As several of you are aware I’m a fan of Reaper Miniatures. A little while ago I finished the last of a fantasy batch that I bought and promised myself that I would buy more Reaper figures in the future. Good to my word I bought a few a couple of weeks or so ago and began working on this little vignette during the closing stages of completing my recent WW2 diorama “Operation Overlord”.
I’ve been wanting to do something involving Pirates for some time but what with one thing and another never got around to doing anything about it. These two figures, along with another one, caught my eye as I was combing my way through the Reaper catalogue and so I finally bit the bullet and made the purchase.
The figures were a joy to paint, so much lovely colour after the drabness of WW2 uniforms. Nothing really to say in respect of the figure painting. The palm tree on the other hand is a complete scratch build.
I had never made a palm tree before so this was a new learning curve and what you see in the photo’s is my first ever attempt at making one. On a personal level it turned out OK but needless to say I learnt a few things along the way. Rather than go into full details on its construction in this post I’ve decided to do a separate “How to Make a Palm Tree” article (I bet you can’t wait to get started making your own!) which I will aim to publish next next week, not least of all because the lead up to Christmas will almost certainly leave me bereft of painting time! Besides, if I share it then between us perhaps we can refine the technique further.
I thought I would also enter this one into Azazel’s December challenge under the categories of Vignette and Scenery Pieces.
Slightly blurry photo’s below. I need to work on depth of field for close ups thats for sure!
TIM
The Imperfect Modeller 
An excellent mini-diorama! Those are very nice figures. I’m a bit disappointed with the tale behind the palm tree though – whereas it looks really great, I was hoping you’d made a hash of several dozen before you got it right, so that I could take the rejects off your hands to use for WW2 Pacific games!
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Cheers John but trust me when I say if you can scratch build tanks then you aren’t going to have any problem whatsoever making these trees. 😊
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Love it mate – cracking minis & great work on that tree! Looking forward to the tutorial 🙂
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Thanks Alex.
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Looking fab, I am with JNV here, the tree is awesome.
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Thanks mate, and they are surprisingly easy to make!
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The tree is spectacular man! Can’t wait to find out how you did it. Love the whole piece too. Very iconic little scene. I’ve got about a gazillion pirates coming from foundry, blackscorpion, blue moon and Freebooters!
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Sounds like making your own trees might come in handy. To be fare they are easy, you’ll have no problem making them if you want to.
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Your easy might be hard for me. For example pulling a tree stump out of the ground is easy for me but my eleven year old is too weak and girly haha.
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You might be right but if you can’t make one I reckon your 11 year old certainly will be able to.
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Haha she’s a lot more switched on than me let me tell ya
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That palm tree rocks, it’s very aaaaartistic…ok, could not help myself. Nice diorama, really looking forwaaaaard to the tutorial…sorry can’t help myself matey…
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Very good Mark but just for that I may have to break the tutorial down into 8 pieces!
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That is a lovely vignette. Looking forward to seeing the tutorial.
I always wondered why pirates arer called pirates. It turns out they just aaaaaaaar.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Good job mate ,some time ago I needed some palm trees so I ask the younger one about any Idea’s in this regard , after many experiments she came up with a design I really liked ,in all the things we tried we never thought of feathers ,well done ! ,looking forward to the tutorial .
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Will be interested to see how what you did compares as a technique. Should have the how to post up on Saturday.
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The young one used a plant SWMBO will point out to you ,it is dwarf nandina from china ,she dries the stems and then cuts the leaves out of artificial plant leaves which are then stuck onto green florist wire and then tied to the stems with your old mate course old string .you can see here work on my African house dio .
I told her about your feather idea and she pretty impressed mate ! .
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Checked out your trees and they do look very good. Will be interested to hear what the young one makes of the feather idea when I put the post up on Saturday. Sohnds like a bright lass.
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Very nice – and I have to say the palm tree is top-notch, especially for a first effort. The pirates look great too, love how you’ve used just a few details to tell the story (and the contrast between the well dressed captain and the shabby crewman is spot on).
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Thanks mate, glad you like it. I’ve got another pirate figure to do at some point so I might have a go at another one in the New Year. Happy Christmas to you and your family.
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I’ll look forward to it. Likewise, hope both you and SWMBO have a very merry Christmas!
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Hm… solid shaft… Hairy balls… Explosive looking top…
I give this diorama with a solid X Rating!
…and yes, it looks great. I reckon Mikko will love this one especially!
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Haha, I’ll have to watch what I write and remember that the “pen-is” is mightier than the sword! 😉
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Don’t point that thing at me!
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Awesome, man! Great paints and love the new tree. I placed an order at Reaper in December, and they are great. Received email confirmation right away and then some fast emails as things were wrapped up and shipped. And they even threw in a couple bonus minis. I know they are a manufacturer, but the other online games shops I deal with typically take a week just to get everything together and ship it all across the country till it gets to me. Nope, Reaper is fast and good. Hopefully I can find more minis from them that fit the scale of the games I’m working with.
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Glad you like the tree. As for Reaper they have so many figures in their site I’m sure you will find something of interest. They are certainly an efficient company that’s for sure.
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Yea, it’s that efficiency that was kind of mind-bending to me. But as a consumer, something that I can really benefit from! I’ve browsed through their line many times. Sometimes hard to find just what I want. Often I fill up a cart with a bunch of randomness that I think will work, then it’s a ‘F’ it!’ as I don’t find exactly what I want, and empty the whole damned thing. Glad I did pull the trigger last time though.
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There’s plenty of good stuff out there and if the UK is anything to go by then there are some excellent companies out there too. I guess much depends on how specific up you want to be but as I dabble in all sorts of things it’s never been too much of a problem.
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