Two Reviews for the Price of One
Frothers Unite UK
Pro – Am Sculpting Competition Winners Set 1
Limited edition & Sale Time
Review by Steve Crofts
Forward
A few months ago Frothers Unite had a sculpting competition, the subject, Alice in Wonderland, the prize, to have there sculpts moulded and cast in lead.
I watched the competition entries start piling in and had a few favourites, but all were good attempts, and although not all the entrants could be winners, I do take my hat off to all the entrants who took part and endeavoured to bring a new light and indeed imagination, to the characters in this famous story.
In all there were four categories as follows:
Alice, Tea Party, Royal Court, and last but not least, Other Characters.
The set that I am reviewing here are the winning entries of the four categories, a second set, (More on that later), will be made up of the four runners up entries, which having seen the photographs of the Greens, It is hard to imagine the thoughts and arguments over which should be placed first and second the judges had, as they are all very good, all I can say is rather them than me!
On with the review!
First Thoughts
Wow these look even better close up!
I’ll take you through these as per the category.
First of all Alice….
Sculpted by Kev White, this sculpt is wicked and has it’s own unique eroticism to it, A quite modern rendition of the character.
Alice stands 29mm from the bottom of her boots to the top of her head.
Kev sculpted her in what I could only describe as a low cut evening dress and doc Martin Boots, holding a revolver in one hand and a stuffed rabbit in the other, this she seems to have used for target practice a neat little hole in the forehead and a large hole in the back with lots of the stuffing blown out of it! Perhaps she was sick of the rabbit being late and “fired him” we’ll never know, but it is a question you can ponder when looking at the mini.
The sculpt is very well done, the hang of the dress is I must say very realistic, with folds in areas where you would expect them and they give a natural weight to the cloth.
Her face is somewhat interesting as Alice is licking her lips, something I’ve not seen on a mini before so something different in the facial features to say the least.
I would love to know what kev was thinking when he sculpted this miniature, and what gave him the idea to do the piece in this way.
Alice’s hair is neatly combed and has a head band holding her hair away from her fringe, again the hair is sculpted in a realistic way and does make a pleasing finish when painted.
To sum up I would go so far as to say, “This babe has attitude”! a marvellous sculpt and a fitting winner of the category.
Second category The Tea Party….
The Mad Hatter cringing with shocked with outrage, sculpted by Kai Teck.
The Mad Hatter stands at32mm from the bottom of his shoes to the top of his hat.
Kai has captured the flavour of the character with this sculpt, Holding his teacup in one hand and capturing the Hatters mannerism of shock with the other, quite an achievement as the a shocked grimace is one of the hardest things I can imagine to try and emphasise and characterise on a miniature sculpt without it looking too cartoony or overly done, so a big well done for that!
Kai has kitted out the Mad Hatter with his famous Top Hat and suit, I particularly like the touch of the long stocking socks with gaiter ties at the top.
Kai has paid attention to detail with the sculpt and it has I think paid off, the jacket hangs nicely with a few folds to give the jacket life, buttons are nicely portrayed and not overly large, indeed I would say they are perfect.
Another nice touch are the hatters buckles on his shoes again nicely sculpted and nicely scaled.
Again, another fitting winner of the Category and a big well done to Kai for his sculpt.
Third Category the Royal Court….
Now the winner of this section, Brad Shier, has I feel captured the queen of hearts just as I had imagined her, screaming out the immortal words… “Off with his head”! a real ogre of a queen, and yep that’s just what Brad has done, sculpted the red queen as an ogre, quite fitting when you think about it!
The queen stands in at a height of 48mm from the bottom of her base to the top of her crown and is the heaviest model of the set.
Sculpted standing with one hand holding her sceptre the other with knuckles resting on her hip the queen looks somewhat imposing, add to that the rather nasty and none believing look that Brad has captured in the ogre queens face, she really is a force to be reckoned with and it is no wonder everyone trembled in her presence.
The sculpt itself is really well done, the queens robes stretching over her bulk beneath and collecting in the recesses, (a real big momma!), captured well and again quite lifelike.
Upon her “wisened” brow she wears her queenly crown, again nicely portrayed and quite stately.
The finishing touch to this, dare I say it??? Lovely! Mini is the sceptre, regal looking and topped with the heart of her suit.
Well done Brad, a nicely portrayed character a deserved winner of the category.
And finally the fourth category Other characters….
Bob Olley sculpted this final piece, hookah smoking caterpillar advises Alice, and is what I would call a small diorama, The sculpt stands at 45mm from the beginning of the texturing on the base to the top of the caterpillars Fez, it is in every sense of the word a wonderful creation.
Bob must have spent many hours on this piece as the detail he has gone to is quite superb, so much so that he even went to the trouble of detailing the underside of the mushrooms.
Alice is portrayed as you would imagine, a young girl in her Sunday dress lost in a strange and curious world and seeking advice from a talking, smoking, caterpillar.
I must admit that this is one of my favourites that was entered the competition, and I guess you can understand why when you look at the pictures.
I am hoping to spend quite a while painting this and giving it the attention with the brushes it deserves, as I feel only my best efforts would befit this lovely little masterpiece.
I would like to have asked Kev, Kai, Brad and Bob about a few questions regarding there ideas and how they came to do the sculpt they did for the competition but as you will find out shortly I have had to rush this review through with good reason so unfortunately the questions will have to go unanswered.
