Samurai commissions

These are all the figures I've commissioned in 2014. A few notes: the samurai in the orange shirt and the one with the yari
are variations of the same figure, both of which are available in Steve Barber's catalog. For one commission, I let Steve
choose what to sculpt, and the result was the neat armored bandit at far right. The archer here was my first commission.

I missed the first anniversary, which was a couple months ago, of my first samurai commission with Steve Barber. Since that first one, I've followed up with several more commissions, including a few extra heads here and there. The photo above shows all of those commissions. I have extra copies of all of them, and many are converted, but these represent, for the most part, the figures now available from Steve Barber.

This is Steve's favorite. This is also one of my favorites, though the archer has
 a little more sentimental value being my first. If you're looking for something
fun and different to paint, I recommend this yamabushi monk. He has plenty
of detail without the detail being too difficult to paint.

I started doing the commissions because I wanted a bunch of unarmored samurai for doing street skirmishes in the vein of several samurai films (Yojimbo, Sanjuro, 13 Assassins, Kill!, Ichi, Zatoichi.) Admittedly, my first commission was the archer monk; I used him to to test the waters to see how I liked the process and the finished product. If it was the first and only commission I did, at least it would be a nice shelf piece. He was a great success (and one of my favorites), so more suitable skirmish models quickly followed.

I have another samurai who is being molded. Unarmored of course, armed with a katana in a hasso stance (at least the best I could ascertain as "hasso." There is one complaint over at TMP from someone who says the pose is all wrong. I don't care -- it's an action pose for movie-style skirmishing, anyway -- It's my money, so I'll choose whatever pose I think "looks cool.")

I'm saving up money for yet another commission; I think the next one will be a classic sohei monk armed with naginata. In the future, I also have ideas for another peasant, a yari-armed samurai, another monk archer (a standing version of the one in the photo) and maybe an ikko-ikki monk. All of these will probably take another year or so. 

So why spend the money? I could spend a few dollars for a few packs of minis to get some figures that are close to what I like, or I can spend extra money to get exactly what I want. So instead of having a shelf of hundreds of figures, a few of which I love, I have a shelf with a few figures, all of which I love.

Steve Barber will do just about any commission. Drop him an email and check it out. He'll give you a quote for free.