Five Million Page Views!

At some point last week, 28mm Victorian Warfare passed the rather astonishing milestone of 5,000,000 page views.  Now, if I'm entirely honest, page views don't quite carry the significance they once did. There was a time when I would check the counter with almost comical regularity, convinced that every refresh somehow validated my latest ramblings.  Inevitably, I suspect I contributed rather more to the total than was strictly necessary!  Nowadays, with bots happily trawling the internet and mysterious visitors appearing from every corner of the globe, the number itself is perhaps a rather blunt instrument; even so... five million is still five million.

More importantly, though, this cozy corner of the Blogosphere has never really been about statistics. It has always been somewhere to record projects, celebrate successes, confess failures, more recently involving superglue or Milliput, and occasionally persuade perfectly sensible people that peanuts are a legitimate modelling material.  What continues to amaze me is the company it has kept.

Over the years I've had the privilege of corresponding with hobbyists from all over the world. Many have become familiar names in the comments, several have become genuine friends and all have helped make this hobby richer, kinder and considerably more enjoyable than it would ever have been sat alone at the painting table.

The recent Forgotten Heroes challenge reminded me of exactly that. Whilst I was delighted with how Captain Caveman eventually emerged from his peanut shell, the real joy came from the conversations it sparked and the encouragement shared throughout the month. It reminded me that blogs still have something rather special to offer in an age of fleeting social media posts.

So whether you've been following along since my earlier Victorian campaigns first marched onto the table, discovered the blog through a fondness for obscure cartoons, or simply dropped in looking for scenery ideas before deciding to stay awhile, thank you.

Five million views is a pleasing statistic, but the friendships are the part that truly matters.  Here's to whatever absurdity finds its way onto the workbench next.

Every Journey Needs Somewhere to End

Season 10, Episode 7

If I am entirely honest, I was not at all sure that this final post was going to happen. June has rather galloped past in the manner of an escaped cavalry charger and whilst Forgotten Heroes itself draws to a close, work, travel and the general business of real life have conspired to leave precious little time at the hobby desk. The irony, of course, is that this has been one of the most enjoyable hobby months I have experienced in many years. There have been peanuts, there has been sculpting, there has been resin and there has even been language that would certainly have caused my late Grandmother to raise an eyebrow. Most importantly, however, there has been friendship.

One of the genuine pleasures of taking part in Forgotten Heroes has been reconnecting with old friends, discovering new projects and being reminded exactly why this particularly cosy corner of the blogosphere is so special. To Jez and Roger, whose continued enthusiasm keeps this splendid enterprise alive year after year, I owe a considerable debt of thanks. Without their efforts I rather suspect Captain Caveman would still be little more than an optimistic peanut sitting on a supermarket shelf.

Yet there remained one final task.  Captain Caveman himself had yet to make his formal appearance and no self-respecting prehistoric superhero can simply be left standing alone upon a gaming table; he requires a home and naturally that home sits atop the roof of a van.  The Teen Angels, as readers of a certain age will doubtless remember, travelled in a somewhat distinctive vehicle which served much the same purpose as the Mystery Machine, Mystery Incorporated's trusty van. This presented an obvious opportunity, namely the construction of Cavey's rooftop cave.  What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it happens.  After a little searching I discovered a suitable STL file on the Crooked Dice website which appeared promising enough. At £6 it seemed worth the risk and after all, what is Forgotten Heroes if not an opportunity to make questionable purchasing decisions? Or is that just me?  Unfortunately the model appeared rather more suited to resin printing than my own somewhat agricultural FDM printer and the initial attempts were, to be charitable, deeply disappointing.

At this point I once again sought the wisdom of the estimable Simon Moore, who very kindly pointed out the entirely obvious solution, "turn it upside down."  One occasionally encounters moments in life when another person says something so self-evident that one immediately wonders why one had not thought of it oneself. This was one such occasion and of course, the next print proved vastly more successful.

Knowing that the roof would ultimately disappear beneath Cavey's cave, I was not overly concerned by minor imperfections and so attention turned towards constructing the rocky summit itself. A sheet of plasticard provided the foundation and a quantity of leftover epoxy sculpt was spread across the surface and encouraged into something vaguely resembling the cave seen in the original cartoons.  Rocks were added, texture appeared and optimism returned.

A little textured paste introduced some variation and before long the whole thing began to take on a distinctly prehistoric appearance. At this point the bits box once again came to the rescue. Buried deep amongst decades of accumulated treasures I discovered some forgotten prehistoric trees from Steve Barber Models which, much like Captain Caveman himself, had apparently been waiting patiently for their moment to shine.

