Model Mate Posted October 4 Share Posted October 4 Hi there! Buoyed by my recent success on my Italian tank crew, I’ve really got a taste for this sculpting lark, and had a thought about what to tackle next. Back in my childhood/teens, I toyed with Napoleonic Hussar types, converting a 1:12 scale Tamiya racing driver into a couple of different figures, glueing on a variety of foil, string, wire and putty. It was great fun, but the results weren’t really up to the standard I’d expect from myself these days. I mostly dabble with WW1 and WW2 subjects now, but why not return to the Napoleonic theatre – and what theatre! Crazy colours and what must have been wholly inappropriate garb for fighting in. But they look great! I did a bit of googling and almost immediately stumbled across a set of (variously colourised) sepia photos of veterans, dressed in their old uniforms. These pictures ticked a couple of boxes for me: 1. I don’t want to model the usual hero poses; fit young warriors, or war weary action heroes. I’m looking for something different, that isn’t already catered for in the kit world. 2. According to a very helpful face sculpting youtube I watched, older faces are easier to sculpt than younger ones (hurrah – or should I say Hussar!) I’m really keen to sculpt everything – heads, hands – the lot, rather than rely on resin parts. I guess I could still use resin hands, but I certainly want to get my head around, err… heads, a necessity really, as these old fellas aren’t readily catered for in the aftermarket. My first foray into facial sculpting was a couple of years ago now and resulted in this, Shrek-like character – I was reasonably pleased at the time. Bear in mind he’s 1:12 scale; a bit bigger than the 1:16 I want to try this time. So I got cracking. I find that trying to sculpt the whole head in one go is a bit of a nightmare. As you push and drag clay around at the front, on the face, where most of the action happens, you find the back of the head getting squeezed and squashed out of shape and before you know where you are, your chap has a short, tall, or wide head all over the place. To avoid this, I started with a basic face shape, baked it and then cut away the main face area. I rolled out a ball of Fimo – I reckon 12mm diameter is about right for 1:16 scale. The ball was cut in half and squished onto a piece of bent copper wire. Of course, doing this destroys the nice ball shape so that had to be re-formed in situ. To this, I added a “beak”, forming a flatish front face, extending down to below the bottom of the ball shape. Again, the ball bit needed a bit of subtle re-shaping to get back to where it started. What I’m aiming for here is a crash-helmet, Daft Punk sort of thing. Finally, I pinched it all slightly at the sides to flatten the ball a bit, ever so slightly tapering this towards the front. Into the oven. And once out, I cut into the “face” about halfway up for the brow line and sliced off his face plane from chin to the brow. During all of this, I kept my nice resin heads close at hand to check overall shape and dimensions. And on with the Fimo – not too bad. He definitely looks old (left his dentures at home by the look of him) but his face is too flat really, and the features are a bit cartoonish – a bit of a gargoyle So I prepared a trio of further blanks to get practicing. Second time ‘round, I made further cuts into the hard blanks to round off the face more and then sanded them. I also made some triangular cuts into the sides to define the jawline. And here’s the result after a bit of detail. Much better! He certainly makes the last effort look pretty poor. As long as they keep getting better, I know I’m on the right track. I gave monsieur Gargoyle a neck too, and have since done the same for Marlon Brando (or Grouty from Porridge maybe?) I’ve not yet decided which of the many (15) veteran figures to try first. There’s a sitting (and rather portly) 2nd Hussar (not among the examples above) whom I’ve taken a shine to, but I think I’ll try making a few heads and see which best matches which photo. It’s interesting to see how much the shape of the blanks defines the final result. I tried to get them all the same, but they all vary slightly and I think this will mean a variety of different faces in the end. The other thing I’ve started is the hands. I made a couple of armatures using pretty thin wire and blobs of milli-green, but I’ve yet to try adding any Fimo – again, I have resin versions to copy/compare to, but it’s a more daunting task than the heads to be honest. One thing I really need to watch out for is uniform colours – these old sepia pictures have been colourised by a host of different people and the colours vary wildly. From what I can tell, some of these efforts are pure fantasy, so a bit more research is on the cards before I crack open the paint pots. