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Logistics, The Figures Updated Feb 8th, 2021

Duke Maddog said:
Partly cloudy and warm. Been exceptionally busy this past week working for a contractor who's had me on six days of 12-14-hour workdays. No time to even open my Hobby Room door! Hey, it's income and if this trend continues; I might even be able to afford Vegas!
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Hey Mark, Don't complain! What if you worked on the Keystone Pipeline? I feel so sorry for those guys!

Bob
 
paddy said:
anyone who can paint faces is doing 100x better than me at the moment, great crowd :)
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Thanks Paddy,

Figures are the bogeyman to so many modelers. Like all things, once you learn how, they are no longer scary. Forty years ago I bought Shep Paine's book, "How to Build Dioramas", from Kalmbach Publishing when it first hit the market. It has an entire chapter on painting figures. I am still using the same techniques and media I learned from that book. A couple of years later, I met Shep at an IPMS national convention. He was the head judge and I won the award for best diorama. We were friends until his death a few years ago. He came to most of my company's, (VLS), model conventions, Mastercon, and, as many conversations as we had over the years, I never once asked him a question about painting figures. The book was that good and I feel the same way about it today. For me, it was everything I ever wanted to know about painting figures.

Bob
 
bob letterman said:
Hey Mark, Don't complain! What if you worked on the Keystone Pipeline? I feel so sorry for those guys!

Bob
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Agreed! Trust me, I'm not complaining; although my body is! 🧑‍🦽 I especially like the payment part of it though! I do have more work coming up next week.

I agree about Shep's book. I have one in my library too. I had to reduce some of the work he does to his faces since the ones on my troops are so much smaller, but his techniques still work.
 
bob letterman said:
This post finishes this phase of the figures. These are figures that are refugees and are related to carts and bicycles. There are 25 men, women and children, 5 horses, 1 Donkey and 1 dog. That's 32 all together, only 83 more in that category.

Here are the 8 figures involved with the horse drawn carts.

View attachment 132575

Then, all 25 figures, 5 horses, 1 donkey and the dog.

View attachment 132576

That's it for now. I will now close out the Logistics thread number two, Jeeps and trucks, (Softskins). Next in this thread, the last 38 figures that will be in and on the last four Sherman tanks.

Thanks for looking in!

Bob
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I really love all of these Bob. The colors are great and will certainly bring thescene to life amongst all the Olive Drab.:popcorntens:
 
Thanks Ian! I do believe the colors will help. that is, as long as they don't help too much. People are used to seeing WW II in black and white and very drab. I have a theory that too much color in a WW II diorama could overwhelm it, even if those colors would be seen in the real setting. I remember talking to an AMT model car kit manufacturer's representative. He told me that they frequently have to alter the real dimensions converted into 1/25th scale as if they did it precisely, they wouldn't look right!. You can't always make things look exactly like their real counterparts.
 
I just finished up the 10 man crew for the number 5 Sherman tank in the eight tank column.

First the tank riders and their equipment. The two standing figures are haggling over a trade. The one with the flag is on the ground from another unit and the one with the German General's greatcoat is the fifth member of the Sherman crew and will be standing on the engine deck..

Tank5 crew01.JPG


I remember those old wooden Coca-Cola crates from my teen years when I was a helper on a Coke route Truck! I used lead foil strips to make the webbing inside the helmet liner. The weapon straps are mostly from Tech Star photo=etching. The newspaper is from a real one sized down in Photoshop.

Tank5 crew02.JPG



Tank5 crew03.JPG



Tank5 crew04.JPG


Then the crew itself. I had a hard time directing the photographic light fixtures to lighten the faces. Especially from this angle. The original idea for the tank was with Daffy Duck turret art. That's why you see the "Daffy" on the bases. With 450 figures, it's difficult to keep track of where each figure will be going! :)

Tank5 crew05.JPG


This is a little better. As the column is stalled in traffic, the one on the right will be sitting on the Turret with his foot on the tank deck.

Tank5 crew07.JPG


I think I can get better photos of the faces once they are mounted in and on the Sherman. These are plastic and I have to watch the tremendous heat from the lamps. I learned long ago what heat does to plastic figures! :-(

Tank5 crew08.JPG


Thanks for looking in!

Bob
 
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moon puppy said:
I wonder what he got for a genuine german general's overcoat?

:tens:
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Well, they were bickering over the difference in price of the Greatcoat for the Nazi Flag. Probably not much back then. If you had one today, somebody would have to mortgage their house to buy it! That stuff is insanely expensive now!

Dad
 
I think posing and making all figures fall in place in a way that makes sense and absorbs the viewer is at least as difficult as painting them. If you ask me, that is way harder to achieve than painting figures to perfection. Wonderful stuff Bob :tens:

Laurence
 
The horse trading GIs remind me of Telly Savalas' character in 'The Battle of the Bulge'.
 
White_Wolf said:
I think posing and making all figures fall in place in a way that makes sense and absorbs the viewer is at least as difficult as painting them. If you ask me, that is way harder to achieve than painting figures to perfection. Wonderful stuff Bob :tens:

Laurence
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Thanks Laurence.

I think that is why figure painters are considered the elite of the hobby, at least I believe that is the general consensus. I've never considered myself a figure painter. You can't put 450 figures in a diorama and expect them to be show winners, there's simply not enough time. Some of those top guys spend an entire year on a 1/35th scale figure and they are awesome. I do a lot of sculpting and converting on my figures out of necessity. Otherwise, they would have a dozen poses and look like department store mannequins. My goal has always been the interaction of the figures. Composition is extremely important to me. I can't stand to see figures on a diorama standing and staring into space with no interaction between each other.
 
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