Molatero Jaegers near complete

Painting stripes on trousers are a real pain! And this has held up my completion of my two Molatarian Jaeger test figures...

Still, nearly done now and I am quite pleased with the uniform. In the grand tradition of the Imperial era I have made a distinction between the officer's uniform and that of the enlisted man's.

Not much to do - just get those stripes straight! And then add the gloss layer.

Light Infantry test figures

Having received my resin heads with Romanian hats it was time to fit a couple of these to my AiP Russian bodies. My Molarian light infantry are loosely based on the Romanian army of the 1890s, the 1900 Russians being a very good base as they shared several items of equipment that were common to the Romanians.

However, there is some differences between the Russians and the Romanians, including the double breasted Russian style tunic and I will have to modify this. A simple job which just entails smoothing away the tunic button seam and replicating it with a central seam and pockets...

You might be able to see that I have already removed the tunic seam on the officer figure (in the foreground) and I will be adding a thin strip of kitchen foil to represent a new seam and pocket tabs. I also added a pin to help attach the heads to the bodies and will smooth out any gaps or jagged join with some Milliput putty.

Once I have any imperfections filled and modifications added I will start the painting of these two test figures.

Adding new heads to commercial figures is the next stage in move towards - eventually - producing a wholly original toy soldier of my own design. The next stage will be to add a completely custom head, including face, and then a custom body.

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clicking on this Complete Series Link.

Er, a whole lot of heads!

...Can't think of a suitable pun for this post, but the postman delivered a consignment of resin heads from my brother. These are copies of the custom Romanian headgear I made for my Molaterian light infantry.

My Romanian officer's kepis turned out brilliantly well. I really am pleased with these, my brother's done a fantastic job. Far more than I actually need, but I happen to know someone who will be very happy to have any spares sent their way!

The Romanian capela field cap was a lot more tricky to cast apparently, but he has sent me enough to get me started...

I will be detaching these hats from the heads and then transplanting them onto my AiP Russians. Once I have my own custom head cast I will start adding my hats to this so I have a totally original head/hat combo. But for now just getting the hats on my AiPs soldiers is good enough, my dream of eventually producing a complete soldier of my own design will have to wait! (Small steps eh?)

Well, aside from this, Ian also included a bag of miscellaneous heads for me to play with...The more the merrier. :)

So... Onwards and upwards - let's get on with my test Molatarian light infantry! Let's get some heads on shoulders.

New heads cast for Molaterians

My brother didn't hang about! No sooner had he received the two heads that I sent up - bedecked in their Romanian style hats - that he began the casting process...

As usual white resin does not photograph so well.

What will happen next is that he will send me back a few copies of these and then I will add the hats to different custom heads. I will send these back up to him and he will then cast the final working heads.

In the end I will end up with about 25 or so of these new custom heads which I will attach to my AiP Russians to make my Molaterian infantry. I think the officer's kepi looks particularly dashing!

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Update: My brother posted up this photo of the progress of his casting today...

These are the prototypes he will be sending back to me so I can add my own custom faces...Progress!

Get a hat! Part 2

Having done the officer's hat it was time to attempt the tricky looking infantry soldiers hat. Based on the traditional Romanian 'capela' style field cap I found that this was a quite difficult shape for me to sculpt in Milliput.

Left: A reminder of what the Romanian 'Capela' hat looks like.

Now, as usual, white Milliput does not photograph easily (without setting up proper lighting), these snaps were the best I could do this morning with my trusty iPhone...

Now this is just my take on the Romanian capela, it's not strictly authentic (it's a bit too high). But my unintentional inaccuracy is - I think - quite pleasing really as it has the look of a authentic traditional hat, maybe just not the one I was going for!

I think I am happy to go with this look as a traditional Molaterian hat.

What next? Well, I now have to decapitate both my models and send the heads (and hats) up to my brother who is going to try and produce multiple copies for me in resin. The idea being that I then stick the copies on the rest of my AiP Russians, saving me a lit of conversion work.

Once painted I hope these won't look too bad.

Want to get ahead, get a hat!

My first attempt at a hat with Milliput putty is this conversion of an AiP 1900 Russian officer to a Romanian officer (who will ultimately become a Molatero Light Infantry officer).

...On a side note I haven't quite decided what the collective term for a group of citizens from Molatero will be - Molaterians? (...Actually that was just off the top of my head, but I quite like it!) :)

OK then, my Molaterian infantry officer sports this rather dapper French style kepi, but of the more modern upright style as worn by turn of the century Romanian officers. This is a bit of a git to model in Milliput and I'm not all-together sure if I have the scale exactly right...It is a first effort.

