shazzdan wrote:Those illustrations not very accurate. I'm guessing that they come from one of the Osprey books. If you want historical accuracy, don't base it on those. The best book is European Armour by Claude Blair.
I don't intend to change anything on the figure, and it's close enough for what I want, which is just to put him in a later period.
My first concern was whether the hood was still in use like this in the fifteenth century, as worn by the mounted archer in the Osprey image.
This is a useful resource for contemporary images:
http://www.larsdatter.com/hoods.htm
e.g, 1432:
The armour is laminar style, rather than lamellar, as the plates are laced together overlapped. It's more of a middle eastern/far eastern style, as is the influence of the hilt on the knife. By the fifteenth century rivets would have been taking over from lacing.
As for the boots laced at the sides I don't know.
The figure itself arrived earlier and is really pretty good.
Tailoring and materials are great, and the sculpted parts are sharp in detail.
I consider Hot Toys as a benchmark for sculpts, and Pop Toys is right up there when looking at the details in the skin, the flesh tones and beard painting which picks out the individual hairs. In natural light there's a lot more detail and quality than was apparent in the BBICN review.
The boots have a very good design to allow them to be connected to the legs. Sometimes it can be awkward to push an ankle peg into the slot inside tall boots. Pop Toys have a solution: there a plastic cup over the ankle peg, similar to the cup that holds a neckless sculpt to a neck. This cup then slots easily into the larger hole in the boot without having to put any extra pressure on the boots to marry the two parts. It's the first time I've seen this technique.
The longbow measures just over 10.5", making it 5'3".
There's minimal assembly required. The fabric quiver needs tying to the belt at his back, and the lower belt needs unbuckling to slide the scabbard loop on. Therein lies the only issue with the figure: the loop is only attached to the scabbard at the bottom, and the metal blade is so heavy it makes the scabbard hang outwards. I had exactly the same problem with Kaustic Plastik's Celts.
The simple solution was to glue the loop along its complete length to the scabbard. It now sits snug to the body in spite of the weight of the knife.