I had the idea for a while of a Sherman squaring off against a Tiger. The idea was originally going to be the Tiger being surprised from behind, but the idea sort of morphed when I acquired the Beetle.
The next idea was of the Sherman crushing the Beetle in it's path and from there all that was added was a Tiger waiting to pounce.
I had big trouble finding some suitable scenery, but thanks to Dave Cox I found the Rathaus from Verlinden productions on the Historex website. I also considered Dave's own creation but have saved that for my next scene. I also got some advice from Russ and Kelly too for mixing scales. The beetle was 1/32 and I was'nt sure it would work with 1/35 before I started, but they were right, it does.
OK, now the kits...
The Good
The Sherman is the M4A3 from Tamiya, and was a good build, now my 4th Sherman I've made. The most surprising thing with this kit was the amount of accessories in the box. There must have been about 8 figures in total all with numerous rifles and equipment.
The Bad
The Tiger is the Tiger 1 from Tamiya, my first Tiger and a joy to build. Even painting the tank seemed the smoothest job I can remember for a while. I wanted to keep the colours an all the models quite subdued as opposed to some of my more lary builds.
The Ugly
The Beetle was quite a modern 1200 so I knew I was going to have to decimate the kit and really "ugly" it up. I only did a partial build on it and left out lots of peripherals. Then I warped it with a candle and some pliers which seemed to work quite well. I also heated a needle and added bullet holes to the side. The warping worked so well I went back and did some to the Tiger too.
Then, after a suggestion from Kelly after seeing my Swedish STR, I tried rusting it by spraying reddish brown paint in water and dipping the kit in. It worked very well (Good idea Kelly!)
The backdrop was a hard build. I just could'nt seem to find any suitable ground, so decided to make my own out of plasticene and a "dibber" I made. The plasticene was only used in the areas around the kits leaving spaces for rubble etc. It looked horrendous until I undercoated it and then it had some potential. The Rathaus went up in an hour or so and had some lolly sticks added for windows. The rubble was just plaster of paris with some coffee added for colour.
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Out of the 3 figures I was going to use only 1 made it into the scene. A pensive trooper about to get a big surprise. Where the 2 other figures were going to be a small cat took their place (thanks to Jonathan for his kindness for that).
The final problem was going to be the photography. I have never seen a good diagram showing how it is done indoors so took a picture of the way I photographed this scene for reference. The left and right lights are 60w the center is 100w. The camera was used on a tripod with the delay to stop jerkiness.
Hope you like it.
Chris Morse (aka Model Citizen)
You can see more of Chris's work in his section of the User Gallery.
NB: If you would like to contribute a similar article about your own project, please contact me here.