The cave itself proved an absolute joy to paint and for a brief and entirely unfamiliar period everything proceeded exactly as planned.  This naturally made me suspicious.  There remained, however, one final detail.  No cave upon the roof of a van can reasonably be accessed by conventional means and so a ladder was required. Two coffee stirrers, split and sanded, provided the uprights whilst small plastic bones were lashed into place with wire and secured with superglue.  It is, I freely admit, completely ridiculous, which is probably why it has become my favourite detail.

As I write this final dispatch the model is still not entirely as completed as far as I would have liked. There remain details to finish, logos to paint and the cave to permanently fix to the wagon.  Yet perhaps there is something rather fitting about that.  Forgotten Heroes has never really been about finishing. It has been about beginning. About rediscovering forgotten characters, rediscovering old enthusiasms and, in my particular case, rediscovering the pleasure of writing and sharing my experiences with this most wholesome of hobbies with friends.

So before the final credits roll, I should like to offer again my sincere thanks to Jez and Roger for once again organising this splendid annual lunacy, and to all those who have taken the time to read, comment and encourage throughout the month.  Your responses to this slightly absurd prehistoric adventure have meant far more than I can properly express.  But what of Cavey, I hear some ask  Surely he must now make his grand entrance. After all, one suspects he has been lurking somewhere in the background all month, glaring through his whiskers and waiting for precisely the right moment to shout:

Captain CAAAAAAAAAVEMAAAAAAAN!

Captain Caveman’s Curious Critters

 Season 10, Episode 6

Whilst rummaging through the bits box in search of components for Captain Caveman, I previously neglected to mention that I had made an unexpected discovery. Nestled within the yellowed remains of another long forgotten Kinder Egg shell lurked a tiny, plastic elephant.  Now most sensible hobbyists would have smiled fondly, returned it to the box and carried on with the task at hand; I am evidently not most sensible hobbyists.  At the time, the discovery was noted and reluctantly set aside. Captain Caveman still required vast quantities of hair and there seemed little point introducing further complications into a project already involving peanuts, cake decorating equipment and minor acts of sculptural vandalism.  The elephant, however, remained.  Waiting. Patiently. Like some diminutive, plastic, embryonic inception.

One of the favourite, recurring motifs of the original Captain Caveman cartoons was the inclusion of curious critters that Cavey would produce from the end of his club or indeed from the mass of hair covering his body.  These often unwilling contributors would lend their unique skills to furthering the plot, and I would chortle at the cameos not truly appreciating at the time that everything could be made better with dinosaurs.  Now as Flaming June is all but extinguished, I wondered if I could include such frivolity in my Forgotten Heroes project?  Before I knew quite what was happening, one hundred and twenty ‘dainty’ dinosaurs were en route to Awdry Towers.  I would love to report that this decision was the result of careful planning and considered reflection. It was not. It was, however, available with free postage and as I write this dispatch, the true scale of this acquisition remains unknown to the Saintly Mrs. Awdry. 

My current strategy is based entirely upon concealment and the hope that brightly coloured dinosaurs might somehow, some day be mistaken for a sensible purchase.  I selected five likely candidates to become Cavey’s familiars and stashed the other one hundred and fifteen! 

Based and undercoated these were immense fun to paint.  I took some initial inspiration from the cartoon itself but in the end plumbed the depths of my paint store to retrieve the most lurid and underused collars I possessed.

Meanwhile the memory of the small, plastic elephant cracked, "Life... finds a way." One of the stalwart gags of Hannah-Barbera prehistoric world is the use of small wooly mammoths pressed into surface of their world. For example a mammoth sink makes an appearance in the Flintstones episode, ‘Bedrock Rodeo Round Up’ and a full blown mammoth shower turns up in ‘The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones’. Could my little plastic elephant be used for such a purpose? In the butchered words of Professor Malcolm,

 I became so preoccupied with whether or not I could, that I didn't stop to think if I should. 

Success criteria would include a more cartoon like pose, longer tusks, more hair and the small matter of creating the illusion that the trunk was emitting water.  I am starting to worry that this was no longer modelling, but more like experimental palaeontology!

