From Curt: 'Amelia Earhart of Mars' for a Sorceress Teleport to 'The Guardroom' (25 Points)

 

As I've explored enough rooms on the main level to allow me down to the second I thought I'd ask for a teleport to The Guardroom via our friendly neighbourhood witch, er, sorceress! :)

This is Amelia, the famous female aviator of the 1920s and 30's. On July 2nd, 1937 she mysteriously disappeared in the south pacific attempting a round-the-world flight in her twin engine Electra. She, her navigator Noonan, or her aircraft were never discovered. Conventional wisdom says she flew off course, ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean, never to be seen again.

Of course this is not what truly happened. Earhart, nearing the end of her fuel reserves, flew into a strange lightning storm over Howland Island.  Attempting an emergency landing, the Electra was hit by a nexus of eldritch arc lightning. The aircraft, along with Earhart and her navigator Noonan, disappeared into thin air. 

They may have disappeared on Earth, but they reappeared somewhere else. Yes, somewhere else entirely. 

Indeed, the Electra, and its passengers reappeared on Mars, or more correctly, Barsoom.

What adventures await Amelia on Mars? Will she survive the denizens of the Red Planet? Will she find her way home? If she meets the mysterious John Carter, will she want to?

Amelia encountering some of the denizens of Barsoom.

I believe this figure is from Eureka Miniatures' 'Maximillian 1934' range. Oddly a little hunched in her pose, but still a great mini and a joy to paint. 

Hmm, pulling out the John Carter stuff really makes me want to add some more figures for for that setting...

'Amelia Earhart of Mars', along with the Sorceress bonus will give me 25 points, and I'm off to The Guardroom on Level 2. Wheee!

- Curt

The mystery is solved - she went to Mars! Lovely aviatrix, Curt - I'm sure that Lady S will arrange the teleportation.

Tamsin

From Curt - Three Denizens of Edgar Rice Burrows' Barsoom (35 Points)

I thought I'd best get together an entry for the Pulp duel before I get left too far behind. 

First, I want to tip my hat to Sander for my inspiration to this small project. During last year's Challenge he submitted a wonderful entry that got my mind whirling and my pocketbook prised open to order these great figures.

In 1912 Edgar Rice Burrows published 'A Princess of Mars', the first in what would be 11 novels making up the John Carter of Mars series. Burrows is seen as one of the founding fathers of science fiction and his writing, while a bit anachronistic, still entertains today as  as it did over a century ago.

These figures were a close contender for my 'Nostalgia' entry as I've had a real soft spot for the series since I was a teen. I have fond memories of going through the turnstile of novels in our town's pharmacy (which was the only place to buy novels and magazines) and taking furtive glances at the salacious covers of the John Carter paperbacks, trying not to be seen by the store's staff. To me, the art of John Carter is inseparable from the writing itself and I can't help but think of all the wonderful overwrought covers from artists such as Frank Frazetta, Frank Schoonover and Joe Jusko as I reminisce about the novels.

So here we have three denizens of Mars, or 'Barsoom', as Burrows called the Red Planet in his novels.

These 28mm figures are from Tin Man Miniatures. They are really wonderful castings, with very nice poses and, for the most part, requiring almost no cleanup.

This tall, green, four-armed fella is called a Thark. They are a warrior race which show up frequently in the John Carter novels.  He's armed with a pair of cutlasses and has a holstered pistol as well.

I decided to eschew metallic paints for this project as I thought the NMM approach would provide for a more interesting cartoony, cell-shaded effect to the figures.

The above figure is a female Barsoom assassin. I spent some time mulling over what colour to go with and finally decided with a simple deep red as it's often heavily used in the series' cover art. 

I did a blocky highlighting style to make her robes and boots quite pronounced.

The 'Wild Ride' vignette is a fairly complex white metal model with around 20 parts. It required a fair bit of pinning and filling to complete, and while I'm still not completely happy with it, I still really like the sense of movement it gives. 

I decided to go with a blue skin tone on the beast as I like the sharp contrast against the red-toned groundwork and, well, it's a freaky looking alien so it seemed to fit.

In regards to the bases, I was at a bit of a loss as at first as I wanted groundwork that was distinctly alien, but yet not too overpowering. In the end I decided to use bits of bark built-up with glue to create a stratified rock effect, which did a decent job of blending with the original bases, and then went with a pale orange/red base tone and highlighted from there. 

