Anamites

I was so impressed by Ingo's sculpting of the Bengal lancers that I asked him to make me some Anamites for my French in Indochina project.

So far I want to share with you some of the uniformplates from my archive and hopefully in a few weeks I can show the masters too.  In the photos and plates here you have a mix of Anamites, Cochinchina and Black flags. The French fought all of them between 1883 and 1885.

A good uniform-source for the "natives" is Ian Heath's Burma and Indo-China (Armies of the 19th century: Asia
from Foundry-books.

My latest project

The reason why I have much time at the moment is, that I don't sleep much and have a few days off.
And the reason behind this is my latest figure-project. This time I left the 1/72 scale and went into 1/1.

May I introduce our new Princess of Bavaria, Marie Louise!!

A great blog

This morning I had a little time and surfed the web, searching for other blogs and hobbyfriends.
Then I found something, that occupied me for a long time. As an uniformologist I am really happy to have found http://miniaturasmilitaresalfonscanovas.blogspot.com/ Great scans of old Bueno plates, wargames, little dioramas etc.

Seeing all this Carlist stuff it reminds me that someone told me about a special shrinking silicone. With this it should be possible (in theory) to scale down figures from other sizes. So I thought about reducing Perry Carlists into "my" scale because I fear they would never go into 1/72. Has anyone any experience with this shrinking stuff?

Viviandrines for Conrad

Hey Conrad,

for you and all the others who are interested in this subject:-)

Anywhere else in my collection I have the Viviandrine with Wagon from the late Daniel Stegmann. When I find it , I will post a photo of this lady too.

cheers
uwe

Stephan's homepage

Here I want to show you a link of my hobbyfriend Stephan's homepage. Stephan is an ancient enthusiast, especially focused on the Roman army. I am glad that he volunteered to help me with the Pyrrhus diorama. See the quality of his work and you know why!

Great ideas, historical perfect and a very good paintjob. Can't wait to see his painted Elephants, charging Roman Anti-Elephant-Wagons:-))

If you want to see more of his dioramas, take a look at http://www.stephan-berry.de/model.html
And some day he should tell me how I can make photos that look like real photos of living persons....

Ingo's Bengal lancers

Some of you know that Ingo is an important part of our diorama group. The one of us who is able to build great houses, trenches etc., while I am "just" a figure painter.
In the past two years Ingo started converting figures which he casted in metal. First for our projects, later just for us. In the meantime his figures became more popular and several sellers asked him to bring them in the shops for the public too. So some of his stuff is availabe from Fuhrmann and CW-Toys under the label "IG-Figuren".

Last week Ingo surprised me with photos from converted Ral Partha Indian Sepoys. I told him "Nice, but I would like to see Bengal lancers, because I would like to do a 2nd Afghan war diorama in the future". His anwer was "Sent uniform-plates". I did it two days ago and now see what I had in my mailbox today

 And just in between a Viviandrine

Crimean Turks from Hank

Yesterday night I got a mail from Hank who already painted 200 of our Crimean Turkish infantry for his Russo-Turkish war (sometimes called Crimean war :-))  diorama. And this is just the beginning!


In the Crimea there were just a few Turkish troops as most of the fighting was at the Danube and at the Asian front around Kars. So we have just a small corps at the Alma and Balaclava and some tough guys at Eupatoria.

The Crimea can really be seen as a sideshow of the war. Of course not for the British and French! But I think it is amazing what stuff you can scratch together when reading old books and making research in the archives of other nations. I have the luck to have some friends in Turkey and Russia. Beside this there is a lot of German texts and books covering the war from a more neutral point of view. And here the Turks got all the honour they deserve.
The war was fought from 1853 to 1856, long before the allies landed and again several month longer after they departed from the Crimea and is full of battles and actions you usually not read in english books on the subject. 

I am glad that Hanks shares my enthusiasm for the subject. I already thought about publishing a book for historians and wargamers about the Turkish part of the war when we have finished the research. In the meantime I just enjoy Hank's diorama and I hope you do the same.

Cröbern 1813

The fighting at Cröbern was part of the battle of the nations at Leipzig in October 1813.

Wolfgang Meyer worked together with some other guys on this project.  To be honest, this diorama is worlds better than all I ever did. Wolfgang told me that in the meantime it is sooo big, that it isn't possible to bring it in one van! Finally it should be find it's home in a museum.

All the figures are metals in 1/72, most of them made by Art-Miniaturen. If you want to increase your Austrian army or maybe Romans, SYW etc. visit their homepage at http://www.schmaeling.de/assets/s2dmain.html?http://www.schmaeling.de/


And if you want to spend some hours simply go on his own homepage at http://www.croebern-1813.de/index2.html

Second Mysore Master

Today I've got the photo of the second master from the sculptor. What do you think about this Mysore rocketman?

At the moment we are nine volunteers to share the costs and are down to 10 Euro a master for each.
If anyone wants to join us, he is still invited. So far I ordered seven masters as enemies for the Sepoys.

Navy in indochina

Last week I got a parcel from my friend Jim Scuderix who rememberd that I told him over a year ago that some anamite boats would be useful for my French in Indochina project.
So he sent me two of this boats. Ok, Burmese but surely the same style as vietnames ones. And who knows, maybe next some British in 1885? :-))

And what I already have to fight them on the rivers is from PMC toys. The Fusilier Marins within the Torpedo-boat are from Scruby - again a gift from Jim some years ago. In addition on of the Redbox figures. Painted they are looking not bad in my eyes.

I hope to post some photos of my French troops in Indochina soon. More difficult are the Chinese, Black flags and the Anamites. Maybe Andy can help me out sculpting 2-3 Anamite infantrymen for me.

Some flats between - Siege of Vienna 1683

before I post something more about 1/72 I wanted to give you a "filler" with another great
flatfigure diorama. I have seen a small film of this diorama when I was around 10 years old on the
German TV.  The diorama disappeared, but four years ago I visited the tinfigure fair in Kulmbach and there was a stand of the new figure-museum in Katzelsdorf, south of Vienna. They have it and a lot of other very interesting stuff. For all of you visiting Austria I would highly recommend this museum.

See here some of this diorama. And let's dream about having it in 1/72 too:-)))