There followed a period of genetic experimentation that would have had even John Hammond quietly reviewing his insurance arrangements as I set about disassembling and reconstructing the unfortunate pachyderm. I had an idea that I would try and make the elephant sit, using a piece of slate to achieve this, and in doing so elevate his trunk to allow the water to fountain out. Lashings of superglue and green stuff followed before the creature was trimmed, sliced and reassembled. The resultant abomination looked so very sad that there remained only one option, the Saintly Mrs. Awdry's cake decorating tool was summoned from retirement and once again pressed into service.*

*I am beginning to suspect it has now spent considerably more time producing prehistoric pelts than decorating cakes.

The fur covered a multitude of sins and anatomic anomalies although there was a call to do some running repairs to sliced off toes, the elephant’s not mine you understand.  The tusks were my next consideration and having removed its original appendages in the manner befitting a deranged, plastic poacher I attached superfine Milliput ones that had previous cured.  A little bit of sanding and some green stuff applied to conceal the cracks and the build was almost complete - just the small matter of the cascading water feature.  

Using a pin vice with a drill bit barely visible to my ageing eyes I had created a couple holes atop the trunk.  And so dear reader on to the true folly of this plan, a return to the UV resin!  What followed looked less like miniature modelling and more like an experiment conducted by a particularly eccentric Fellow of the Royal Society.  With the UV torch suspended above the desk, strands of twisted wire were slowly coated with resin and cured layer by layer until something resembling a fountain began to emerge. 

Leaving the ‘water’ aside to completely harden, the mammoth was given a lick of paint and then positioned for the final assembly.  I delicately threaded the ends of the wire, kept free from resin into the pre-drilled holes in the trunk and et voilà!  

Does it serve any meaningful purpose on the tabletop?  Absolutely not.  Does Captain Caveman require a woolly mammoth shower feature?  Equally no.  Did I enjoy every ridiculous moment of creating it?  Cavey would, I suspect, answer that question with a resounding… 

Captain CAAAAAAAVE MAAAAAANNNNN!

Captain Caveman on Ice

Season 10, Episode 5

At this point, with Captain Caveman assembled, a sensible chap should probably have tidied the workbench, cleaned their tools and moved on to painting our prehistoric protagonist.  Unfortunately, I still possessed spare peanuts, surplus Milliput and a single troll’s foot.  The outcome, in my mind at least, was therefore inevitable and a second Cavey was born.  This time I proposed a rather different outcome, one that paid homage to the opening sequence of Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels.  This famously sees our hirsute hero discovered frozen within a block of ice and it occurred to me that this might make a rather entertaining objective marker; what could possibly go wrong?   

Following the successful formula of the previous build, a second miniature was constructed and painted in suitably chilly shades of blue and placed within a makeshift mould constructed from scraps of plasticard and secured with a hot glue gun. Possessed of UV resin and a wholly unjustified degree of confidence, I began pouring the first layers.

The plan was simple, the execution, less so.  The resin was carefully tinted and layered as intended until a steady stream of bubbles began emerging from beneath Cavey's arm.  At first I was puzzled.  Then enlightenment dawned.  The peanut was hollow! The resin was entering the shell and the trapped air was escaping.  I am not ashamed to admit that this revelation arrived several minutes later than it probably should have.  Still, by this point, I was committed to the process and elected to persevere. A few bubbles could surely be explained away as imperfections within ancient glacial ice?  Unfortunately, the resin had not yet finished teaching me valuable life lessons.

Despite knowing perfectly well that these procedures should not be rushed, I removed the shuttering too early and promptly released partially cured resin across the workbench with consequences that can best be described as educational.  Following a brief period of reflection, several cups of Earl Grey and a stern conversation with myself regarding the virtues of patience, the resin was left alone to cure properly.

The resulting block required some considerable tidying up and at this point I encountered another of life’s great ponderables, how did all those impossibly talented social media resin wizards manage to restore crystal clarity after sanding?  The answer, it transpired, was more resin.  A final coating restored the transparency beautifully and although some bubbles remained visible, these were ultimately disguised with snow effects around the top and base where they now appear entirely intentional; sweet serendipity shines again. 

And so Cavey now exists in two forms, one ready to join the Teen Angels on their adventures and another patiently awaiting rescue after several millennia trapped in ice.  Frankly, given the amount of trouble he caused in his construction, I am beginning to understand why nature tried to keep him there in the first place!

Captain Caveman Gets His Coat

 Season 10, Episode 4

With the Teen Angels safely recruited and apparently intent upon solving mysteries through the vigorous application of firearms, it was time to return to the small matter of Captain Caveman himself; more specifically, it was time to confront the issue of the hair.  My original plan had centred around the Saintly Mrs. Awdry's cake decorating tool, a device which had already shown considerable promise when pressed into service for purposes entirely outside its intended remit. The difficulty, however, was finding a suitable material to force through it.

