Spot the difference

No, I'm not naming him that. Let's get that out of the way first : in fact there's a totally different reason for the title of this post!

Last time, I wrote about the small unintended variations in OF models, how one painter might handle the airbrush just a little differently than another, leaving us with models more shaded, more speckled, more dappled, and so on. This time, I've bought a model who was specifically designed to vary from horse to horse : 2018 regular run EZ To Spot.

Introducing EZ To Spot (let's just shorten that to 'Spot' from now on, as 'EZ' just doesn't work to my British-English-speaking mind : that spells out Eezedd or possibly a shouted Ezz!, but never Easy!), a sort of hybrid mix between two of Breyer's ways to paint appaloosas.
Sometimes they design a masking pattern to outline all the spots more or less exactly in the shapes and places they want them, and sometimes they use a rather more haphazard paint-spatter technique which gives random spotting spread anyhow across the body. 
Trads mostly get the masking method, Stablemates tend toward the spattering because it's easier and cheaper for something so small and low-cost; you really only see SM scale masked appy patterns on the more expensive and exclusive special runs.
Spot is curious because he's got masked spots on his head and hindquarters, the rest of him is done with paint spatter. He's a portrait of a real pony, so they could have gone for the usual fully masked spotting to make him as true to life as possible (Lil Ricky Rocker proves that even the all-over spotting of a leopard appy pattern isn't considered too much effort for a regular run), but instead they chose to leave that whole middle section of him to chance, and let each pony vary. 
I've no idea what reason could've been behind this decision, but it does at least mean that collectors can tell their Spot from any Spots their friends own, or any that might come nose to nose on a live show table!

The other side, I'm not sure which side I like best to choose his website/showing photo, maybe this one as I knelt a little lower so the angle's slightly more realistic.

The fact the spots vary from model to model means it's a bit pot-luck whether you get a 'good' one or a 'bad' one - although it's a matter of personal taste : one buyer might think a lot of spots makes a good one, while another would be choosing based on the placement of the spots and not mind that there's very few of them. 

I've spent some time looking at real people's photos of Spot, both collectors' out-of-box models, and Ebay listings where the seller's taken their own photo rather than relying on the Breyer stock image alone. And there really is a huge variation in the spotting, both in the number of dots and how they're spread out - mine seems about middle of the range in the amount of spots which hit home when the paint started to fly (just imagine how messy the factory floor would've been after a batch of these went through it!)

I almost didn't end up with a Spot of my own, last year I liked him from the promo photo but never got round to ordering him, and eventually saw one in person on a trade stand at Burghley - I dithered but ended up leaving him behind...and regretted it almost immediately! I almost went back at the end of the afternoon, hoping he hadn't sold, but after a long baking-hot day round the hilly cross country course in a packed crowd, I just couldn't face the walk all the way back in from the car park. Later, I had a look for him online, and everywhere had sold out, so I just kind of left him lingering on my mental wishlist, incase I ever saw a second hand one in need of a home. 

So when the very same trade stand still had Spot in stock at a different horse trials this summer, I picked him up and didn't let go :D 

I do really like this little jumping pony mould, I've ended up with every regular run except the very first release (I have a deep aversion to pearly paint!)
Yet to settle for sure on a name, though I've got a couple of ideas, I'm also undecided whether to show him as a British Spotted Pony, or the Pony of the Americas Breyer sell him as - I have a feeling the POA breed is a bit more stock-horse typey, and the mould was sculpted as a British native pony breed, so mine may change nationality!

Each side of his face, showing off that big blob of spots all merged together!

All in all, a decent paintjob on a mould I like a lot, and the paint technique amuses rather than disappoints me - I doubt I'd have bought him if he'd been spatter-spotted all over, but the fact it's combined with realistic masked spotting too makes the general look of him so much better. 

The only thing I'd say seems lacking is the pink speckling of the muzzle so characteristic of appaloosa patterns, the real pony has it so it's a shame that detail never made it to the model version.

