I’m building this model inn (working on the last main element now) and I still have the first town house to complete (the second one is finished… just about) also the second tower is still in parts, I have ten fortified castle/city wall elements to be completed, a block house planned …and a smithy. I also have several wagons and chariots in construction and plans for a siege tower.
On top of these I have several semi finished naval models, including an almost completed knarr (Viking trader) (mine’s only missing a few details, I'll post an image later on) two fishing boats (only needing masts) and a ‘Lorien boat’.
I have undecided plans to build more naval models, including another knarr a Viking type long-ship and a Bremen cog. This ought to give us several possibilities for small-scale naval skirmish games…
And today I realised I’d love to build an Arab style ship like the one Tim Severin built back in the early nineteen eighty’ (see image) only maybe a bit more advanced, say with an upper deck… Like this perhaps, only with less rigging and details to get in the way of the game.
Such a vessel is normally called a dhow. They come in many shapes and sizes, but the one I'm interested in building is based on the ship I saw in the animated film, 'Simbad', which looks similar to the corsair ships featured in Peter Jacksons mediocre adaptation of the Lord of the Rings. The 'Sinbad' ship seemed to be a fantastical hybrid of a dhow with the sails of a Chinese junk.
Sinbad. Legend of the Seven Sea's
I love animation. One of the reasons why is because I like figuring out how they did it, but beyond that there is also a pleasure in seeing the skill of the artists involved. In this regard, ‘Sinbad’ delivered pure pleasure since it was technically very well done. The drawings and colouring were excellent and although I thought they relied a little too much on c.g.i. they managed, for the most part to blend the digital (as in computers) with the digital (as in fingers)
Where the film fails is in the cultural department. ‘Sinbad’ the actual figure from Arabian stories (and possible history) is absent. DreamWorks have made their own version of the story much as Disney has been doing for years) and in some way I felt a bit cheated by this. The story of Sinbad is a pretty good one and didn’t need to be completely rewritten.
1 comment:
Yes the 'ship' is what we in the West call a dhow or daw and is a Swahili word for ship. But this vessel comes from the Gulf region of Kuwait and is known there as a BOOM or BOUM.
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