I think this is the second or third installment of my project to strip off old paint jobs from when I was a wee lad and update to something more modern. No question the old FTT troll with the female captive on his back looks much better. As I was rummaging around I ran across an old bag of mins that go all the way back to my first purchases ever, something like 45+years ago.
Yes these guys need some TLC!
These are pre-slota base skeletons from Citadel's Fantasy Tribe Skeletons (FTS). I have always been fascinated by skeletons especially fantasy miniature ones. I place that blame squarely on Ray Harryhausen and the skeleton stop motion scene from his 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts. It seems that this has been mentioned by many other hobbyist similar in age. As noted in my Digging Up Bones post, I've been collecting them for my entire hobby career. Citadel was clearly head and shoulders above most miniature companies in terms of quality, detail and variety of their products in the late 70's and early 80's. The Fantasy Tribe series dates from 1979-1983, after that it became the C series of codes.
I immediately knew I had to get some of these great miniatures. Wargaming and RPG mins were not easy to come by back then but I was relentless in my search. Whenever I went on vacation with my family I would comb the yellow pages (if you dont know what those are I dont know that I can explain them to you!) finding any and all hobby shops in our destination. If they were close they would indulge me, if not I could only dream of the treasures that I was missing out on. I'm fairly confident that these miniatures we actually ones that Ral Partha produced under license from Citadel and distributed in the US in the Ral Partha Imports line. I managed to find a pic of one of my actually mins on ebay still on the blister.
I had these guys in an old 2L bottle diorama that I learned how to make from an copy of Military Modeling magazine back in the day.
They had what I thought was a brilliant idea, nowadays I think it would be referred to as a hack. Back in the 1900's, (okay 1980's but using 1900's sounds older) the the 2L bottles of pop were a two piece creation. They had a clear bottle that was rounded on the bottom and a black or appropriately colored bottom that squared it off so it could stand up.
The article shows you how to pop the bottom off the bottle, cut the top off where it started to taper and then attach the bottom to the freshly cut piece, instant display case.
Or you could attach it to a wooden base and accomplish the same thing
There guys were in a similar work with lots of cotton balls stretched out to simulate fog. Actually quite brilliant of my younger self if I don't sound too boisterous.
Fast forward to today. Like anything old they clearly need a fresh coat of paint. So off we go. First are a few close up starting pics. Clearly I had no knowledge of inks, washes, or dry-brushing yet.
After a good soak in Green Stuff for the better part of a month or two.
Some apex shading with pure white.
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