[GubernatorFan]

Long before I did Wonder Woman, I had put together a little vignette based on ancient Greek mythology, of the Athenian hero Theseus and some of his shenanigans. Here is the first set, Theseus and the Minotaur. A bunch of photos follow at the end. (Edit: for the next set, see Theseus and Peirithoos.)

I used Phicen's M33 and M34 bodies, made the outfits from microsuede cloth (with fabric markers decorations) and leather, modified some Ignite caligae, and sculpted the rest from air drying clay, painted over with acrylics. Theseus' head sculpt is a Hot Toys Superman (I think the most recent one). I sculpted the Minotaur's bull's head, flipflopping between as close to a realistic bovine as I could get and a Minoan bull's head mask/sculpture. Considering I've never sculpted anything like this before, I think it came out rather good. The clothing and weaponry reflect the ones used in the Greek Bronze Age. Some of the poses, however, are based on Classical and modern depictions of the myth in art.

Henry Cavill seemed suitable for Theseus, not least because he actually played Theseus in the ironically-named Hollywood travesty The Immortals. Apart from the occasional visually-appealing shot, the film was abysmal by even Hollywood pseudo-mythological standards (what with a sidekick named Stavros ["Cross"... in 1228 BC!], a deranged king of a modern city [Herakleion], and apparently the irresistible motivation of getting one's testicles smashed up as initiation to being enlisted to help end the world; oh yes, and mortal Greek gods? WTF!). But the casting of Cavill was perfect, arguably the only part of the film that was.

Hope you like.

 

[Happy Couple]

Great job! Loved the minotaur. The skirt is outstanding, impressive details!

 

[primesoup]

Nicely done.

 

[GubernatorFan]

Thank you very much, Happy Couple and primesoup, glad you liked them!

 

[Ephiane]

Great Scenes, Poses and Story !

 

[SUN_GZU]

This is awesome! :rolling

 

[Stryker2011]

Very cool. I like how some of your photos match the ancient renderings. It's too bad they went with a guy in a helmet for that movie instead of an "actual" Minotaur (always my favorite of the Greek stories).

 

[dadrab]

That's some pretty wicked stuff, man.

Damn nice work.

 

[GubernatorFan]

Thank you very much Ephiane, Shogun85, Stryker2011, and dadrab! Stryker, I agree, it was anticlimactic that the Minotaur in Immortals played such a minor role; and if he was a guy with a mask (some of the ancient rationalizations of the myth actually took an even more minimalist approach, arguing he was just a random guy named Tauros, "Bull"), the mask was not very cool or convincing.

 

[Efbee]

Nice work mate,they both turned out excellent.Special props for sculpting the Minotaur's Head,that can't have been easy.

 

[GubernatorFan]

Thank you Efbee! Given the quality of your work, huge compliment! And I don't even get nearly as detailed and gritty as you do (because I want to keep most pieces unchanged for other kitbashes). The sculpt of the Minotaur's head took some time. I am not used to sculpting bulls or at that scale, but the hardest parts were getting the horns to match and to stay until the clay cured, and the paint job. The difficulty with the last part was mostly due to flipflopping between what I wanted it to look like. There is a marvelous Minoan rhyton sculpted like a bull's head, and I thought it might look good as a mask/helmet; then again the Minotaur is a mythological beast and a hybrid of man and bull... Also, what kind of bull? I ended up trying to channel a "jabonero" bull, which has off-white/beige hair, but a darker brown or black underhair or skin shows through. Maybe not the best choice (the Minotaur's father was a white bull), but I thought something closer to beige might work better with the skin tone of the human body for overall appearance.

 

[onesixthpolice]

Nice....although I've always pictured the Minotaur to look something more like this, and less than a man with a cow's head....

 

[GubernatorFan]

Hi onesixthpolice. That's a fine comic-style Minotaur you are showing but as I explained in the opening post, I was striving for as "authentic" a Minotaur as I can, based on Ancient Greek culture and art. And that is a regular guy with the head of a bull (and sometimes but not always a bull's tail). And he should be nude (which is possible with Phicen bodies, but we are keeping this clean, so I gave him a Minoan loincloth+kilt). I can't find an online photo of the sole Bronze-Age image of the Minortaur I know (engraved on a seal ring), but ancient Greek depictions can be found HERE, HERE, and HERE, for example.