the Hunt for the Oliphaunt part 2 The Kit Bash

They arrived within a few days. What had I bought? 4 toy rubber elephants. They are solid and heavy in comparison to plastic. They are made of the same kind of rubber that I remember toy snakes being made of as a child, a familiar smell, the same texture.They feel dense, they heft in the hand. They are surprisingly well detailed with minimal cast lines and far more realistic than I expected. One is noticeably larger than the others, it is the worst of the four, poorly animated, not quite so detailed. One is brown coloured, it has a nice animation, walking, looking to the right. The other two are identical, they are the most realistic looking and better animated although slighter in mass then the others and I am immediately thinking about the possibilities of conversion. A change in posture maybe. Can you model rubber?

 Well yes and no. It’s easy enough to cut, but not to carve. The cast lines are impossible to shave off. Retrospectively, long after they were completed it occurred to me that heat might prove to be the way. A heated spoon perhaps.  

Having cut them, what glue would serve to fix the cut pieces? I have no idea and never had to find out. The rubber drills well enough and so I drilled and filled using copper wire and green stuff. I cut through the fore leg of one and raised as if stamping it down and then cut its head off and re-positioned it to look towards its raised foot.

you put your left leg in....

I was pleased with the result although as you can see from the pictures it gave one of the poor beasts a deformed neck. I was hoping that it would be camouflaged by paint and made a mental note to position the mahout over it. Next job was the modelling of harness straps, manacles and tusk decorations.I also pierced their ears

            

I  was completely unsure of how to paint them. Grey I guess, but really all grey? What shade? I began googling elephants and soon realised that elephants are actually lots of different colours. I imagined painting pinky white splotches on faces and ears,speckled fleshy spotty patterns and decided that I probably didn’t possess quite that level of skill and settled for mostly grey.I concentrated on the fatter, crappier one first













I started with a flat coat of....grey! I washed this with GW Agrax and Sepia,much as I don’t like GW aesthetic or their very expensive figures I would say that their paints and brushes are very good and that the washes are best I have found.

Leonardo da Vinci eat your heart out

 

I then dry brushed with slightly paler greys finishing off with Longbeard grey and used some flesh wash in the ears and around the eyes. I tried to reproduce musk tracks on the cheeks with flesh wash and gloss varnish. I used some dark flesh tone around the eyes and painted the tusks and toes with bone appropriately washed and dry brushed.Next,I had to think about a fighting platform for the men but howdah you do that?I had several ambitious plans involving trellises, ships masts, rigging, boarding platforms,anchors, grappling hooks

Howdah you do that?

Howdah you do that?

My original concept had been a tall tower castellated and brightly coloured. I was thinking of using card to construct it. However,I had recently come into possession of some nice walnut veneer and I wanted to use it. That meant a squarish structure because it only cuts well in straight lines, it has tendency to split. It also meant no bright paint because the quality of the wood is so good it would be criminal to hide it. Square and stained then.
But what size? I wanted it to to carry four crew men. I decide they would be mounted on pennies so as to have the smallest possible base. I made a paper template to get some idea of how to proceed.I laid out four pennies in a square and drew round them to give me the size of the floor

The frame work is made of walnut strips although balsa would do very well. I scored lines in the walnut with a sculpting tool to create a planked look.

 Mark two. Having hit up on a formula and growing more confident with using the walnut I began to get ambitious.

Place your ad here!

What are those side things hanging down called? Curtains? Panels? My wife decided they were tabards. These are made from newspaper and coated with PVA, the modellers best friends. They are hanging from some 0.8 mm brass rod which I’d fixed to the jumbo’s side with small brass eyelets that I got from the local model shop (boating division)......

...who also provided some lengths of brass chain, in two sizes, very small and fiddly size and impossible to see let alone thread anything through it size. I tried to “age“ this chain using various different products with no luck at all. The chains are actually holding the howdah in place so must remain flexible

That’s about it! I painted up the rest of the elephants. I had already decided on only having one multi tiered howdah. I adorned it with the centre bosses from a pile of plastic shields that I didn't like, this didn't quite achieve the effect I anticipated, it looks a bit like my old grannies chest of drawers!  This one I imagined filled with archers, the other three, smaller howdahs would be packed with fighters armed with sarissas and javelins. This howdah and the original smaller one fitted well and sat nicely on the backs of the elephants and didn’t require fixing. All the howdahs are actually held in place by the chains. I wanted them to be removable for when they get damaged and I plan to build a ruined howdah as a future project all smashed wood and chains with maybe a limp body hanging head first from them.

Heraldry

 I wanted each tusker to appear individual. I imagined them to be pampered by their crews and honoured by the Haradrim,given godlike status even. With no Harad culture to go by, I decided to give them desert themed heraldry. Each symbol could represent a deity. Snake is the only known symbol of the Hardarim and scorpion came easily to mind and after some consideration scarab and salamander seemed appropriate. Highly alliterative gods to be sure. I went off on a bit of a tangent when doing the salamander and ended up with an anaemic crescent bleeding into a Red Eye. I’ve no idea why, I expect its symbolic.I expect to write up my own take on who the Harad really are, I mean, for one thing they don’t call them selves Harad right? That would be like WW2 Germans calling themselves Jerry or the Hun. I could have moulded folds in to the tabards but I wanted to paint the folds in. I painted long thin triangular shapes with the base colour then added highlights to create a 3d effect. Washed with an inkand then glazed. This required a lot of glazes! I think the snake came out best.

 

I added a few details. Shields adorn every available surface. Scabbards full of arrows and leather-bound boxes to hold spare spear and javelins are fixed where the crew can reach them. Swords and axes fixed to the howdahs ready for the crew to grab in time of need. I created some corpses, including a horse, to decorate the bases with. I strewed the field with discarded shields and weapons.









The Crew

I have had a pack of GW corsairs of Umbar knocking about for some time. They are ugly figures, poorly proportioned and sculpted for the main part, but they do have rather lovely voluminous pantaloons. I also had a pack of Gripping Beast Heavy Arab Cavalry with lovely scaled and lameller armour and a selection of exotic heads,some left over Warriors of Rohan and some GB Saxons.I put them all together and got a crew.I mounted them on pennies so they would have small bases and fit in the howdah,but I also wanted to use them for a Battle Company so I based them as a for a desert. I used Foundry dusky flesh,GW mephiston red,Vallejo brass for the armour and gave all of them a mustard/gold cummerbund to give them a uniform appearance and a sense of being an elite unit. 
















 
I drilled out the centre of a javelin and the hand of the javelin thrower and inserted a guitar string, I am quite pleased with the result.

The sarissa is a single piece of brass wire flattened and filed to a spear point at the end with a ferrule made of whisky bottle top foil in the middle. It was fiddly job getting the arms right, I drilled the hands, threaded them on the spear shaft and then positioned them on the body.




The Mahouts were kitbashed from Gripping Beast Light Arab Cavalry bodies with heads from GB Dark Age Cavalry. I made the "cruellest cut of all" between the legs to splay them enough to fit. I painted their tunics  with the same colour I used on the crews cummerebunds.

Mumakrim! The Battle Company

Ware! Ware ! May the Valar turn him aside! Mumak Mumak!

I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and I am looking forward to completing my horde of Harad and creating a culture that is fitting for the most neglected of Tolkiens creations