1/72 WWII Germans vs. Real Soldiers (from Ref. Images) (Part 1)
The topic aims to bring a small tribute to the regular soldiers, common people that were sent to die on WWII fronts. Fighting only to survive, and not for ridiculous ideas promoted by stupid politicians from their warm chairs, living in extreme conditions with death around in every minute, but still hoping to see the end of the ordeal, the ordinary soldiers were the true heroes of WWII.
The selected images want to present the German soldier as he was and to contradict the perception of a smart dressed soldier with everything in order, closer to a robot than a human. I also looked for images showing gear as it was worn, not all according to regulations.
For these purposes I used only Preiser figures, the poses being achieved through mixing parts from almost all the sets related to WWII Germans made by the mentioned company as well as scratch builds and few items taken from Dragon paratroopers (the gas masks containers with gas cap pouch rolled around and a map case).
I tried to make the poses and weapons and gear as close as those appeared in the original images, but of course, not everything is matching. Quite complicated was to find the appropriate bodies and limbs (with or without Y straps, opened/tied up collars etc). Painting was also pretty hard and together with assembly took me almost 4 months to finish these troopers and other few colleagues that will appear in Part 2. Bearing in mind the large number of photos, I thought that it would be better to split the topic in two parts (Part 2 will feature images with more soldiers in one photo) and if you enjoy them, probably I will try to make and other Parts, using figures from other manufacturers as well.
All original photos were taken from Internet (unknown sources, but most of them well-known images,appeared in Signal) and next to them I attached the 1/72 figure in the same environment. After each such groping I put few images showing the 1/72 figure from the front and back, as well as the image from where I moved the figure in the environment provided by the reference image.
I think the best appear those images featuring small soldiers, but I tried also to depict soldiers photographed from a very short distance. Of course, their correspondent in the 1/72 scale will not look as good as those from a far distance.
However, it is something different than what I have done until now and I hope that you will like these images and the poses. As well, your opinions about these are highly waited.
Cristian Florescu
