1/72 Multiverse

Linear-A has just released a couple of kits based on the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, best known for the visual effects created by Ray Harryhausen.

The recent 3D printed Linear-A sets have been expensive, and these are no exception. The Hydra, Golden Fleece, and Skeleton Army set (LA136) runs about US$45, while the Talos and Crew set (LA121) runs a whopping US$70.



I went ahead and bought the Hydra set because of the skeletons, but passed on the Talos set due to the price.

I've seen some talk claiming the high prices are due to licensing, but I doubt that is the case. I see no markings on the packaging crediting the Ray Harryhausen Film Library or Columbia Pictures.

In addition, similar products such as the Oxus Civilization and Jesus Story sets released at the same time are similarly priced.

With regard to the Talos set, it includes two multi-part Talos models, but it's not clear how big they are.


In any event, options for sofubi and polystone Talos figures exist from X-Plus, and come in 8", 12", and even 20" sizes.


The 20" Star Ace version is prohibitively expensive for most people, but the smaller figures can be found for around the same price as the Linear-A set.

The box for these sets are quite large compared to their normal boxes.


The largely empty box makes the contents seem rather meager though, given the price.


You can actually fit four of the regular sized Linear-A boxes inside, with room to spare.

Anyway, the two human figures in the set are King Aeetes with his basket of Hydra teeth, and Jason poised to fight the Hydra or Spartoi.


I feel that the figures are actually better scaled than the previous Linear-A sets that I have reviewed, which I felt were on the big and bulky side (particularly for people of antiquity).

The Hydra from the set is a faithful representation of the creature from the film, and the size is quite reasonable.


The other figure on the left is a Mage Knight Hydra, which I wrote about along with other Hydra miniatures in another post.

The Golden Fleece is also quite reminescent of the one from the movie, although the tree is on the bulky side.


The painted Golden Fleece on the left is produced by Crocodile Games.

Jason v. Hydra clip
Of course in actual Greek mythology, it was the Colchian Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece (which I have written about here), instead of the Hydra.

Last up are the skeletons (or Children of the Hydra's Teeth) which are printed in green resin, and quite faithful to their appearance in the movie.



The skeletons may seem frail if you are used to metal or injection plastic skeletons, but they are accurately proportioned. My main peeve though, is that they count the skeletons rising from the ground as three separate poses.

Star Ace Children of the Hydra's Teeth (Statue, singular)

Argonauts v. Skeletons clip
Overall, I'm satisfied with the set I purchased. I'm not sure if I will buy a lot of these 3D printed Linear-A sets in the future, but we'll see.

Two of the latest sets from Linear A are 3D printed resin models. One set covers the Indus Civilisation, and the other covers the Roman Bacchanalia.

Indus Culture Set 1

Bacchanalia in Ancient Rome Set 1

The figures in both sets require a bit of clean up with a hobby knife, as traces of the supports remain on the figures in various places. The Indus Culture set however, had a lot more issues.

Several of the figures were wet looking and sticky, particularly on the bases. I wasn't sure if it was uncured resin, so I tried putting them under a UV light which seemed to reduce the stickiness a bit (but it may have just been my imagination).


The stuff didn't seem to wash off with isopropanol, so I scraped the base with a knife to remove the stickiness. This is not a good solution for other parts of the miniatures which were affected though. I may try scrubbing with soap and water later.

On many of the figures, the hems of the garments were ill-formed or incompletely printed.



What was really egregious however, were the malformed scales held by the merchant figure.


I used CA glue and baking soda to build up the bottom of the pans, then filed them into shape using the only properly printed figure as a reference.

The good, the bad, and the restored.

The servant holding a fan comes in two parts. The resin is not really flexible enough to allow the fan to slot into place easily, so I ended up shaving down the pegs on the hands holding the fan before trying to attach it to the figure.


The Indus Culture set consists of 40 figures in 10 poses.



Despite the various printing issues, they are very nice figures. The dancing girl figure is clearly based on the bronze statue of the Mohenjo-daro Dancing Girl. Other figures seem to be based on illustrations from Ornament Styles of the Indus Valley Tradition (Kenoyer, 1992).

The Bacchanalia set also consists of 40 figures in 10 poses (kind of). PSR claims the set is pornography, and refuses to show pictures, but whatever.

