People Talking - HO Scale

A conversation in the middle of the street

The whole package is tied together by a single theme: people talking to each other. Talking figures are exactly what layouts most often lack, and yet they can turn an empty sidewalk into a place where something is going on.

Who with whom

An older lady has a sweater thrown over her arm. A man stands beside another woman and holds her around the shoulders. Another woman is waving, while a pair of men keep to themselves. The poses are turned so that they follow on from each other, but none of the figures holds another, so they can be split up.

The distance between the figures

With talking figures the gap is what decides. In a ratio of 1:87 the usual distance between two people in conversation corresponds to roughly one centimeter; a bigger gap creates the impression that the people do not know each other, a smaller one feels oppressive. Before you reach for the glue, then, try the spacing dry and look at the result from the eye height of a viewer.

Use in a scene

Split the six into three pairs and spread them over a longer stretch of street, at a railing, in front of the entrance to a building and at a corner. Scattered pairs populate a scene far more convincingly than one cluster, and they also give the viewer's eye a reason to travel over the scene from one place to another.

The turn of the heads decides

The most reliable way of linking two figures is to turn them slightly toward each other and leave an open space between them in the direction of the viewer. A group closed into a circle tends to be unreadable from a distance, because half the figures stand with their backs turned and their faces are lost. An open arrangement, on the other hand, looks as if you could step up to it and listen to what is being said.