Michael Caine in Cloak As A Subject For A Toy Soldier Conversion

 What's that you say, what's with the movie still instead of a pic of your toy soldiers? Well I am going bonkers, presently, as my computer uploading of SD card mechanism is behaving like a two bob watch - (favorite saying of my dear departed Poppy).

In the extremely unlikely event that none of the readers recognize the movie source this is an early scene in the film, Zulu.

Michael Caine is brilliant. When he did his screen test for this film there were doubts expressed about his ability to play the upper class British officer, Bromhead. But, as we all know, Caine is known for his ability to switch from his own cockney accent to upper class and to carry it off. The character himself evolves from a flippant and arrogant one to a more sympathetic one who gives credit where it is due, to the engineer officer, Chard's clever organization of the defences at he mission, Rorke's Drift.

I already have a painted plastic Conte figure of Caine with rifle and bayonet as well as a figure of him with revolver - I forget its origin. But recently I received, in the mail, from new Zealand, fifty, mostly mounted, Britains (and a few others) damaged hollowcast, many without heads. I often collect damaged hollowcast with the intention of repairing them. With postage included I paid $150) Australian; that's $3 a figure, still more than I wanted to pay but not bad, I suppose for such old figures, even if they are damaged. A number of the horses require the odd new leg. Unfortunately some also had their legs and sword and carbine scabbards squashed up against the bodies by the tightly wound bubble wrap so when I straightened them out some broke - good intentions not rewarded. Anyhow, one of the horses intact had a rider in cape but no head. I already have a couple of these I made into horse guard officer and British general. I decided to do something different here. So Michael Caine became the candidate.

As far as depicting history goes am I depicting military history or film history? Well it is a bit of both. The film got the uniforms right. The exception would be that the helmet badges were unlikely to be worn on campaign and the white helmets were generally dyed with whatever brownish substance was handy - tea was one. I haven't researched to see if the grey cloak is accurate but it doesn't matter as I am depicting the film scene.

The first step in the conversion was to find a suitable head. I looked through the head box and selected the nicest one. The only issue was the one with the best face and sculpting also had a pugaree and spike. I cut and sanded these off. The face lacks a moustache which was good for depicting Caine. Funnily enough, the real Chard and Bromhead had beards.

The shot of Bromhead returning from the hunt has the cloak open at the front and this is how I wanted the figure to look, in order to show off the scarlet and gold, so I managed this with some deft application of Green Stuff. On the other hand the toy figure's cloak covers the knees. I decided not to try to cut and sand this back so the cloak, whilst open at the chest is kind of going to be still covering most of his legs. I am not sure how viable this is but I'll fudge it somehow.

I decided to just paint over the existing paintwork rather than to strip it and I have been using semi mat or semi gloss Humbrol enamels. The scene shows Caine on a dark brown horse (horse lovers will tell me what they are called) with a small white patch on its forehead. The reins are a light orangey brown.

At some stage I might search for a suitable shirt sleeve figure for Chard so he can be told to carry on with his mud pies as he attempts to build a bridge over the river.

The figure of Caine/Bromhead will be probably used by me as a Redian general. The reason I often put my hollowcast cavalry on thick bases is because it will somewhat conceal their relatively small size when they come up against my Armies in Plastic humungous cavalry horses. They look fine, on the wargame table, in separate units, but a bit jarring when they come into melee.

Eventually I'll get some figure pictures back on the site when I work out what is going wrong with the card reading process.

One other thing: So far I am painting block colors without shading or highlights. I am leaning towards a traditional toy soldier finish but with whites of eyes as in the way Roy Dilley painted faces. On the other hand the head I selected has a very realistic, detailed face which asks for a more natural finish. What do my readers think - traditional toy finish or model finish? Or something in between? These days I am favoring a semi mat or semi gloss finish on many of my figures, a kind of compromise but it reflects that old gloss figures lose much of their shine and this is how I remember the few I had from childhood and plastics also have a natural sheen or were originally factory painted in a semi mat paint. And it just looks nice. Gloss looks kind of impressive but to my thinking the figures look like they are wet and, in my opinion, the gloss detracts or distracts from detail.