1:35 WWII German Tanker #3

The third pose from one crew

The range of tank crewmen is designed so that the individual pieces can be put together into a group. This piece closes the numbered set of three and adds another stance to it. German tank crews in the Second World War usually consisted of five men, so even three figures still remain an incomplete team and can be used in many combinations without the scene looking overcrowded.

Why it pays to go for a group

Modelers often find that a finished armored vehicle looks static. What helps is the relationship between the figures: two men absorbed in conversation at the rear and a third turning toward a sound turn a static model into a moment. Think the arrangement through before you glue anything. Stand the figures on a paper template of the base, turn it round and see whether the scene works from every side, not only from the front.

Setting them against the machine

A soldier standing freely on a base looks separate from the hardware. The tie is created by a small thing: a hand laid on a fender, a foot propped against a road wheel or a helmet set down on the armor. A detail like that joins both parts of the scene into one whole and the viewer stops taking them as two separate models stood side by side.

Preparation and painting

Before painting, rinse the casting and remove the remains of the mold parting lines, which are hardest to see on the inner side of the arms and along the trouser legs. The face is the smallest but the most watched area, so give it a procedure of its own: a base coat, shadow into the eye sockets and under the chin, light on the nose and the cheekbones. Only at the end even the whole figure out with a faint veil of dust so that it matches the vehicle and the terrain.