Flash
Flash was none existent on the casts, only bit I saw and that was where the lead had gone into the air vents and as is the case it was easily removed and not worth mentioning really.
Mould lines well again only a faint line to be seen on the red queen and again that should be no trouble to remove.
Painting
Unfortunately due to the lack of time I had with this project I was only able to paint two up, and I was not being biased with my choice of the two I did paint for this review, it simply came down to what I new I could get painted and based in the short time I had before the review was to be ready, I will ask John to post the other two entries that I will paint as soon as I get time to paint them.
I chose to paint Kev’s Alice and Kai’s Mad Hatter, both were a joy to paint and I found myself singing the old White Rabbit songs whilst painting them, much to my wife’s amusement! Jefferson Airplane, The Damned, yes I was off in wonderland!
It is quite a good feeling when you put the paint on and the minis just start to come to life stroke by stroke, and it is quite gratifying to say the least when they are finished and you feel that anything else would not do them anymore justice, I’m sure you have all had that contented feeling.
I say this quite often when I review and paint a mini, but I must say it again, these figures do work with you as you paint and each complements the other.
Final Thoughts and Information
As you can tell I am very pleased with this set of figures and a big congratulations goes out from me to the winners, you did a splendid job and I really do hope to see more of your work in the future.
I must also say a big thank you to the guys at Frothers Unite UK, for doing me the honour of allowing me to review the winning casts, Thank you guys!
Now for the important information!
These miniatures in this set are for a very limited period on sale to the general public, in fact they will only be sold up to an including the 28th of January 2005, so they will be a very limited run, so if you wish to have a set of these wonderful minis I suggest you go to the Frothers Unite UK website and click on the SHOP option and order your set straightaway! The link is at the bottom of the review.
More news regarding the competition…. Ok as you have read already, this is set 1, set 2 contains the runners up and you can rest assured that there are some real nice runners up too! In fact so nice that it must have given the judges brain strain trying to pick the winners!
Although the greens for these have not as I type been cast up yet, I am reliably informed that they will be available shortly. If purchased separately the price of set 1 is £12 and set 2 is £10, why the difference in price? Well it is because of the volume of lead used in set 1 that gives the off balance, the red queen on her own is a hefty piece! But the good news is that both sets can be ordered now for the great price of £20 this if I remember correctly includes shipping world wide, so a real bargain.
Again the second set will only be available for a short period of time so again they too will be a fairly limited number of castings, so both sets will be and are collectors items!
So don’t hang around or you’ll be late! Get your order in now and get some really nice and different minis in your cabinet!
Check them out at… http://www.frothersunite.com/
Frothers Exclusive Miniature
Dave the Frothersunite UK Orc
Review by Steve Crofts
Forward
Before I start this review I would like to state that this figure was purchased for myself by myself.
Why am I breaking my No 1 rule? well this is an exception, not one that I will make very often, but the money from the miniature goes to support a website that I frequent and post on from time to time, full of news of new sculpting works in progress and helps me to keep in touch with what is up and coming in the figure world.
Will the review be biased? Certainly not!
First Thoughts
Sent my cheque off and a couple of weeks later Dave, (Yes that’s the name of the Orc). was posted through my letterbox.
First of all he comes in three parts the main figure plus his Cleaver, (the Orcs hands are attached to the cleaver and these are then attached to the mini at the wrists, and last but not least the slotted base.
Dave stands at approximately 32mm from the base of his feet to the top of his head.
Sculpted by none other than Seth Nash, I expected a decent miniature and yes I got one!
The detail is very good, rivets on the armour, buckles depicted, the works.
Overall the figure does not lack in any department, and I was quite itching to get the brushes out and get painting this really likeable figure.
The head shape and Face is what I tend to think of when I get a minds eye picture of an Orc, Mean looking and thick set, a real bruiser who’s seen some action, definitely a hero that leads a unit or army to victory!
The figure is very proportionate and positioned well and in a very believable lifelike pose.
Armour is well represented and is quite interesting to paint, the plates are nicely depicted and joints ect… give a painter plenty of scope to add depth of colour tone to make it seem well used and coated with areas of rust due to neglect from the owner.
Flash
The mini was very clean and no flash was evident, there was a slight mould line that went across the shoulder plat of the armour but with a little work this was soon removed.
Painting
I had a great time painting this, all except and I must admit it the flesh, I messed up with this in a big way and thought I had remembered my technique of painting greenskin flesh, unfortunately I hadn’t and it
didn’t turn out as good as it should have! Well there is a lesson for us all in that one I suppose, make sure you remember the technique before doing it, suggestion of either trying it on a bit of paper or and old mini first.
Apart from this major muck up the rest of the mini went well. Why didn’t I strip it and start again I hear you say, well unfortunately time plus the added factor of the weather, I don’t like to spray undercoat on minis when the temperature outside is too cold, you tend to get a white residue/powder on the finish and it’s a pain in the butt!
Overall, (discarding the aforementioned clanger), all went well and I was pleased with the rest of the paint job on the mini.
Final Thoughts
I really do like this mini and although at £4 he might seem a tad expensive, he is what you may call a limited edition mini, he will be cast until the mould is no good and that will be it. So along with supporting the site you also get a limited edition mini to boot which will no doubt be worth more than four quid when the casting ends.
A further note is that the £4 charge also includes postage and packaging world wide.
Can’t say fairer than that can you.
To order you Dave the Orc mini go to the website at…
http://www.frothersunite.com/
Please remember to mention
Wargames Forum when contacting traders!
