In the last blog, I talked to Jean Andre about colour, and our conversation mostly concerned colour in dioramas, and due to my own background perhaps: scale models. During that conversation, Jean and I touched on figures, but I thought it would be really good to talk to a figure modeller about colour to round out the conversation.

The painter I chose, is Tue Kaae. Tue is someone I met last year at Scale Model Challenge, when he took part in the figure painting panel discussion Tracy and I recorded for the Sprue Cutters Union Podcast. I was really impressed by how deeply Tue thinks about what he does, and how articulate he is in discussing it, and that’s exactly the kind of creator I want to bring you for this podcast and blog.

Before I get on to the interview, I just want to remind you that the Model Philosopher is sponsored by the world’s leading hobby show, the most exciting event in the model calendar for figure modellers, armour modellers, diorama modellers, aircraft modellers, ship modellers and every other kind of modeller: Scale Model Challenge.

Scale Model Challenge is not just a show, it’s a full rich event that celebrates the hobby and craft of modelling with a world class competition with over 3000 entries each year, where everyone from beginners to the leading modellers in the hobby, come to show their work to their peers. They have a program of 14 workshops from leading modellers and painters, including Gerard Boom, Eric Swinson, and Jean Bernard André where you don’t just get to hear what they do, you get to work on a project with their instruction and personal guidance. There are over 150 unique vendors selling everything from kits, to limited edition figures, to tools, to aftermarket, to diorama accessories and everything else you might need for your own miniature masterpiece, and all in a phenomenal conference venue easy to reach by air, road or rail with the world famous (in modelling circles) abbey bar.

It’s the show you should never miss. Scale Model Challenge. Check out the details at www.scalemodelchallenge.com  or look up scale model challenge on the socials

OK back to our interview. Lets dive in and hear from Tue:

Chris
welcome to the Model Philosopher to Tue Kaae. Thank you for joining us

Tue

I’m happy to be here. I’m very, very happy for the opportunity. You’re supplying a reach to an audience that I don’t normally have a chance to talk to. So I’m super happy to be here.

Chris

Well, I’m hoping modelists of all kinds, for want of a better word, are going to get something out of this podcast. It’s not quite as subject driven as the Spruecutters Union podcast that I did, in terms of being aimed more at modelers, rather than figure painters or something else.

It’s more about the concepts. And I think the concepts can be universal. But that being said, I hope people have listened to the last episode (or read the previous blog) where I spoke to Jean -Andre about colour and he spoke from a diorama point of view. But I was very conscious, while we were talking, that we had a kind of a bias in favour of dioramas and models. And given that colour is something which I think is far more developed in figure modelling and figure painting circles.

I wanted to get someone on to talk from that point of view. The first time I remember seeing your work was very recently, because I’m a bit late to the party, at World Model Expo. And I was really struck by the use of colour you did there. So I got in touch and we decided to get you on and talk from your point of view.

Tue

So, with military modelling, is that the right word? Yeah, historical modelling. I think the base premise, the sort of the merit that everyone has agreed that is to be achieved is about correctness. It’s about getting the right colour.

Chris

Hmm. I guess so, yeah.

Tue

It’s about, I mean, “museum grade” is like a really high praise. So everything is about getting things right. Where the base mindset in my end of the fantasy painting is to get things exciting.

So, the whole idea about what we as a community have decided is merits to be achieved. They’re just very different. They’re not better or worse, but it’s just a very different mindset. I don’t care if the orc is green or red or brown or whatever, as long as it looks cool.

Chris

I did chuckle slightly there, the reason for that is when people say “it’s museum quality”. Most of the models I’ve seen in museums are pretty awful. So it always makes me laugh when people say that like it’s a good thing. But it is, I mean, it’s a phrase which people take, you know, to have a meaning, which is that it’s good.

Now, with colour accuracy, this is something I came across, in particularly in aircraft modelling, because I used to edit Scale Aircraft Modelling magazine for Guideline Publications. And there was a lot of talk about scale colour accuracy, to the point where it was important to the exclusion of everything else. And I think that is very the idea of accuracy and realism, in air quote marks, because realism to me is a subjective, value judgment. It’s not an objective truth because how realism observed changes person to person.

But anyway, caveats aside, I’m getting diverted already. I think it’s something that is changing. Certainly, from my own point of view, I’m not so interested in colour accuracy anymore in military modelling. I’m more interested in telling the truth by which I mean sort of the emotional truth and the story truth that I am with making the model completely accurate.

Tue

So many people think that accuracy is truth, and they might be right, but I think it’s a very, very boring version of it. mean, all the history, all the story that we get told is subjective as stories told by the victor.

Chris

don’t get me started on that. don’t believe in that phrase. It drives me mad. I think that’s something people say, but it’s not actually always true. If it was, then we wouldn’t have the Confederate “lost cause” thing and we wouldn’t have neo -Nazis telling us that, you know, the Germans were far more powerful than they actually were, and things like that. to a certain extent, yes, but also no. But anyway, we’re going to get distracted again.