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muchmirth Posted October 4 Share Posted October 4 Your ambition is definitely impressive! Go for it. I too love the Napoleonic era/figures and will be following along. Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 8 Author Share Posted October 8 I’ve been steadily refining my head sculpting and things are getting better, although I have tendency to slide further and further towards Marlon Brando for some reason. I splashed some paint on the first two heads I made – Monsieur Gargoyle and young Marlon just to see how they would take paint and what might be achievable. They’ve turned out far too tanned, and they aren’t my finest paintwork, but they have potential. I’ve since stripped young Marlon (actually, maybe he’s a bit more Patrick Stewart) of his perma-tan. He might be useable, but Monsieur Gargoyle will not be playing any further part in proceedings. I had another crack at sculpting – first, old Marlon (or maybe Private Godfrey – appropriate) and then realising that chins were getting squarer and squarer, I trimmed the blank for the next one much sharper and ended up with a slightly slimmer face. I’m pretty pleased with these two. I think they’ll just about cut the mustard. I’m getting the hang of noses and eyes, and the ears are getting better. Lips are still a real struggle though – particularly the top lip and the junction between it and the bottom of the nose. And so onto the figure… Here’s the somewhat portly 2nd Hussar who originally caught my eye. The second one is a colourised version I found online that appears, from my research to be completely wrong. From what I can discern, he should have brown Pelisse and Dolman and pale blue trousers. More like this… …and looking at his facial features and Captain Sparrow hairdo, he could be the same chap 30 odd years apart. Now I’ve noticed that in these veteran photos, many of the old boys seem to be wearing somewhat simplified trousers, missing all the fancy braid. I know that I, as a mid-fifties bloke, have absolutely no chance of fitting into trousers I wore in my twenties and I haven’t put THAT much weight on, so I guess the same is true for these old boys. From what I’ve read, a seamstress/person was on hand to alter jackets, but I assume they were happy to let the trousers be substituted. I’ll ignore this, and model the original trousers, but I will maybe add a bit of last minute, temporary clothing inserts and alterations at the back of the jackets etc. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 14 Author Share Posted October 14 Time to get started on the actual figure. I knocked up a basic armature, based on a diagram I drew up a while back. The torso section is a simple loop of copper wire that minimises the amount of metal at the neck joint as far as possible, but also allows both arms and legs to articulate – albeit together in pairs rather than independently. I posed my body-kun doll to match the photo and used this in turn as a reference for the armature which got some milli-green blobs squished into place to fuse the pelvis, shoulders/chest and give a bit of non-bendable bulk to the arms and legs. For the boots, I want to sculpt them, but need something firm to start from, so I stamped on a rolled out piece of Fimo and cut out the shapes. I slid a couple of heels beneath these and added some Fimo to the overall body shape. I made sure that the arms could still be moved up and down. This will be really helpful later, so they can be lifted out of the way while I’m sculpting the body. So into the oven, and 30 mins later I had this… The soles were tidied up by a bit of trimming and sanding and then drilled and fixed in place using little blobs of green stuff. I also beefed his thighs up a little. As I’d mixed up more greenstuff than I needed to fix his soles in place, I used the rest to add some facial hair – ‘tach, goatee and brows for this chap, and ‘tache and beard (although it needs beefing up a bit) for Marlon, who might be turning into a Grenadier guard in due course. Neat greenstuff is really nice for hair as it can be stroked with a pin to get a decent texture. As this fella is a Hussar, a crucial part of his uniform is the jacket braiding, and if I can’t get this right, then the whole project is in question. I drew up a template based on the photos in CAD and printed it out at a variety of slightly different sizes to hopefully get one about the right size. Holding it up against a variety of 1:16 figures, I reckon the second largest is the one to go for, so I laid it on a piece of HIPS foam board and drilled 0.5mm holes, inserted little lengths of silver wire in 0.4mm and 0.6mm diameter to create a jig. I’ve got three different materials to try the braiding with: 1. Teased-out strand of embroidery thread, soaked in diluted PVA to