Breyer Catch Me

Each year, I look forward to seeing the photos of upcoming regular run models from Breyer.
Why the regular runs? Surely they're the least exciting?
Much as I enjoy seeing all the lovely colours and new moulds which come through the various collector clubs, premier collection, breyerfest runs, store and web and show specials, they're very much a spectator sport for me, as the costs are just too much to even contemplate once we factor in the price, the exchange rate, the shipping, and the customs fee.
Occasionally I manage to pick up the cheaper kind of limited edition (Breyerfest celebration models, and bricks-and-mortar/flagship-store specials) on UK Ebay, for around regular run price a couple of years down the line, so there are a few in my collection, but the chances of getting my hands on any particular horse are so slim I never get my hopes up.
So the regular runs are the most exciting to see, as those are the ones I can actually decide to buy - I imagine it a bit like having a catalogue in your hands, but only being able to order from one or two pages : all the rest of it's for other people!

When the regular run promo photos first hit the internet, there's usually one horse which jumps out at me as the 'must have' of the group, the one I absolutely can't resist ordering as soon as they're available here, to be sure of getting before it sells out - and this year's was a gorgeous grey warmblood gelding called Catch Me.

This is a mould I hadn't seen in person until opening up the box this week, and wow, is it a big handsome chunk of horse! I hadn't been expecting it so large, but it makes perfect sense, it is a warmblood and a lot of them are pretty huge in real life, so the model needs that hefty size to be in scale. He's too big for all my photographic backgrounds, so I had to dig out the old print-of-a-painting one just to fit him in front of something without the edges showing!

It's always a pleasant feeling adding a new mould to my shelves, I'm not sure why because I'll happily conga lots of colours on the same mould (I'm up to about 40 of certain SMs!) but there's a real satisfaction in the first arrival of a new sculpt, having it in your hands for the first time after seeing only photos, admiring all the details, and seeing how it looks from different angles.

As for Catch Me himself, I really like him. Grey suits the mould extremely well, and I'm glad they didn't go for a plainer bay or chestnut for the first regular run release. The real horse isn't one I'm familiar with (I only follow eventing and UK racing) but he has a lovely face marking, with the little pink nose and lip, all crisply masked. The dapples are soft and subtle, with a gentle fade-in, fade-out look to them, at least on mine - model paintwork can vary a great deal depending on the hands behind the spray gun that day, and if you ever get chance to look through four or five of the same horse on a trade stand, you'll see some are lighter, some darker, some with more contrasting shading, some heavily dappled, and some faintly so. So not all Catch Me will be identical to my one here, and I'd be curious to look up how wide the variation is, in a few months' time when more 'real' photos are out there.

A lovely head, and a nice dynamic action pose without being over the top dramatic like a horse having a hissy fit (Banks Vanilla, Empres, skewbald 'vanner' : I'm looking at you three!), this gelding looks a perfect gentleman - I can imagine him as a reliable hunter or hack, a sensible ride in the show ring, or even an eventer with good manners.

I've named him Mariner's Moon, his pale silvery grey colour just seemed to suggest something moon themed, and I've had that name idea on my scribbled list for some time, waiting for a horse to come along and suit it :)

Mangalarga Marchador

My first arrival of the 2019 Breyer Traditionals, meet the Mangalarga Marchador :

At least, this seems to be the side of him Breyer want us to see first, as he's photographed facing this way for their catalogue/promotional photo, and packaged in the box with this side showing, but I personally think the other side is his 'display' side, what do you think?

I also really love his markings on this side - facing the other way it just looks like he has a white section in his mane but here we get a brilliant flash of tobiano patching, nicely designed. And that made me realise, for once this horse doesn't seem to be real - the info on the back of his box just refers to the breed in general, and the example photo isn't even pinto (or chestnut!) - bucking the trend for portrait models as regular runs. He's apparently named Enzo in the press releases, but oddly the box doesn't mention this name anywhere. I've named mine Harecroft Mantiquiera - when a breed is so linked to a specific country, I like to look up an authentic name from real pedigrees, and this just popped out as something that suited him.

The Mangalarga mould is one which seems to have divided opinion, in sculpting style and detail it's just fantastic (he even has whisker bumps, and fluff in the ears!) but I've seen negativity about the pose, especially the legs. And it's something I've pondered while I waited for him to arrive - I think the reason it might look 'off' is that for the vast majority of collectors, we're just not as familiar with the breed and their particular variety of unusual gait.

