A Mammoth Task

As mentioned previously, my cavemen need something to hunt.  Mammoths would seem to be the obvious choice. Given their size, making moulds and casting them would be inappropriate, so each one has to be hand made.  I decided to experiment by making a dead mammoth first, to see if the technique I planned on using would work and if I would find the outcome in keeping with the Cuties visual theme.

So off to work I went, with some helpful advice along the way from my grandson Toby.

The body is a wooden half egg from a craft store, the rest of the mammoth is sculpted from Milliput.  The eye isn't very clear in this picture, but at Toby's prompting it is an X, which is how you are supposed to indicate something being dead according to him.

The hairy parts of the mammoth were then coated in white glue and it was dipped in scenic flock.  Much easier than sculpting hair over the same area and if I'm going to make a herd of these I want an easy way of doing it.

The whole thing was then painted black, both as an undercoat and an additional way of holding the scenic flock in place.  The eye is a lot clearer in this picture.

A quick paint and base later, and the cavemen celebrate their success.  I think the mammoth fits in well with them, so it looks like the herd will be a possibility.

Cuties

'Cuties' is the term I use for the figures I make.  They are egg shaped little people, 15mm tall, with no facial features other than eyes, and no visible legs.  The intent is always to make them crudely cartoonish, with just enough detail to make them identifiable.

Hopefully the figures above make you think 'Cavemen', and I score bonus points if you consider them to be cute too.  I find them adorable, but I'm biased.

Another aim was to make them virtually accident proof. It's very hard to damage a 15mm ball of lead by dropping it and the spears are thick enough that they bend rather than break and easily survive straightening.  While I have had some figures come off their base after a fall I can honestly say that I have not had a single figure damaged or broken.

The three figures above were all made from one mould, of the spearman on the left.  The torch holding pyromaniac in the center has the tip of the spear snipped off and flames modelled using modelling putty.  The stone thrower on the right has the spear hacked off with the remaining part of it painted as a rock.  Multiple use of moulds helps keep down the cost, and mould making is a messy business which I avoid when possible.

The woman with baby and the small boy shown here are also used for civilians in other periods, simply through the use of different paint schemes.  Again, it saves on moulds.

The Cavemen are very much a work in progress, intended additions are expansion of this tribe, a second rival tribe, and animals to hunt or be attacked by.