Getting the darn thing symmetrical - working in 3 dimensions - is a challenge as each time I sanded one facet of the hat to get it straight or whatever I inevitably ended up sending another facet out of shape. So round and round I went!

The goal here if to produce a master which I can then send up to my brother so he can copy it in resin. I will undoubtedly need a few copies of this style of head/hat combo for various Molaterian officers in my army...

I'll have it copied as it is, pretty featureless - this is so I can customise the copies with different badges and decorations to represent different regiments. You might notice I gave my chap a better moustache as the AiP one was a bit feeble.

But now onto the far trickier Romanian infantry capella style hat! This will test my skills for sure.

Princess Elena's Light Infantry Regiment

I have been mulling over the idea of the uniform for my light infantry, the basis of which would be the Romanian infantry uniform of the 1890-1914 period. Well I managed to find a rather nice drawing of a soldier and officer of the Romanian army at the outbreak of The Great War and although it displays the rather more drab field-blue adopted during the Balkans War of 1912 it is quite indicative of the style - if not the colour - of Romanian uniforms from the 1890.

Pictorial source unknown, if you happen to be the
owner and wish me to remove the images just
drop me an email.

It is a nice uniform, somewhat reminiscent of the later war French except that the lower ranks wore the distinctive Romanian 'capela' field cap.

I did some Photoshopping and drafted what the uniform would look like in Molatero colours...

This should be a very easy conversion job as the AiP Russian's uniform is almost exactly like this except for the hats! Even the infantry rifle is the same (the Russian Mosin-Nagant).

Now, where's my Milliput modelling putty?

Molatero mobilises! Infantry regiment raised.

"As the clouds of war muster over the continent and the covetous eyes of empires gaze upon small free nations, Molatero must mobilize in order to defend it's liberty!" Prince Regent Vallzack III to Parliament.

Three boxes of the Armies in Plastic 1/32 Russians arrived on my doorstep yesterday as I decided to step up my work on a FLW Molatero army. As previously mentioned these toy soldiers will be converted to something resembling Romanian soldiers of the 1890+ period - the nation on which I will be loosely basing mu fictional country of Molatero.

The actual title of these toy soldiers is "Boxer Rebellion Russian Army China - 1900", but as usual with Armies in Plastic sets they are simply one version of a generic type from a given period. This set exists in three different flavours to represent Russians from 1900 to the Revolution in 1917.

This version is moulded in a milky white - which is a pig to photograph by the way - and is unusual in that it included two different types of uniform in the one set. I am no expert whatsoever on the Russian military of this period, but it seems that both naval infantry and army infantry are modelled here.

The 'army infantry' with their peaked cap

The army infantry wear a peaked cap, while their naval counterparts wear a Russian style sailors hat. This might be a bit of a nuisance if you are trying to build a regiment out of the box as it means you only have half the same type of uniforms that you expected and would have to resort to conversion.

The 'naval infantry' with their sailors hat

As it happens this is of no consequence to me as all these toy soldiers will soon be decapitated as I undertake to convert them into faux-Romanians with the distinctive Romanian style field cap!

However, it does mean that I will be - once again - scrimping for the exact poses that I want despite having bought three boxes of the blighters! This is because the two units have their own officer figure, so I have ended up with a total of 10 officers in total for some reason (don't ask me how).

This means the other infantry poses are reduced in number, especially - much to my frustration - the firing poses which I prefer! In fact the AiP Russians seem to be very heavy in the charging poses and I have more than enough to make a FLW regiment out of advancing Russians.

Anyway, I will cope - I refuse to buy another box!

So - between finishing off my Burkish infantry I will be producing my test figure based on these Russians. I will be trying out Molatero colours for the uniform and a trial conversion for the Romanian hat.

And on it's way - AiP Russians!

Winging their way from Transport Models of Preston are three boxes of Armies in Plastics Boxer Rebellion Russian Army China - 1900!

This will constitute my second FLW regiment, the first of my main Molatero infantry. They will be hastily decapitated and have new heads and hats fitted to make them look more like 1900 Romanian infantry.

The picture on the left represents a Romanian infantryman of 1916. The style of the uniform had not changed drastically since the turn of the century, except they had adopted an overall dowdier field blue and putties instead of long boots. Evident is the distinctive Romanian infantry cap.

During the Balkans war of 1912 the Romanians were still wearing a uniform where the tunic and hat were royal blue with red piping, trousers were black.

Obviously while mimicking the style I will be changing the colour scheme to something incorporating the Molatero colours of black, orange and blue-violet. Perhaps along the lines of what I have already done with my Burkish infantry - violet-blue hat and tunic, with orange trousers and black boots?

I don't know if my hand is steady enough to attempt orange piping on the tunic and hat, but I can but try!