Adie Roberts continues his inspirations to help inspire modellers of all abilities to work out of their comfort zone building dioramas or just trying new builds.
Ok… hope I’m not kicking up a hornets nest here, but here goes…
I like the basic model and figure work, as well as the base. But there looks to be just a lot of haphazard extra stuff on there that has me asking why?
A standard Stahlhelm laying about, but these are Falschirmjägers, and as the one figure wears, had their own type of helmets.
Multiple extra individual weapons just laying about for no purpose, and no soldiers around them. Most western armies are a little sensitive about such things. NCOs love to “correct” the private who is so negligent as to be more than an arms length away from his issued weapon.
Other bits of kit just laying about, waiting to be swiped by any passing soldier.
I think in the long run, I’m commenting on all the composition “padding”. What is the reasoning for all the excess stuff? The fuel drums and associated items make sense. But then when combined with all the other items, it looks to be more a case of “let’s put stuff here to busy it up” without any other apparent reasoning. There are reasons as to why all that sort of thing is dispersed in real life situations.
You’re not alone. All it’s gonna take is someone screaming “Achtung Jabo” and they’re gonna drive away with that MG just laying there at the roadside.
Hornets nest? Nah, it’s only a discussion about a diorama. Anyway, I feel a diorama is only a depiction of a small bit of time/space, you don’t know what’s beyond the edge of the scene. In this case, there might be several more troops on the other side of the fuel barrels, and that’s who the weapons belong to. As for the piles of equipment, I just looked at a photo of a Ramcke truck parked in North Africa, and there was all kinds of “stuff” lying around the vehicle. It’s difficult to model correct dispersion of equipment and still keep a diorama within a reasonable size. For example, I did a U.S. Army CP a while back, and wanted to include an RC-292 antenna, it’s close to the CP, which we would never have done in real life, but my diorama would have been 3 feet long if I accurately depicted correct distance from the CP. A little bit of Artistic License comes into play from time to time.
Well, at some sites that I’ve been on in the past, if you critique a build or diorama posting, it can cause a “release the hounds” reaction. No matter how accurate and tactful a critique is delivered.
Yes, we could say there is all sorts of stuff off the dio scene that could be implied, but I guess based upon personal military experiences, all the unattended crew served and personal weapons stretches credibility in my mind. A 292 closer than ideal to a CP would be more plausible, depending upon circumstances.
Verlinden used to do the same thing on his dioramas - stuff just scattered around willy nilly.
Yes just stuff to fill empty space
Perhaps a little too busy but fine and correct combination of car and soldiers
What I think to be incorrect is the windscreen cleaned by water spray, precious liters of drinkable water in the desert may have other utilization… but perhaps they are in Tunisia 
I guess I did a poor job of making my point, depicting sloppy military practice in a diorama doesn’t make it inaccurate. This morning I dug up an old photo taken at a FSB in Vietnam in 1970. I’m sitting on my flak jacket & a couple of ammo cans behind a tripod mounted .50. A few feet away are my helmet, M16, web gear and ammo bandolier. Near that is a case for the Starlight Scope, leaning on the parapet are a couple of M72 LAW’s and 2 more M16’s, on top of the parapet is an M60 w/belt loaded, an ammo can, the “clickers” for the claymores, and a civilian radio (tuned to AFVN no doubt). Nobody else is in the photo, but I was not alone on the bunker. So if I constructed a diorama of this scene, would it be construed as “inaccurate”? I feel our dioramas attempt to show little slices of life in the middle of a war, and soldiers are notorious for not doing things “by the book”. It’s OK to show this in a diorama. As a PS, after 18 more years, I became a bit more proficient at soldiering than the kid in the photo. Keep modeling, it’s fun.