As to the vegetation, Burrows describes much of Mars being covered with loamy, yellow-red plants so I thought I'd use some old 'autumn' foam flock which I've always thought looked a bit too weird for Earth anyway, but it's finally found it's home on Barsoom.

Scoring? Well, the Thark is over 50mm and should safely fall into the 54mm category. If possible, I ask that the 'Wild Ride' vignette be scored as two mounted figures as I believe the size and complexity warrant it. The assassin is a standard 28mm figure.

Thanks for taking the time to visit!

Aaah - that's about time you got your finger out for this duel... and what a way to do it...very interesting figures I must say. The basing also really sets them off and sets the theme - well done Mr Snowball

From SanderS - The Last Barsoomians... (Mature Content) (114 Points)

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

This update sees my last Barsoomian update for this Challenge. I have managed to paint up the last 9 figures of my Barsoom collection which is nice but also a bit sad since I'd like to do more of them.

The figures can be divided in two categories: humans and creatures since one of the models is one of the great White Apes that plague the ruins of Barsoom's once mighty cities.

The model is from Bronze Age Miniatures again, and the base (all of them BTW) are from the 36chambers.

The humans are some regular warriors from both Zodonga, in red "clothing" and Helium, in blue. The pictures are not that clear and therefore the blue looks a tat purplish which it isn't in real life. Poses are pretty lifelike and the miniatures have loads of detail.

The 8 normal 28mm figures amount to 40 points and if Curt is kind enough to count the ape as another 54mm figure we're looking at 50 points for this contribution.

Now I was originally planning to do a second post for these WW1 miniatures as well but deciding against it because it would add to Curt's to-do pile and so here are some more pictures.

My main medium for our beloved hobby remains the 1:72 plastic miniature. A while back there were quite large holes in the available Great War ranges. Therefore I ordered some sets from various 20mm metal producers. Amongst those are this Tumbling Dice BEF troops. Since their plastic equivalents have become available now, they ended up on the unpainted-lead-pile. Until now that is, because here they are painted and all.

First some Early War Scots with heavy weapons.

Secondly, some regular BEF heavy weapons bases.

These WW1 troopers will be shipped to the display cabinet in my class-room to populate my WW1 trench-lay-out in order to explain trench warfare to the kiddies at school.

Now these 16 troopers amount for 64 points making the total for today's entry 104 points is that right boss?

Cheers Sander

From SanderS - Sci-Fi Anyone? (45 Points)

Dear Ladies and Gents,

A promise makes a debt as we say in the Netherlands. Some time ago I promised you all a few painted Tarks and well here they are. As I was doing some Sci-Fi stuff anyway I decided to paint up some more West End Games Star Wars miniatures as well and post them here together.

Here's a group shot of the lot of them.

Let's tackle the Star Wars mini's first. These figures are supposed to represent Han Solo shooting some-one, Lando in his Skiff-guard disguise and Leia dressed op as a bounty-hunter (with thermo detonator, mind you!) in order to rescue Han.

And yes, Han did shoot FIRST!

Next up are the Tarks, I can't remember what make they are but they're marvellous sculpts. The weapons are separate as are some of the arms. The bases are from the 36 Chambers again and really enhance the overall feel of Barsoom on the mini's I think.

Well I hope you like them as much as I do. Sadly the Tarks (and the OOP West End mini's for that matter) are rather expensive, so I haven't got any more of them. The Barsoom project still has about 8 base-coated humans waiting in the lists but I'll turn in some regiments for more points first. There are still loads of Star Wars mini's unpainted in my cupboard but they'll have to wait for a while yet.

Points wise this is a conundrum for me, yet again, the Star Wars mini's are 25mm (so let's say 28mm for the sake of argument)  and that would make 15 points, but the Tarks are much larger so let's leave it up to Lord C. to decide shall we?

Cheers Sander


From Curt:

Oooh, those classic Star Wars figures from West Wind are wonderful (and rare), but I have to say those Barsoom-esque miniatures take the cake for me. They're huge!  I really like the baroque bronze armour and weapons set against their green skin - very sharp. And the alien landscape basework sets it all off so nicely.  You've officially pushed me over the edge in wanting to get some of these (as credit card emerges from wallet...). Just so you know the excellent alien figures seen here are from Savage Barsoom while there are similar types available from Tin Man Miniatures as well. 

Points? I'm counting the 'Tarks' as 54mm so the total is 45. Well done Sander!