stiffen it up a bit and tone down the hairiness 2. A double length of 0.2mm silver wire, twisted in a drill bit to get a rope-like pattern 3. Relatively thick black coloured copper wire The embroidery thread was my first thought, and so also my first trial, so I wound it in place, added a few drops of thin superglue at strategic points to sharpen the loops and sloshed a bit of diluted PVA on it to fix it and stiffen it further. To my relief (and slight surprise) it slipped off the jig pretty easily. I glued it onto a piece of black plastic card using contact adhesive (bad idea) and added some 0.6mm and 0.8mm nail caviar balls using regular superglue. I also washed it all with thin superglue to completely seal it in. I then sprayed it with Halfords plastic primer, followed by a brush-load of Vallejo model air brown and a dry-brush of white to pick out the detail. It looks really lumpy and crude, but the pattern’s definitely there and I was really heavy handed with all the glues, paints and primer, so I’m confident that this can be greatly improved. I’m even hoping that I can fix it all in place and have it painted as a separate piece which can be glued on to the painted uniform later. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 16 Author Share Posted October 16 I had another go at the braiding using the thicker black wire. Looking at the real thing in the photos, it isn’t obviously textured, i.e. doesn’t look like rope or string, but a relatively smooth rope. However, the wire, even after a bit of annealing, was too stiff and threatened to pull over all the little pins in my jig. The same was true for the wound wire, so I went back to the thread. This time I added a further row of pins to better define the separation between pairs of braids. After the application of a little thin superglue and diluted PVA, it popped off ok and looks pretty good – a bit messy in this picture, but I think it’ll be ok. Another peculiarity of this outfit is the Shako (bearskin). I ordered some fake fur samples a while ago to use as long grass in dioramas (not just plopped on a surface, but snipped up, mixed and used as super-long static grass). I cut out a section of a black sample and wrapped it around a section of plastic water pipe that’s just about the right diameter, closing off the top with another patch of fur. I gave the lot a pretty dramatic trim with scissors, applied a bit of hairspray and ended up with this: Here it is in place: Nice as this is, it will need to be painted somehow or it’ll look really out of place, so I discharged what seemed to be half a can of Halfords primer on it and gave it a “comb” with a pin to even out gooey lumps. Hopefully it’ll dry hard enough to paint later. I also made a “feather” decoration from a length of copper wire and green stuff. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 18 Author Share Posted October 18 Back to the sculpting, and I got his legs done. I took a guess that he’d developed a 42” waist in his leisure years and so scaled this down to 1:16 and made up a belt/tape measure out of a strip of metal foil to check on his progress as I build his legs, bum and waist up. I actually added a lot more clay than these pictures show, but trimmed off his chest and belly down to his belt-line before he got baked. I tried smoothing the clay with white spirit rather than meths on the basis of an excellent video I saw online. It’s a lot more aggressive than meths and needs handling with care, but it certainly did help to smooth out what were (in my opinion) overly sharp creases. Next onto his torso. I bulked him out and added a few side creases and a hasty alteration at the back to let his jacket out. This last part is pure speculation, but so, as it turns out, was my memory of what was going on at the sides. I checked the photo after baking and will need to trim a fair bit off the sides and remodel the creases there – lesson learned… keep referring to photos all the time. The back will have to remain speculation though as I obviously don’t have a picture of his back. I trimmed his neck and temporarily fitted his head. I’ll need this in place (slathered in Vaseline) to sculpt his collar. I’m also planning to sculpt his arms, but then cut at the shoulder to allow his arms to continue to animate. I’ll fix/fill them at the end using milli-green once all the baking is done and I start adding green-stuff, milli-green, string and foil, wire etc. accoutrements. 