Boche Fini Finished

 My first 1/35 scale diorama came together rather quickly in the end. As always with something like this I learnt quite a bit as I went on.

Tamiya Bren Carrier and two figures from the British Patrol set, the Germans are from Master Box German Captives 1944as is the girl, Civilians, Western region WWII era. The old French man comes from Mini Arts French Civilians 30-40s. The dead German is by Stalingrad Miniatures. The base and wall are two kits from Fields of Glory and are plaster of paris with the top of the wall made from resin.

The figures are all plastic except the dead German which is resin. The old man's head is also resin. I have to improve my clean up, I found a few mould lines that should have been taken off appear once I had started to paint them!

The base was a joy to work with, as was the wall, the texture and detail made the basic paint easy and once that and the dry brush work was in place I went to town with pigments and inks. Amazing the detail that can add. Next time I will take even more time over it and make it more suttle.

Tamiya have the deserved reputation of being easy kits to work with with clear instructions. For me the poses of the crew really made this kit work so well. It was the core of my dio idea and helped me build the story tremendously. 

A cheeky pair, I built a gloss to the crews boots, the guys bringing in the prisoners don't, kind of subliminal detail.

I messed around with positioning of the prisoners, Cath pointed out that they were too evenly spaced so I moved them off from each other and was happier with the final positions, Cath can be very direct with her criticism which I am always grateful of.

The German figures for me make this dio, lots of detail and interesting. 

Never fully at ease with putting a dead man on the base I wanted to make it personal, next to his hand is a photo of his wife/girlfriend. Hopefully it will give people pause for thought if they were thinking good he's German. I added the girl mostly as she has a very stern look on her face. The idea that a dead man is just behind her but she is looking at the captured Germans so fiercely, went for lost youth kind of  feel. I also made her colourful to add another dimension.

Overall I am very pleased, I have my next one mapped out in my mind, more rural but won't get started for a month or so as I have other work in the pipeline. This ones for sale for £85 but can only be hand delivered as too delicate to post. I can see this being sold at a show sometime.