Falaise
Awarded: Silver
Users' choice
This gallery has 5.06% of the users' votes.
By: John Schmitt
Manufacturer(s): Dragon, Hasegawa, CMK, Revell, Italeri
Description: British armour moves along the damage and destruction suffered by the German Seventh Army in the Falaise pocket. The base is styrofoam with a small irrigation ditch carved in for a space filler. The road is printed card by Faller. The trailers are from Attack & small arms & equipment are Preiser. Figures are CMK & Revell.
- Judge 1
- This is a great 'Packed' scene. Lovely rich colours especially on the German Camo & soldiers skin, great use of pinwashes. One thing I noticed all the tyres are very clean a dusting of dirt pigments would make a real diffrence & add more details to the tyre treads. Wooden tools looks well painted as is all the metal parts more of the metalic paint work could have help sprocket & track teeth & cables. Most of the decals are well applied except the '30' on the Humber A/C there is signs silvering. In Falaise german unit would have got mixed up, but the 12th SS Panther has a pre- Normandy style numbering. The British AFV's have different Division decals (7th AD & 11th AD) & should have been the same. Nice one.
- Judge 2
- The composition of this diorama is quite simple – it shows a typical scene of victorious troops moving past a defeated enemy. Still, looking at such mighty pieces like the Panther, the Flak 36 and the Pz.IV, all of them practically untouched by damage, the victorious troops presented by two mediocre tanks and a small scout car seem to be squeezed. You could avoid this by showing German armor heavily damaged, burned out, torn to pieces, etc. Now we can see AFVs more or less suitable for further fighting and we have to guess what made their crews abandon them so hastily that they even left their small arms. Yes, soft-skinned vehicles have their front glasses hit but no corpses are seen. So, the work could (and should) show more damage and destruction to look convincing. And pay attention to small details – your Sd.Kfz. truck lacks tracks (that was the reason why it stopped) but where are the tracks themselves? Grass, bushes and the ditch – all look convincing. You’ve introduced an interesting way to make a paved road via printed paper. I’m sure you’ve used a high-quality printer to do this because while looking strictly from top downward the road looks very realistic. Painting is very careful with extensive use of pin washes, I like the Panther most, but chassis of all the vehicles look too clean. Stronger shading could make British armor look more interesting. Figures are painted much better with good contrast between dark and highlighted areas.
- Judge 3
- Your modelling skills match that of your photographic skills, all the individual vehicles (and there’s a lot of them) are very well made and painted, my personal favourite is the opel blitz. As has been pointed out by the other judges I too would expect to see a lot more dirt, dust, grime and damage. The fighting in Normandy and in particularly the Falaise pocket was fierce and the weather was hot and dry and all photos I’ve seen show the above mentioned signs of wear and tear. Although I can understand why you didn’t go down that path; your models are beautiful as presented just not as believable. Your figures are superb great shading and highlighting with good depth and balance, excellent job. The scene itself is nicely presented and the little vignettes embedded within the main diorama are very good work – Tommy looking over the Panzer IV, second tank commander signalling to the off scene tanks etc. But there are also some oddities, why do the windscreens have bullet holes but nothing else- very accurate ground attack aircraft maybe? - and where are the famo’s tracks? Where are the Germans? As good as your diorama is I think we needed to see a bit more, maybe a prisoner or 2, a few corps would solve the missing German problem and more realistic distribution of battle damage. This is still an impressive work by any means and something to be proud off, I’m looking forward to seeing something else from you next year.