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 21 Author Share Posted October 21 After taking some pretty serious chunks out of his flanks, I remodelled the creases on his sides to better match the photo and took the opportunity to add an extra couple of inches to his belly while I was at it. I also attempted to model the collar with a greased-up neck and head, but it stuck regardless, and when I tried to pull his head off, the collar tore, stretched and wobbled about, so I decided to bite the bullet and glue his head in place. So I then remodelled the collar and popped him back in the oven. Thankfully, the green stuff on his face survived the oven without melting into green goo all over his mush. He has lost a little section of his right eyebrow, but given this chap’s rakish style, he would probably go for that. Maybe this is where the current trend originated…? Next up was arms. I find it really difficult to see if I’m heading in the right direction until the arms are in place, the torso looks unconvincing – too narrow, but with them on, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I tried to retain the animation in them, but the necessary cuts at the shoulder were really quite large, and the clay kept tearing and distorting, so as with the head, I decided to fix them in place now. I can’t resist shoving his hat on from time to time for the photos. After another baking it was hand-time. I considered dipping into my diminishing stash of resin hands, but I’m starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel there – he might have ended up carrying a machine gun and smoking a fag as a result. I have some left-over hands from a German stormtrooper which are gloved (good) and the right shape/pose (also good) and I did seriously consider them, but I decided that I really should sculpt them to make this a completely scratch project. Hands are tricky….. so are face and bodies I guess, but hands are fiddly, and we’re all intimately familiar with them, so errors stick out like a ….sore thumb. After much pushing around of Fimo, I got to a point where I considered them just about acceptable, so back into the oven again. Oh, and his right foot split and fell off. I think the thick wire I used for the armature and the repeated baking were a bit too much. I really need to try to avoid much more oven time. Without all the braiding and so on, he looks very much like Andy Parsons wearing a tracksuit on mock the week now I think…. To stop him looking like a modern day comic, I moved on to his ludicrous jacket – on reflection, the outfits sported by combatants in the 1800’s are just bonkers. This jacket wasn’t generally worn, but just hung off the wearer’s elbow which, if you’re riding a horse, trying to fight and avoid being shot is just plain crazy. I rolled out some Fimo on a sheet of baking paper – I didn’t dare go too thin, so it’s around 1mm I guess. I cut out an assumed shape for the unwrapped jacket and also rolled out some arm fabric which was rolled into tubes and “glued” in place using white spirit. I didn’t want to commit this in place as painting and further detailing would be a nightmare, so I wrapped Andy up in tin foil and moulded the jacket into place on top. I needed plenty of white spirit to smooth out the inevitable fingerprints and then the foil was carefully prised off him and the coat went in the oven alone. And here’s where he stands (or rather sits) now. I glued his foot back on as this is where the baking ends and sticking bits all over him starts. His jacket is blue-tacked in place for now. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davethehat Posted October 21 Share Posted October 21 Excellent work so far looking forward to seeing this progress 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 23 Author Share Posted October 23 No more Fimo – it’s all “traditional” model making from here on. I applied little strips of Tamiya masking tape to represent the various borders on his outfit and fitted some thick rope for his belt and some thinner stuff at the tops of his boots. All this braiding is made from embroidery thread; teased out single strands, combined, twisted and soaked in diluted PVA to get differing thicknesses. It's then fixed with little dabs of superglue and diluted PVA. Oh, and he got some green hair to poke out the bottom/back of his hat. His jacket got the tape border treatment too, with a piece of wine-top foil glued to the inside of the collar. That allowed me to apply little sausages of greenstuff, teased with a pin to emulate the astrakhan fur. For the main decorative braiding, I’d considered finishing this off separately and fixing it in place once all the painting is done, but it doesn’t really feel in the spirit of figure painting and there’s too much of a risk that it’ll not be as easy as I hope so could ruin a lot of work. I decided then to tried glue on the distinctive front braiding now using the example I made up earlier. This isn’t easy – I want to avoid too much superglue as it leaves little blobs and blocks up the embroidery holes all too easily, so I tried fixing one end using minimal superglue and then sploshed on diluted PVA to let the string bed down and settle on the surface. The PVA glues