NSFW

According to PSR, the set is based on the movie Caligula, but almost all the figures are completely nude, which I don't really think was the case in any of the relevant scenes from the film.


One of the figures is clearly based on the Priapus with Caduceus fresco from Pompeii, while the tibicen player is perhaps based on the left panel relief of the Ludovisi Throne (maybe).

Given the limited utility of these figures, I think that Linear A should cut down on the number of figures per set, reduce the price accordingly, and increase their quality control.

I placed an order with Speira Miniatures back in April, and received the models from Sweden in July, after a lengthy stop in Illinois.

Speira has a nice range of in-house historical miniatures, but their range of fantasy miniatures all seem to be 3D files licensed from other companies. I will cover some of their historical figures in the future, but this post will primarily be about the fantasy miniatures.

The first two figures are a pair of skeletons designed by Runeforge Studios.


Like most 3D resin printed skeletons I've seen, these do not disappoint. I really think that resin 3D printing technology is ideal for making skeletons.

The next figure is a dwarf (Roteante) designed by MiniaturesOfMaddness. I requested that it be printed as an 18mm figure because I imagined it would be on the tall and bulky side in 1/72 after seeing examples posted by Sceavus.


Unfortunately, the 18mm print looks undersized to me. Rotenante looks scrawny and underfed next to the 15mm Scibor dwarf (left), and is much smaller than the Caesar dwarf (right).


Next are three female figures – Elena, Aline the Bold, and a Female Warrior, all designed by Artisan Guild. I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the Artisan Guild models. Overall, their models seem to be influenced by a kind of WoW video game aesthetic that is too cartoony for my tastes.


With respect to these figures, the proportions seem off, and the first two poses are overly exaggerated. Still, I'm guessing they'll look okay after being painted up.

The final miniatures are lamassu terrain pieces, which I believe are in-house 3D designs by Speira.

The bull-type lamassu measures 54mm to the highest point.


The lion-type lamassu measures 60mm to the highest point.


I ordered the lamassu statues because they brought back faded memories from the 90s, of a fantasy diorama that I saw at the now closed Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica.


Notables from the D&D world associated with Aero Hobbies included the owner, Gary Switzer, and the renowned J. Eric Holmes who bought his first D&D rulebooks there. Of course, by the time I visited the store, the kid at the register didn't even know what Demogorgon was.

Now that I think about it, I probably should have ordered the 28mm prints, because I seem to recall that the pieces at Aero Hobbies were larger than these 1/72 prints (but it could just be my imagination). In any event, having something closer to the scale of the lamassu that are part of the Gate of All Nations would look quite impressive.



On a side note, about 20 miles due west from Aero Hobbies, you will find a shopping center known as the Citadel Outlet, which has several lamassu incorporated into its architecture. It is said to be based on the palace of the Assyrian ruler Sargon II, and quite eye-catching as you pass by on the freeway.

City of Commerce

North Star Models (not to be confused with North Star Military Figures) is a Latvian/Ukrainian company that produces various 3D modeled figures and kits in a wide variety of scales.

1/72

1/43

I first became aware of their existence from their eBay store, where I could scarcely believe that the picture of their Girl Mechanic model was actually 1/72 scale.

To see if the picture was too good to be true, I decided to purchase a few models directly from North Star and have a look. Flat rate shipping to North America runs €16, and takes over three months to arrive at the moment.

The first picture is a set of printed models entitled Naked Girls 3D (F-72018). It seems to be one of their most popular sets for some reason, so I bought them purely for evaluation purposes.


I think that the painted catalog images for this particular set are actually their 1/43 models, and not their 1/72 models. My initial impression was that there was something off about the head to body proportion, or length of neck, but I think it's actually because they have realistically modeled hair (which makes their heads look undersized at 1/72).

The next models are all cast resin. The resin is a bit on the hard side, but it is not overly brittle. The models had some minor flash that is easily cleaned up.

The first model is the Girl Mechanic (F-72017). She comes in three pieces, and has huge mold lines up and down the sides of her legs.


Next is Frau Lili (F-72015) who I presume is a representation of Marlene_Dietrich.


