1st attempt

There you go airbrush .... you had hyperlinked the thumbnails instead of the main picture.

Now on to your fig ..... great work ! You have really captured the look of this figure very well.

Keep up the great work Airbrush and thank you for sharing with us.

good job!!

Great work, Airbrush! Pretty convincing for a first attempt.

I suppose thats the MG42 you were asking straps for?

Airbrush,

I'm impressed. Thats a great job for a first shot. Nice and crisp detail. The equipment looks like its hanging not "stuck on". The MG looks like it has some weight and you seated it nicely on the shoulder. It looks as though there is good connection between the equipment and the figure. Thats a sticky point with me. On the bigger figures its easy to just sort of glue the equipment to the hand and it doesn't look right. One suggestion here, shave a little bit of the shoulder when you have a figure shouldering something. (anything with weight will make a depression into things like fabric, epaulettes, the crrok of an arm etc.) It seems like nit picking but it makes a big difference on the bigger figs.

Your shading is subtle and looks good. I like to exaggerate a little bit more to delineate lines or highlight the texture of the folds of a garment. Gives it some "eye candy" so to speak. I would weather things like the gas mask cannister. Because it get banged up and moved around alot as it flops around when guys run and move, it tends to get scraped and chipped. (Friend of mine does WWII renactment and I remember when he bought his. It was brand new and had a pristene finish, after about 4or 5 events it started showing some paint chipping etc.) A Wash here would make the ridges stand out a bit more too. Pay attention to highlighting the edges of straps, the upper edges of folds like collar turnbacks, cuffs etc. Also some outlining helps make some of the detail stand out more too. A darker shade used along seams, hems, edges of pockets, just under the belt etc. makes these details pop and stand out. Mind you these are just my preferences and what I like to do. Looks as though you need little help from me though.

Bigger scales are hard, you can't get away with some of the visual tricks you can with smaller figures. But you've done a wonderful job here. Bravo! More! Encore!

Mike

Well done!

Renarts nailed it perfectly.
I would try to do what Renarts suggested, check out this post of his work I think kicks ass:
http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5223&SearchTerms=renarts

Thanks for the replies, I'm still working on it. as he is going to be in Russia in the mud, I am going to cake mud on his boots, the bottom of the trench coat, elbows, helmet, gasmask, etc... hes a machine gunner after all, not a rifleman so he usually lays down to shoot.