Peg Horse, Final Hurdle

Sorry, this is yet another post about my peg horse tinkering. But, I still wasn't happy. I had two main gripes; the shape of the horses head and (still) the rider's legs.

Getting Ahead...
OK. I know I wanted 'simple' but I think I was setting my bar a little too low. My first few peg horse prototypes had a very unsatisfactory head shape...I just couldn't seem to capture an equine profile, but  I couldn't put my finger on why it wasn't looking right.

Finally, it clicked...Ears.

Left: My 4th prototype. Right: 5th Prototype, with ears.

An obvious omission it may have been, but I was trying not to add additional features to my peg figures. My peg soldiers have no facial features and I thought that I should carry this on with their horses. Wrong.

My first few horses looked more like the Loch Ness monster! And apart from the lack of ears I also had the angle of the horses neck wrong and I rectified this as well in my 5th prototype (I made the neck more upright and the head slightly more downward looking).

Construction Simplified
While my horse and rider's 'look' was too simple in the end, their construction remained a little too convoluted. This was particularly true with my previous attempt at modelling the peg horseman's legs, for although they looked OK I had to use a lot of Milliput to complete the figure.

In the end, the overall look of my 4th prototype was that it had far too much putty holding all the joins together and fill all the gaps in my badly measured joints. So, I thought I'd have one final go, this time simplifying the cutting of the joints entailing (hopefully) less filler...

I decided to have a go at finishing the model as a Prussian Uhlan (lancer).

The main change was the way I chose to model the rider's legs as I went for a very stylised look. Rather than sculpting a (relatively) 'realistic' form of a seated rider I broke the peg figure into two with the idea of re-joining the separate parts by painting in 'missing' upper-legs.

In Conclusion
I'm much happier with the outcome of this final prototype, having toned out al the annoying bugs to my satisfaction. So, I'll have a go at painting the model now, just to check that my bisected body ploy works!

After that, I should be able to crack on with my first peg cavalry unit.