The next figure is a WWII IJN Fighter Pilot (F-72012). The pilot is a single piece model with a separate sword. I think they actually use a 3D printed sword for the model in their catalog image, because the resin version is pretty sad. I don't know if its because of his bulky flight suit, but his body looks oddly proportioned to me.


The last figures are Despots of [the] 20th Century (F-72003). Hilter is a single piece model, while Uncle Joe comes in four pieces. They are nicely cast with no seams, but the fit on parts is not great without some carving. I don't really have a use for these two, but they were on sale.


With regard to scale, the resin models lean toward the small, thin side. The 3D printed models look tall, but they are still on rafts that are the equivalent of 4" platform shoes. The mechanic is really tall and all legs, but her proportions aren't totally off if we think of her as a gravure model rather than a mechanic.


The despots look undersized as well (Stalin in particular). I think this may be due to one of the major issues that I see with 3D mastered models. The sculptors start with some standard sized model, and then just scale proportionally up or down to the height that they want for the figure.


The problem however is that the proportions for people of different heights is not a linear relationship. Thus we have Stalin who should be short and stocky, but instead looks like a 1/76 figure instead of a 1/72 figure.

In any event, the models lean towards the expensive side, particularly with shipping. I'd rate the sculpting as excellent, and overall, I'd say the figures are suited for diorama purposes, or for use as objective markers. However, some of their catalog listings only show 3D renders of the figures, so it's hard to judge what they will look like in real life.

I was debating whether or not to write up one final post for 2019, and decided not to be lazy and just do a quick write up on some resin figures that I recently got in the mail.

The first pair of figures comes from Modern Armies in Miniatures. MAiM is a German company that produces it's own line of WWWII figures under the Front46 brand name. The figures are 3D printed and come in a number of different scales. Four sets are made in 1/72 scale (two of which for some reason are scarecrows). The other two are female support crew.


The figure in the plastic blister comes with the scaffolding still attached.



The second figure comes in a box filled with paper to protect the figure. I'm guessing the box is one-size-fits-all for all their products. They have a "No Recasting" warning on the box, which I've never seen a miniatures manufacturer use before.


Their website also warns that if the figure did not come in the original box, that it may be possible that the figure is a bootleg.


The figure that came in the box did not come with the scaffold, but if you look closely, you can see small divots at the attachment points which look similar to bubbles in cast resin, and may require adding filler to smooth out.

For the figure still on the scaffolding, I used a sprue cutter to detach the figure. Unfortunately, the clipboard and wrists on the figure are super thin, and ended up breaking away. As you can imagine, one of the hands promptly disappeared into the carpet never to be seen again.


So is the figure a low quality bootleg because it didn't come in a MAiM box? My guess is that it's probably one of their original releases. I'm sure that so many people were complaining about issues with breakage that they decided to just do the scaffold removal part on their end in their later releases.

The gray figure with the missing hand is the Mechanic with Clipboard (MAIM72003), while the black figure which is hard to see details on is the Mechanic with Wrench (MAIM72004).


I find the figures proportioned very much like Preiser model train figures. They're scale accurate, but seem off because their heads look too small. It might be hypocritical since I complain about the appearance of chunky figures with heads and hands that are too big, but directly scaling down digital models to 1/72 doesn't sit quite right with me either.

Next up are some figures from Paracel Miniatures, a family run business out of Vietnam. I actually had never heard of them before, but they have apparently been around since 2015.

They produce various resin figures in different scales, and have four sets in their 1/72 Mini Series.



The set that I bought was the NVA Tank Crew (MINI7201).


The set comes with one half figure, one three quarters figure, and one full figure, along with various bits of stowage for a T-54B. The resin is firm, but not brittle.


The figures are well sculpted, although I think they are probably on the tall side for T-54 tank crew. I'll probably pick up their other sets at some point in the future.

The final set is the High School Girl Part 2 Set (Troops & Peoples 1-72-006) from Kami de Korokoro that I picked up at WonFes (as mentioned in my last post).


The set comes with two figures, each with a choice of two different arm poses.


I used the arms that I thought made the figures look closest to the packaging illustration, but they are not an exact match.


The resin is decent, but the feet of the figures are not fully cast, and will require some sculpting to fix. I'm going to have to buy another one of these sets to build the figures using the alternate arms.

Anyway, that's it for 2019, and Happy New Year!