Max Wunsche from Young Miniatures
As I spend most of my time building armor models and dioramas I couldn’t resist this figure with the Panther commander’s cupola. I actually started building the entire turret top to go with it, but ultimately decided it would take up too much space – overpower the figure. After all, I would be displaying the figure, not a tank.
I did want to use my armor modeling toolkit to produce realistically painted and weathered tank components.
With the added MG34, I felt I needed a larger base – more than just the cupola. So, this is what I wound up with.
The Panzer Assault badge on the base came as a bonus piece in a Border Models Stug, kit – cool!
Different turret roof options (In standard German red primer.)
With figures this large, I paint the faces in artist’s oils (If you don’t follow Milan Dufek on YouTube, you should).
The rest of the figure is painted in acrylics.
I would have preferred a more traditional SS camouflage uniform, but the figure is sculped for an Italian camouflaged jacket, probably based on a famous photo of Max.
I would have preferred a more traditional SS camouflage uniform, but the figure is sculped for an Italian camouflaged jacket, probably based on a famous photo of Max.
Young Miniatures also offers a 1/10 MG34, so I added that to the project. I also did some scratch-built enhancements to the over-simplified MG mount.
As my eyes are failing me – I’m old – I had trouble getting Max’s eyes to the level I’d like, but we can only do what we can do… One technique, is as a final step I add a clear gloss layer over the eyeball. The sheen helps the realism – I think.
As with my dioramas, I enjoy shifting photos to black and white to see how close they come to period photographs.
The other basing issue was that the figure is sculpted to be looking off to his right. – not centered on the copula. The Panther commander’s hatch includes an aiming sight at the very front, so its orientation is obvious. If you want the figure to face the observer, you have to rotate the copula to point it off to the side – not toward the viewer.
I chose to do that. What do you folks think?
Ralph (Bravo36)
