Eastern Front 1:72 diorama

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cillmhor

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Here is a diorama I have been working on for a while in 1:72 scale. And it is safe to say that I will not be working in 1:72 again, things began to get really fiddly when it came to painting the figures! My eyes won't forgive me if I buy another 1:72 figure!

The house is an Airfix 1:76 resin kit, fairly new to the market. I found it good fun to paint, even though the colours I have are limited. I applied some washes with varying degrees of success, but in the end, I think it was okay. However, the 1:72 Valiant miniatures figures I used are too big in comparison to the house and they are too big in comparison to the 1:72 Italeri HT (the HT was a reasonable model, but the fit was far from perfect, and the large number of small individual links required for the tracks taxed my limited abilities).

The Valiant figures were good to work with, with pretty good detail to pick out, if you had a magnifiying glass which I did not unfortunately. I used modelling clay for the base, and plonked it in a card lid, not a classic display piece this! But I got some good practice in for future projects. I then used some Tamiya earth mix to give me a muddy track, and then some ground base grass mix to try and simulate grass (not very successfully). Although each part has its weaknesses, the overall diorama is not that bad, if you keep your distance!

I'll try and get some close-ups of the figures and HT. I stuggled to get a feld grau for a while, and in the end mixed on by accident. I pushed a black wash into the figures' faces to bring out their eyes etc, and to give them a grubby battle-worn look, and the same for the creases in their uniforms. Did the same for the bricks in the house, as I felt they have been burned, as white what you would normally expect between bricks. And I then cut up some red bricks I had and washed them with the black wash again. In 1:35 the figures would have looked messy, but in 1:72 they forgive my inadequacies.

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Nice... Im gonna be trying a 1:72 North Africa diorama I have the figures but need to pop into the shop on Monday to see what vehicle Im gonna build alongside them. Never done 1:72 before. Its nice and cheap though compared to the bigger models.
 
Here is a diorama I have been working on for a while in 1:72 scale. And it is safe to say that I will not be working in 1:72 again, things began to get really fiddly when it came to painting the figures! My eyes won't forgive me if I buy another 1:72 figure!


:RpS_lol: Know what you mean ! I'm trying to get my 7 year old son interested in modelmaking and bought some "easy to make" models of a F16 and a F117. Scale 1:144..........

You feel very clumsy to trying to glue the dashboard inside the cockpit when that dash is smaller then the nail of your little finger. The only reason why Revel thinks it is easy to make is the number of parts. But when the parts are SOOO tiny it makes it very difficult.
 
With the huge amount of time we spend playing CM, plus chatting on the forum, plus playing other games and say hello to the wife/girlfriend (or whatever...) from time to time, I am amazed that you guys still find the time for this wonderful work. You do them at the office or what??? Lol I had plane models waiting for me since years.... now I buy ready ones...
 
Great work Cillmhor!! I very rarely work in scales smaller than 1/48 except in aircraft, especially now that my eyes are, shall we say, not as young as they once were.
 
Thanks for all the encouraging comments. Haven't made models since I was a teenager, and I wasn't the most patient then, and my patience hasn't improved that much:). I started working on this back in July and only finished it recently, so I'm not the quickest. But this build has taught me a lot of lessons on what not to do, as well as some things which worked. The scale is a good one Bootie, if you have the eyesight and patience to work with it. And as you say, you get a lot more bang for your buck with these kits. And there are some really nice kits out there. I'm looking forward to seeing how your build goes.

Bert, 1:144, I can't imagine how small that is! Maybe if you were building a superfortress of something, but that is small.
 
When I was young, before computers, we played on tables and at that time I spent days painting 1/300e tanks and infantry. Don't think I could do it anymore (eyesight and hands shaking...lol)
 
The AC-130 that I am entering in the group build is 1/144. Actually not too bad a scale for an aircraft that big. I generally like the 1/48 scale for aircraft as the kits are big and impressive. However, because they are so big they do take up a lot of room to display, especially when you have lots of things to display.
 
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