Captain Caveman and the Forgotten Heroes

Season 10, Episode 2

With my subject for Forgotten Heroes safely decided upon, it was now time to prove the concept and decide quite how one goes about modelling a vertically challenged prehistoric superhero whose principal distinguishing feature is, essentially, hair.

From the outset I imagined some manner of armature covered in layers of modelling putty; perhaps Milliput, perhaps Green Stuff, perhaps whatever ancient and partially fossilised packet I could unearth from the furthest recesses of the hobby desk. The intention was to roll out countless thin strands and layer them rather like some sort of woolly balaclava. Simple! Elegant! Foolproof!  Naturally it very quickly became none of those things.

The first problem was deciding what to use as the underlying body shape. At this point my thoughts drifted back to an earlier Forgotten Heroes entry involving Audrey II and a walnut shell, which had worked remarkably well thanks to the wonderfully organic texture. Sadly, the walnuts were going to entirely unsuitable for Cavey, but whilst trudging mournfully around the local supermarket with the Saintly Mrs. Awdry, I found myself wondering whether a bag of monkey nuts might provide the answer.  Yes, best Beloved, I bought the nuts.

Once safely smuggled home amongst the weekly provisions, a suitably Cavey-shaped specimen was selected, cracked apart and then reassembled into something approaching the familiar silhouette of our hirsute hero.  At this point I became insufferably pleased with myself and started muttering phrases such as “super scratch sculpting” under my breath as though auditioning for an episode of The Great 'Puttery' Throw Down.

Pinned to a cork and armed with elderly Milliput of questionable freshness, I began layering strands across the shell. Despite the putty possessing all the suppleness of month old Stilton, the effect actually started to work rather well. Different thicknesses of strands gave a pleasing sense of depth and texture and for a brief, glorious moment I believed myself to be some sort of tonsorial genius.  Alas, hubris is ever the

 enemy of the miniature modeller.

Upon placing my creation beside another figure for scale comparison, I realised I had not created Captain Caveman so much as an especially unfortunate alien lifeform from Doctor Who circa 1974. One could easily imagine Tom Baker confronting it in a Welsh quarry whilst the BBC Radiophonic Workshop made alarming noises in the background.  Still, all was not lost! The experiment had at least demonstrated two important truths, that the Saintly Mrs. Awdry’s cake decorating tool worked surprisingly well for producing hair texture; monkey nuts possessed genuine modelling potential.*

*There is a sentence I never expected to write.

Undeterred, I pressed on to Mark II.  This time I abandoned the laborious nut reconstruction approach in favour of using whole shells which were sanded down to shape. Whilst pondering facial features I remembered a small Kinder Egg troll lurking amongst the accumulated detritus of the bits box and on excavation discovered that I possessed not one, but two potential donors; the trolls were immediately marched to the operating theatre. marched to the operating theatre.

Their feet were removed with all the delicacy of a Victorian field surgeon, one foot promptly vanishing into the carpet monster and despite a lengthy search has yet to materialise, and then the salvaged limbs were attached to the shell. Once fixed in place I added a little filler around the joins before turning my attention to Cavey’s distinctive face. At first the Green Stuff flatly refused to adhere to the shell, sliding off with all the enthusiasm of a politician answering a direct question. A coat of PVA glue, however, solved the problem admirably and soon a rather bulbous nose was secured in place.

The eyes, however, proved rather more problematic.  What began as two tiny balls of putty rapidly flattened into something deeply unfortunate, but after some careful prodding with a sculpting tool I accidentally discovered that pushing the putty upward created surprisingly expressive brow ridges. Quite suddenly, and somewhat alarmingly, Captain Caveman began peering back at me from the peanut shell.

I am not entirely certain at what point one crosses the line from “fooling about with leftovers” into “actually sculpting”, but this felt dangerously close to it.  With Cavey himself beginning to emerge, thoughts naturally turned to his famous club. I rummaged again through the bits box in search of suitable components and although I discovered enough abandoned plastic to equip a small militia, nothing seemed quite right. I very nearly hacked a club from an old WizKids model before deciding that if I was already dabbling in sculpting then I might as well continue the madness.

Using a short length of wire as an armature, I built up the shape with putty before texturing the surface to resemble ancient, gnarled wood. Rather to my surprise, the end result looked… alright. More than alright, in fact, positively club-like.  So, despite setbacks, alarming moments of scale creep and at least one peanut based existential crisis, I now find myself with the beginnings of a genuine miniature thanks to some unexpectedly successful scratch building and sculpting.

The only remaining issue, of course, is the small matter of the hair and given that Captain Caveman appears to be approximately ninety eight percent hair, this may yet prove my undoing.