fine, but isn’t tacky, so the threads all float about and lose their shape and end up standing above the surface. The regularity of the spacing is also at risk, so I need a better plan. This first attempt is on the back of the jacket; generally out of view, so I can either live with it there or strip it off and try again – I think it’ll have to be the latter of these options. To aid in aligning and glueing the braiding, I marked some holes on the front of his under-jacket. This will allow me to push in little temporary wire pins to more reliably install the braiding there. I also knocked up a basic stool for him to sit on, trimmed off armature his foot-wires and drilled a big hole in his bum for a wire to hold him by while spraying. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muchmirth Posted October 23 Share Posted October 23 Coming along! Love the way you did the braid and his gait! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard E Posted October 24 Share Posted October 24 Excellent work of the highest order and you are definitely creating something different. Without his military garb I suspect that your chap might pass for the aging drummer from a "Prog Rock" tribute band though 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psdavidson Posted October 24 Share Posted October 24 1 hour ago, Richard E said: from a "Prog Rock" tribute band He bears more than a passing resemblance to Peter Gabriel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 25 Author Share Posted October 25 13 hours ago, psdavidson said: He bears more than a passing resemblance to Peter Gabriel yessss! I thought that too, and weirdly enough, I was listening to Gabriel during my last session working on him. My plans regarding fixing the braiding have hit a bit of a stumbling block at the moment. It's proving really difficult to get them to settle down on the surface. My "Pins on the jacket" idea has had mixed results - when I tried to mount a fresh braid set on them, I lost any tension in them and the shape sort of drifted, so I think a single, central set of pins will be useful to align the middle button row, but the outsides of each set will need to be individually glued using the holes beneath to align 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted October 29 Author Share Posted October 29 So I did decide to strip off the latest attempt at braiding and have another go to get the spacing more regular. I drilled a series of holes on his torso and fitted a load of thin wire spikes to loop the holes in the braiding around. After a lot of fiddling around with tweezers, the results still weren’t great as the tension in the braids was lost and they went a bit saggy, so I pulled out the outside rows and just looped over the middle row, supergluing the other ends over the holes (or as close as I could get) on the outsides. Finally, this seemed to work reasonably well and so I could glue some 0.8mm nail caviar balls in place for the centre buttons. I’ve been using this nail caviar for rivets on scratchbuilt tanks and they perform pretty well. I have 1.0mm, 0.8mm and 0.6mm, but for the smaller ones, the size and even shape varies a little so I also invested in some solder balls in 0.4mm and 0.2mm (more like dust than anything) a while back which are perfectly regular and spherical. I now need 0.6mm to replace the dodgy nail caviar, so I ordered some and will have to wait for them to arrive before I can finish off. Foregoing the pins and just aligning over the holes, I re-fitted the braiding to the jacket too, and also glued on his boot tassels. I made up a hat strap from thin wine-top foil and a bit of silver wire. His hat will stay off for painting, so the strap was glued to his head. Conversely, his pigtails were glued to the inside of his hat. As usual, these were made from twisted strands of embroidery thread, soaked in diluted PVA. I’ve also made a start on his sword, from a couple of layers of 0.75mm plastic card. I made up a basic base using the lid of a candle from Aldi with a circle of cork glued in place and covered with a printed out section of persian rug. Here’s him in place as a latest mock-up. I’m really itching to get some primer on him so I can start painting, but that’ll have to wait until I’ve got the little buttons attached. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Rose Posted October 29 Share Posted October 29 Great work with the fiddly details, hes looking good, I really like the design on the base too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted November 1 Author Share Posted November 1 While I wait for my 0.6mm solder balls to arrive, I got on with some of the accoutrements. I finished off the sword with a few bits of Tamiya masking tape and silver wire. His satchel(?) was also knocked up from a couple layers of 0.75mm plastic card with a tape boundary and some circular indentations to represent the fancy embroidery squiggles that adorn its corners. I gave the sword and stool a squirt of Halfords plastic primer and then Vallejo (brushed on) acrylics – mid fleshtone on the stool and model-air steel on the sword. The former then got a burnt umber oil coat applied neat and using a rough, battered bristle brush to get some grain effect. The latter turned out a bit grainy – the primer was pretty rough unfortunately – so I flattened it down using some 800 grit paper and re-applied the silver. I stuck some greenstuff on the satchel to represent the Imperial eagle badge and to bolster the corner squiggles, but then after checking references, realised that I’d made the whole thing too thick so had to pry apart the two layers of plastic card I’d made it from. It got a bit (battle) damaged in the process and I’m not sure that it’s very accurate to be honest. There seems to be a wide variety of slightly different designs, and I’m just going to live with this one now even if it’s not entirely correct. I then fitted the “pockets”, straps and rings on the back using wine top foil, nail caviar and wire. And finally for now, a bit of painting at last. I did the brass parts of the sword using model-air bright brass, but although this is the best of the various brass/gold paints I’ve got, it’s still pretty rubbish. Pennies in aspic rather than convincing metal, so I went over it with a brass/gold sharpie which was a slight improvement but not very metallic, so I followed up with another thin coat of the model-air. The result is “ok”. The handle was done using dark grey then it got an overall coat of Klear floor polish before some black and burnt umber oil washes to give a bit of patina. 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdesaxe Posted November 1 Share Posted November 1 That satchel is called a sabretache. Maurice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted November 1 Author Share Posted November 1 1 hour ago, mdesaxe said: That satchel is called a sabretache. Maurice Ahh, thank you! There’s a whole new language (well, French of course, but obscure French) that I’m slowly picking up. Is it a kind of paperwork satchel, or have I got it’s use wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdesaxe Posted November 1 Share Posted November 1 Originally, yes, but by your time period it was purely decorative, rather like the jacket (which is called a pelisse). Maurice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Model Mate Posted Friday at 02:39 PM Author Share Posted Friday at 02:39 PM My solder balls have arrived – hurrah! (or rather, “Hussar!”). Just a bit of background on these little balls… after a trawl around ebay a few years ago, looking for suitable little spheres to model rivets on scratchbuilt tanks, I came across “nail caviar” – little decorative glass balls that are designed to be glued onto one’s fingernails to bling them up. They come in a (limited) variety of sizes, so I bought some 1.0mm, 0.9, 0.8 and 0.6mm. They worked pretty well, but at some point I needed smaller ones and the smallest of the nail caviar weren’t very consistent in size or shape, so a second trip to ebay resulted in the purchase of some solder balls in 0.2 and 0.4mm, which are altogether better. Here are some examples – 0.4mm, 0.8mm and 1.0mm for 1/35 rivets on my gun carrier and 0.9mm on my 1/16 Italian tankette. So now I have my decent 0.6mm balls, I could get on with the little buttons on his jacket. This was a right PITA – I have a love/hate relationship with superglue. It either sticks like you know what on the proverbial blanket or not at all, and positioning each of these tiny balls has been really trying, but I got there in the end and added his medal too. I realised that I’d made his hat “fully-furred” without the strange little night-cap insert, so I cut out a circle in the top, glued in a disk of plastic card and sculpted it using milligreen – I mixed this milliput-heavy so it could be smoothed with water. It got a thread tassel pushed in the pointy end and I glued his feather in place after the application of a bit more greenstuff to get it slightly taller/bigger. I primed the sabretache (thank you Maurice!) using highly thinned grey enamel, but it’s a bit fragile on the rear face where I used metal foil and glass balls, so while I primed the rest, it got a proper Halfords coat. I was a bit wary of the grey rattle-can stuff as it came out a bit grainy on the sword, so I used Halfords black bodyshop primer instead. Great stuff, and so smooth it’s even shiny in places. 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muchmirth Posted Friday at 02:48 PM Share Posted Friday at 02:48 PM Excellent! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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