World of Cats

Nine Lives

28mm scale

Even the smallest feline is a masterpiece of nature.

In the overgrown ruins of a long-abandoned human city, a colony of cats are living their best lives...

Most of the cat miniatures are from Bad Squiddo Games.  The diorama base is made from thin plywood and foamcore board, coated with polyfilla.  This piece was inspired by playing the video game "Stray", as well as a couple of stunning dioramas by Roman Lappat:

The Moses of her People

Harriet Tubman

28mm

“I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home after all, was down in Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free."

Harriet Tubman, born an enslaved person in 1822 in Maryland, finished her life as an American hero who personally liberated over 70 other Black people from slavery, and guided a Union naval raid of Black troops that freed 750 others and destroyed their enslavers' plantations.  

After escaping slavery as a young woman she secretly returned again and again, on foot, to guide others north to Union states where they would be free.  She worked as a nurse and spy for the Union Army and was an associate of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, and armed anti-slavery insurrectionst John Brown.

Later in life she was a suffragette, working alongside activists like Susan B. Anthony to demand the vote for women.

This figure is from Bad Squiddo Games as part of their "Community Miniatures project".

What's that WHEEKing sound?

Mysterious Wasteland Character (Guinea Pig Mimic)
28mm

Crimson and clover
over and over...

As you sift the rubble for anything useful to add to your gear or trade for bottlecaps in town, you hear a sound.  Scrambling for a hiding spot, you see an odd figure approaching. Masked and shrouded, it's humanoid enough at first glance, but its movement is an odd combination of shuffling and lurching, with legs hidden under a long overcoat.  And you think you hear squeaking...

This is certainly one of the strangest and most unique figures I've ever seen, let alone painted!  Annie Norman of Bad Squiddo Games has a well-known obsession with guinea pigs, and this figure is clearly the oddball product of that.  I love it.

Shieldmaiden

Thorrun, Shieldmaiden
28 mm

When I am dead,
Lay me in a mound.
Raise a stone for all to see
Runes carved to my memory

A Bad Squiddo Games figure, from their impressive line of female Vikings.  I think I spent more time on Hurstwic.org doing "research" than I spent painting this figure... gotta be accurate, right?  That said, while I wholly approve of historical revisionism in the name of fun, inclusive gaming, there's not a lot of evidence that Viking women warriors like Thorrun here were common.  And while stories of someone like Freydis Eriksdottir are known, I'm not sure she's what you'd call a good role model for your Norse daughter...

No step on snek.

Oh yes, and...  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Avenging Outlaw

Phoolan Devi, "Bandit Queen of Uttar Pradesh"
28 mm

I was intrigued that Bad Squiddo Games (aka Annie Norman), purveyor of "believable female miniatures", made not one, but three models of this controversial, but memorable figure from India's recent history.  Was she a hero avenging women and the mistreated lower castes?  Or simply a murdering brigand?  As usual, real people can't be pigeonholed, and her story holds a mirror to the desperation and unjust treatment women and lower-caste Indians faced during her lifetime, and continue to struggle against today.

Seema Biswas as Devi in her 1994 biopic;
obviously the model for this sculpt.