The elderly Milliput used during the proof of concept stage had proven rather too crumbly, so I turned instead to Green Stuff, that ubiquitous modelling putty found lurking in hobby rooms throughout the land. If it could be sculpted, reasoned I, surely it could be persuaded through the decorating tool; best beloved, it could not. There followed a frantic period of archaeological excavation as I attempted to remove rapidly curing putty from the Saintly Mrs. Awdry's cake decorating implement before awkward questions could be asked. Whilst I cannot claim the operation was entirely successful, I am pleased to report that diplomatic relations between the Kitchen and Hobby Room remain intact.

Fortunately, disaster was narrowly averted and the decorating tool survived to fight another day; my dignity, however, was less fortunate.  Admitting temporary defeat, I invested in some superfine white Milliput and turned my attention to another pressing problem, the cloak.  Unlike the hair, which merely covered approximately ninety eight percent of Cavey's anatomy, the cloak represented something of a mystery. Tin foil was briefly considered, as was card, before my attention settled upon an old blister pack lurking in the pile of shame.  The inhabitants were duly evicted then a little cutting, some cautious heating with a Zippo lighter and...

Well the first attempts filled Awdry Towers with enough acrid black smoke to suggest a papal election was underway.  Eventually, however, I discovered a happy medium whereby the softened plastic could be persuaded into convincing folds before rapidly cooling and retaining its shape. Better still, it would remain lightweight and flexible whilst avoiding some of the fragility associated with thin metal.  For once, a plan appeared to be working.

The cloak was carefully trimmed, repeatedly offered up to the model and adjusted until the fit seemed right. The trick, I realised, would be layering a foundation layer of hair first, then the cloak, before finally burying the joins beneath yet more hair to create the illusion that everything emerged naturally from Cavey's luxuriant pelt.

With the club attached and the remaining wire concealed beneath putty, only one final detail remained, the whiskers.  These wonderfully unruly appendages seem to possess a life entirely of their own in the original cartoons and so fine wire was drilled directly into the shell and secured with superglue. Once in place, they immediately transformed the miniature.  Quite suddenly, Cavey was no longer a collection of experimental components.

He was Captain CAAAAAAAVE MAAAAAANNNNN!

Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels

Season 10, Episode 3

With Cavey temporarily glaring at me from his peanut shell and the thorny issue of sculpting approximately ninety eight percent body hair looming ominously on the horizon, I found myself seeking distraction. As is often the case when sitting at my hobby desk, one project quickly became three and so I gladly present for your delectation, the Teen Angels, Captain Caveman's mystery solving maidens of mayhem

I wasn't looking to build or create new miniatures here, but rather re-purpose some existing purchases and so went in search of suitable young ladies to accompany Cavey, a phrase which sounds increasingly dubious the longer one dwells upon it and one best not repeated in earshot of the Saintly Mrs. Awdry!  That said, I quickly stumbled upon what I thought were Crooked Dice's Angels of Justice and a Double Agent that were already based and primed - Zowie!*

*I say thought, but latterly I have discovered that one of them is in fact a Lucid Eye Psychedelic Superspy, Julia Verne. 

Unlike the Hanna-Barbera draughtsmen whose original characters had a certain economy of line, sculptors at Crooked Dice and Lucid Eye were under under no such restrictions.  The proportions of these ladies are sublime and suggest they might occasionally encounter gravity!  Their delicate posture always makes me nervous, been used to more forgiving, robust sculpts, but in the end, I simply allocated a model to each character and had fun trying to match their respective colour palette.  Being cartoon characters, I had made the conscious decision not to worry unduly about too many layers of shading, just keep it tidy. 

Armed to the teeth, they perhaps owe rather more to Charlie's Angels than the Teen Angels, although one suspects mysteries would be solved considerably more quickly if Brenda really did have access to a snub nosed Smith & Wesson .357 revolver!

So whilst Captain Caveman himself remains very much a work in progress, the Teen Angels are assembled and ready for adventure. Quite what they will make of being transported from Saturday morning television to the rather more perilous environs of 7TV remains to be seen, although judging by the amount of firepower on display the masked miscreants should be considerably more concerned than they ever were in 1977.  As for Cavey himself, he remains largely naked, partially sculpted and alarmingly dependent upon a peanut shell; fortunately, there is still time to address all three concerns.