Creating casulties.

I work a lot in 1/72 scale and was having the hardest time creating the illusion of dead or wounded figures. (I don't buy expensive figures, mostly soft plastic and then I hack em apart and creat my own poses) Most of them would seem to float above the ground work or have a limb sticking randomly up in the air. I wanted them to look as if they are heavy and pardon the term, a dead weight. After trial and error and mounds of frustration I found a way quite by accident to give them the look I wanted. Here's what you do.

- First find a figure that is in a pose close to what you want. Like the German Soldier hucking a grenade or a soldier lying down firing an MG. Cut away the weapons an discard them. Most weapons are lost upon injury or impact. You can find many spare weapons out there and if you are really good with a knife and paint you may be able to salvage ones off of other figures.
- shave off the bottom parts that will be exposed to the ground so that that side is relatively flat. Don't get carried away as you don't want to make the figure look too skinny.
- cut off the limbs and head and then place ( not glue) them back in their original place. They should now apear to be laying closer to the ground as if they were completly relaxed.
-use gap filling super glue to glue them back on w/o picking any parts up. Just glue them while the figure is still on the ground ( not on your ground work but on your work bench).
-once the glue is dry look for any inperfections and do necessary touch ups. Do this in small doses as too much glue can make the figure look like popeye.
-paint your figure and your ready to go.

A few more things to try. cut off the original head and replace it with one that doesn't have a helmut. Then find a helmut off another figure and place it nearby. Heads can be glued back on turning to the side for more realizm.
Oh yea, these figures may be a little fragile now so take extra care hadling them. Well good luck amigos.
Jaysun out.