Come on baby, light my fire

[sberry]

I have shown already some very first test photos of my new dio with the Salian priests.
Photography of this scene was a bit tricky because of the combination of the flaring fire in the foreground and the somewhat dim background illumination appropriate for a scene at dusk. Therefore, I experimented a lot with background photos and light conditions.
Later on, I will tell you a bit more about the figures I have used, but here comes the real stuff, the first series of pics (background photo © Giorgio Galeotti CC BY 4.0)):

[sberry]

[sberry]

[Peter]

Excellent work! Like it whole the way!

[Beano Boy]

i can well imagine the roar and heat from that fire.
Boy is that sucking up the oxygen!
i love it all. Well done. BB

[MABO]

Very well done! Is the house self made? Can you tell us something about the dio parts as well?

[PhilC]

Too bad, there are no Doors on the house

As I've already written in your other post, this scene is a marvel to look at. And your second set of pictures is even better than the first one

[Susofrick]

Cold day so I really need those firey pictures! Feeling hot, hot, hot!

[huib]

Nice scene. The photography is very nicely done. I can imagine you needed quite some experimentation before you had it like this.

[Wiking]

A unusual scene. Very good made.

[sberry]

Thank you, gentlemen!

I always like to mix lots of things from different manufacturers to get more variety and nice details. Here is a list of the stuff I have used:
- Figures are mostly from Linear A 014: The Etruscans – Villanovan Culture Warriors. I also used two figures by the unforgotten Phersu, and one by Erik Trauner.
- The dog is some metal figure for war-gaming, I can’t recollect who made it.
- The hut is completely scratch-built. It has a core of styrodur and a construction of wood sticks for the roof, then everything was covered with modeling clay.
- The accessories are: cart – MiniHistory, well – Italeri 6148, fence – Renedra (actually, it is 28 mm, but I didn’t mind), baskets and other small stuff – Erik Trauner, Phersu.
- The fire is illuminated by a 4 Watt LED lamp, it is made from polyester cotton with translucent window color. (Same method as I had already tried here).

So here comes the second batch of photos. (The background is again the Tuscany at dusk, but sunset has progressed, so it is darker than the first one. © Giorgio Galeotti CC BY 4.0).

[sberry]

Too bad, there are no Doors on the house

Yeah, they had this strict "No Doors" policy back then. No Stones either, the walls were made completely from wattle and daub. But at least it was acceptable to paint things in Deep Purple.

[sberry]

Feeling hot, hot, hot!

Until now, it was completely unknown how the ancient song of the Salian priests might have sounded. Thanks to your research on the internet, we now have a clear impression!

[Kekso]

So many cool photos of such cool project.

[Santi Pérez]

I have shown already some very first test photos of my new dio with the Salian priests...

I repeat here what I said there, sberry:

"Wonderful diorama, sberry. A very original idea and very well executed. I love the effect of the fire light. My best congratulations. "

Nice to see more detailed pictures of this masterpiece. Thanks for sharing them.

Santi.

[sberry]

I had promised some remarks on the figures, so here they come.

Besides their dance and song, the Salians had special, 8-shaped shields (pl. ancilia, sg. ancile) that were highly characteristic for their appearance. When such figures became available in the Linear A set, they were the trigger to start this project at all.

The set is OK, but not really fantastic: the quality of sculpting and casts is modest, at least in several figures.

Another problem with this set is that the shields are a fixed part of the figures. I know that some people like it that way because they hate the fiddly work of gluing shields onto tiny hands. But I belong to the other party: I hate the limited and often awkward poses that result from this design.

And another problem – we aren’t finished yet – is the fact that this set comes as a mixed bag: The title “The Etruscans – Villanovan Culture Warriors” tells it already; the Etruscans are believed to have emerged out of the Villanova culture, but we are talking about different times. Accordingly, the set is showing figures from the 9th to 5th century BC, which is really quite a chunk of time. I really doubt that anybody would buy, say, a set of “Prussian Grenadiers” that covers the whole range from Frederick the Great to the trenches of WWI, so I always ask myself what is the rationale of the manufacturers to produce such sets.

On the other hand, I tend to buy things that are really original and have not been produced yet, and this is definitely something that speaks in favor of this set.

The set contains 14 different poses including the command group, but only one of them (included three times in the box) carries an ancile. As there were 12 Salians and 12 of those sacred shields in antiquity, I did some head- and arm-swops to get more variety. And I used a number of the other poses, removed their fixed shields (see above my opinion about that!), and gave them some handcrafted ancilia made from Milliput.

Meanwhile, the night hath cometh and the only illumination of the scene comes from the fire itself; this looks like this: