
Why 1/10th scale?
I chose 1/10th scale as it produces figures which are large enough to get a decent amount of detail into but are not too large (the big 1/6th scale I tend to think of as a doll scale, not a miniature figure scale). 1/10th also makes converting sizes to scale much easier; you find out the scale of the real thing in centimetres then just read that as millimetres. A sword 55cm long becomes a model sword 55mm long. Easy! (even for me). It also means I’ll be obliged to build it all myself as I won’t be able to buy in ready made parts like heads, hands, weapons and so on. These tend to be in those awkward traditional “inch scales” 1/12th, 1/16th and so on. I prefer it like that.
The Armature
I started by preparing some anatomical references to scale and had these professionally laminated.
These represent a man 5 feet 9 inches tall imperial [5 feet 11 inches Roman] in 1/10th scale. I have made some for other heights and in 1/20th scale too (in case I want to try something smaller sometime). 5’11” Roman fits the height requirements for soldiers as recommended in Vegetius’ De re militari. I could fine tune these a bit for other figures in future by altering the length of the legs, as this is what accounts for a large range (though not all) of the variation in height in humans.
Not being confident that I can sculpt a human in proportion from blobs of clay I first made a somewhat stylized skull, ribcage and pelvis to scale to use as an armature. These were made in plasticine (after many false starts and deformed monstrosities). Then I stuck them in the fridge for a day or two to stiffen the plasticine up.
I then rolled out a thin sheet of Magic Sculp[t] (what is the proper name for that stuff, anyway?) and pressed it carefully over the refrigerated plasticine. Once this had cured, I sawed the hard packages in pieces to make push moulds.
I then used these moulds to make rough castings of skull, ribcage and pelvis in Fimo polymer clay and baked them hard. I made several of these and put the others aside for future figures.
Wanting to be able to sculpt the arms, legs, hands and feet separately. I drilled out holes in appropriate places and inserted lengths of brass capillary tube into which I can fit aluminium rods to articulate the limbs.
I have cut more capillary tube to size for the forearms and shins so I can slot in the hands and feet once these have been done. The capillary tube will also mean that I won’t get elbow or knee joints misplaced when I come to bend them. These tubes are slid onto more bent aluminium rod to represent the upper arms and legs.
I have posed the body and head into the desired attitude (head looking slightly to one side and standing contraposto on his right leg) and fixed them in place with some more baked polymer clay. The head pose is fixed in place and I’ll use the body as a handhold while I sculpt that.
In parallel, I started working on the accoutrements. So far, the eagle, shield, shield boss, medals and dagger parts are in progress, with belt buckle, dagger frogs, belt plates and torques decorations to follow later.
The Eagle
The eagle is built up of Magic Sculp[t] on paperclip wire. The head is based on the silver one in the “Marengo horde” which is often said to be (but almost certainly isn’t really) a fragment of a legionary eagle. This is just a “plucked” version so far. I will be adding the feathers and details in polymer clay. Polymer clay is very forgiving. If I make a pig’s ear of it, I can easily scrape it all off and try again. I anticipate I’ll be doing quite a lot of that.
The pedestal is being shaped in Magic Sculp[t] on a length of aluminium rod (with styrene sheet inserts to guide the sizing). I also have half a thunderbolt in progress (the eagle sits grasping this). I’ll cast this so I have two identical sides. The sparks flying off the thunderbolt will probably have to be cut from styrene sheet. That’ll be very fiddly.
The plan is to complete and mount all the eagle parts on the pedestal then drop cast it in resin and remount it on an aluminium rod. I can then have a few eagles ready for the inevitable disasters with painting and finishing. I also plan to reuse parts of the eagle for another figure later.
A 3mm dowel is drilled out ready (I concocted a centring jig for this) for the eventually finished eagle on its pedestal to be slotted into the top. The handle and ferrule will be made and added later along with the leaf crown and the acorn twig.
The Shield
The shield shape on the stone is clearly a curved oval, with a very good depiction of the design on the face.
I made some convex and concave jigs in Magic Sculp[t] to help keep the curvature of the shield consistent while I build it. I am making the core of the shield by laminating sheets of spray-glued tracing paper (the full-size original was very likely made of plywood) until I build it up to the correct scale thickness.
A Roman shield in this era should be no more than about 8mm thick at the rim (so 0.8mm on the model). Shields on commercial model figures (due to unavoidable casting limitations) always appear far too thick and I definitely want to avoid that.
One of the convex jigs will be used as a support for building up the wings, thunderbolt and sparks of the shield design. I am interested in the thesis of Dr Boris Burandt [of Burg Linn Museum, Krefeld] who suggests that the designs were at least sometimes built up in low relief with painted leather appliques. If these copied the construction method of later medieval shields then the leather appliques would have been covered in a mix of chalk and animal glue and then painted while in place on the shield face. Some surviving wooden fragments of Roman shields have traces of a “chalk” layer on them which might support this.
I drew the shield design in Gimp, basing it closely on the one on the stone (BTW if there were legion-specific shield designs in this era - which is not known for certain - then this would without any argument be the one for the 14th legion). I added extra guidelines to help accurately position everything, such as the central cut-out for the hand grip and the horizontal and vertical bracing frame on the back. Then I scaled it to size and printed out several of these on paper.
I’ll use this as a guide as I build up the parts of the low relief design (in paper or Magic Sculp[t] – I haven’t decided yet). Then I’ll planish foil over that and fix the foil to the face of the tracing paper laminate shield and that’ll be the face of the shield ready for painting.
The shield boss
The shield seems to have originally had an ornamented boss, although that part of the stone is now very worn. I am working on a rendition based on the boss from Blaricum in the Netherlands. This shows a gorgon’s face. These had an apotropaic symbolism to the Romans. I actually suspect, from the style, that the Blaricum boss is at least 2nd century in date, so I might simplify the elaborate embossing on it a bit to make it look more period appropriate.
The dagger
I made the dagger’s guard and pommel in Magic Sculp[t] with the shape of the one from Herculaneum in mind while observing the one shown on the stone. I made a two-part push mould out of the Magic sculp[t] parts in the same way as I made the body part armatures. I will then use these to press out castings in ivory effect polymer clay and bake them hard. These will then polish up nicely. I’ll make a few as I will inevitably drill the fixing holes through them all wonky on the first few tries, unless I jury rig some kind of jig for it. The grip itself is being carved down from cured superfine-white Milliput (meant to represent bone).
The dagger in its scabbard is being built up of Magic Sculp[t] on an ice lolly [popsicle] stick.
I am basing it on the dagger found at Velsen (Netherlands) as this is of the same approximate date and rough geographic area. Making the elaborately inlaid face will be a huge challenge.
Photo by Jona Lendering CCO 1.0 Universal
For all the accoutrements, dimensioned illustrations from archaeological papers [for preference] are scanned and resized to 1/10th scale so I can use dividers to make sure I am keeping to scale.
I have now gathered all the materials I think I’ll need for the rest of the figure and I’ve also been experimenting with various concoctions for turning brown paper into convincing miniature leather. His belt at least will be red leather, as there is good evidence for this.
I will post more when I have made more progress. I only have a very short time in the evenings on weekdays to work on this, with real progress having to wait until the weekends.
(Please let me know if this is not the right way to post a vBench)
-- Harry