Think of the gaited models we've been seeing year after year - the American breeds in a flashy high-stepping running walk, Standardbreds pacing, Peruvian Pasos with the spectacular swing of the forelegs, and Icelandics almost invariably sculpted in the tölt. They're not the usual walk/trot/canter/gallop we know off by heart, but we're used to them. They've stopped looking out of the ordinary. 

This model brings a new gait to the mix, one we've maybe never even seen a video of to understand the action, and at a glance, paused in a 3D freeze-frame of plastic, it leaves the legs looking kind of jumbled and strange, almost a mistake - but it's perfectly right, and anatomically correct, for the breed. It's one of those cases where the more you read and watch about the real horses, the better the model version gets - have a search on Youtube for 'mangalarga marchador marcha picada' for some videos showing the gait in motion, it's faster than you might be imagining!

And the reason I'd already read up on the Mangalarga Marchador? This new chap isn't my first one!

Yes, I managed to get my lucky hands on the Breyerfest run from 2016, Imperador das Aguas JM, second hand on UK Ebay a little while ago. A dappled grey done with a really nice hint of brown in his shading, a refreshing change from the standard black or blue-grey looking paint - this one looks rich and realistic for the warmer colour tone. His dapples are done differently than usual too, they're smaller, and rather less even, so you find areas clustering and bending to shape rather than being a grid of perfect circles. It'd be lovely if this technique filters down to regular run releases eventually.

I've also got the Mangalarga Marchador by Collecta, but I'll leave that part of my collection for another day.

Copper Django chase piece

Last week I treated myself to a whole box of last year's Stablemate blind bag mystery horses - I'd already managed to collect one of each, amazingly with only one duplicate (who had terrible overspray and so became a custom body, already repainted!), and one I decided to give in and buy as an opened bag to complete the set of eight.
But for a bargain price of under £2 per horse, I thought getting a whole case was a nice little combination of value and fun - they'd make a great body box; a refreshing change from the old increasingly tatty shoebox of blank G2 SMs! Although I do like all those older moulds very much, there's only so many you can paint before wishing for a few different breeds and poses to work with, so with last year's blind bag selection being a mix of moulds from G3 onwards, it seemed they'd be exactly that new blood I was wishing for.
And then the very first packet I opened had an odd fiery glow reflecting off the silver foil inside...

I'm not a decorator collector, not even a decorator fan, which is why I'd never cared that I didn't get the chase piece back in 2018 when people were actually chasing them, but once this shiny chap was in my hand, I had to smile. He's just quite pretty.
The coppery tone is really rich, and surprisingly I like the paintspattery masking effect, despite generally thinking it's one of Breyer's worst paint experiments that should've been left in the 1980s when they persist in using it for unfortunate 'dappled greys'. On an already totally unrealistic, non-horse colour, it kind of works. He's an artistic oddity, not trying to look like anything that happens in nature, and for that I'm instantly fond of him.
I've named him Centurion, because apparently one in four cases of 24 Stablemates contained the chase piece, and surely being one in 96 is close enough to one in 100 to give him a hundred-themed name, I never was great with numbers anyway!

I do love the Django mould, I know a lot of people have criticised his faults : narrowness, liability for moulding flaws, legginess/lack-of-chest-depth, and even his scale when compared to other breeds, all of which are perfectly valid points (although the last never has bothered me, I collect all scales so I don't care if a scale isn't consistent within itself), but I just like him anyway; such a handsome horse, a pose which captures an impressive presence and bearing, and I'm a big fan of this sculpting style over the chunkier/cuter/stylised SMs we've been seeing more of as time's gone on.

The rest of the box contained three of each model, apart from the little chestnut cob (who I call 'ponycob' cos it's way too small and cute-faced to represent a big chunky 15-hander of a cob!) which I only got two of - they had to take something out to make room for the chase piece, pity it was the mould I've not painted before instead of one of the others, but ah well, that's the thing with the whole mystery horse concept : you get what you get!

Welcome to the world of Harecroft Horses

Welcome to my new blog, a place to post my model horses as they arrive, share customs as they happen, show any miniature tack or props I've made, and to feature various models from my collecting over the years.

My collection is online at http://harecrofthorses.weebly.com/ which I try to keep reasonably up to date - a model is most likely to be missing if I didn't name it yet, or it's been out of luck weatherwise for getting a decent photo taken. But from I'll start adding them here as well as over there, and that means you can see a few more photos and a little bit of a review and opinion for each one.