Friday, January 25, 2013

Aoshima 1:35th Scale Plastic Samurai

Here's a small group of 1:35th scale plastic models that I worked on many years ago - before I got into gaming and was more into modelling. The box art showed one mounted samurai so I thought it would be a large single-figure kit. As everything was printed in Japanese, I was surprised to find a bunch small multi-part figures. I went ahead and put them together and went a little wild with a hot knife and putty modifying their poses and also adding details like mail and plates on their sleeve armor. I had forgotten about them and discovered them recently while rifling through boxes of junk. I glued back some broken off pieces and mounted them on bases from Warmachine (30mm for the foot and 50mm for the mounted figure).
The banners are made from tissue paper soaked in white glue. The tall eboshi helmet as well as the arquebusier's hat were made from heated plastic and a putty. Thread was used for the helmet cords - as my wife is a trained seamstress, we always have stuff like that around.
The mounted guy was actually supposed to sit on a field chair, but put him on the horse instead. I think the guy with eboshi helmet was the one for the horse. The horse tail is a lock of hair donated by my wife.
The arquebuse is actually a Brown Bess musket from a 54mm Airfix kit with its stock modified a bit.
The cloth horse reins and also the cloth belts holding the short swords are also made from tissue paper soaked in white glue. The tassels on the horse are from some long forgotten ornament. The figures are a bit crude looking (especially the horse!), but I learned a lot about Sengoku period armor from the research which has helped me with my more recent projects.