This is gonna be one of those conversations where we constantly go off all over the place. But for me, the way it works is a fact is something which is observably so, from various different points of view. So, a fact is something that people can agree on is a fact is a thing. A truth is an opinion that you form of the fact based on the fact. So a truth is something that feels right to you, but isn’t necessarily shared by everyone else.

Everyone can have kind of their own idea of what’s truth, but facts are facts, if you see what I mean. So one’s subjective, which is truth, and the other’s objective, which is facts. But that’s, basically semantics, and this isn’t really an English semantics podcast. So I don’t really want to get into that.

Tue

But I find language fascinating and interesting. And to me, fact and truth are the same.

Chris

To most people they are. Perhaps I separate them just because it suits me for my argument, who knows? But you did say something else there, which was more important and something we should get back to. Remind me, what did you say about colour in fantasy?

Tue

Hahaha

So, the fantasy painting community is sort of splitting at the moment, kind of similar to the way that fantasy broke off from historical, like 20 years, 30 years ago. There’s two different main directions that fantasy painters go into.

I’m clearly and firmly in the fantasy miniature art direction, and I want to do less and less trope stuff, less and less fantasy stuff. And there’s a faction that is led by Games Workshop and Golden Demon and that whole crowd. And that one is actually, by now, relatively close to the old school historical stuff. So, you are starting to get Warhammer rivet counters. Like people who put down your paint job because you put the wrong logo on the knee pad of the spacer. And then it doesn’t matter how well you paint it because you made a mistake and that is not the way that it’s supposed to be.

Chris

Well, when they created the lore and there’s hundreds of books now, I know I’ve been reading some of them, they’re quite good, some of them. But when they created that, they created a history basically for their fantasy universe. And it’s an incredibly detailed history, which has mostly a strong continuity to it, you know, a strong canon. So essentially, it’s historical modelling, just the history’s made up.

Tue

Yep, yep, it is.

Chris

but it has the same restriction, like you say, doesn’t it? That if you want to paint an ultramarine, you should use Macragge blue, because that’s the correct blue for an ultramarine. And any other blue is incorrect and stuff. And so you get these restrictions they’ve created for themselves.

Tue

Yeah. And they did that because it’s a company and they want a coherent marketing. want you to instantly see that it’s a Games Workshop miniature. They have all kinds of motivations about that. But it means that it spills down into the miniature painting as well. So personally, I would much rather see a brown or red orc because it’s more interesting. I mean, green can be interesting well, but in that other direction, orcs need to be green.

So I’m speaking very much from my side of that fence. I think we’ll get a stronger and stronger division between the two. Not that the relation between the two groups will be divisive, but there’s a definite, just different currents, whereas some people want a much more miniature art and emotive and artistic prostrate.

So I think the majority of people prefer the like escapism world building thing.

Chris

It may surprise you, but a similar kind of thing is happening in scale modelling and history modelling as well. That there are some people, mostly diorama makers that want to do something artistic and emotive and it tells a story. Even if the story is based on history, want to, the story is more important than the colours and so on. But most people want to make an accurate thing based on the rules.

and so on. So I think in a way it’s kind of similar. Is it really interesting that fantasy’s done that though? Because it didn’t need to do it, if you see what I mean. Because you’re starting out from something created, something imagined, you would think maybe it’s just something about people. Some people like rules, some people don’t like rules.

Tue

Yeah, yeah. I think so. I think so. I’m very, very happy to hear that it’s happening in the historical community. I had a feeling that it was. I think that the whole… I’m gonna rant now. Are you ready?

Chris

Yeah, go for it. We love rants.

Tue

So I think that there’s a lot of gatekeeping in the historical community. We’re getting quite a bit in the fantasy one as well, most of the sort of base infrastructure in historical is made around “if you don’t do things the way that Shepard Paine would have done, you’re doing it wrong.” You can modernize some of the techniques, but there’s some very, very set in stone merits that you have to stick to. And if you’re painting your tank pink, the first question [is not] “that’s interesting. Why did you do that?”, The first interaction is “you did it wrong”. And I think it’s a really, really unhealthy way to build communities. And it’s a very common way to build communities. And I think that fantasy, at least my side of the fantasy, are way better at that. And having that much more free mindset about what you can do, it’s much more how you can interpret the stuff in an interesting way. It definitely started with the diorama Builders, just as you’re saying, but there’s a definite pull in the opposite direction.

The problem is that there’s a lot of money in it now as well. And especially at competitions, it’s very, very clear that there’s a lot of money in it and money is steered by consumers, and consumers have no taste and no taste for something new and something different. They basically just want whatever they’ve been told the past years that they should want. It’s why pop music is forever there.

Chris

I think it’s kind of true, but I also think that people don’t know what they want until they see it. And until they see it, they think they want what they can already get. So I think you need risk takers to show them something new, but the risk is you won’t make any money. And as long as its money involved, people are risk-averse.

Tue

Mmm, yep. I agree.

Yeah, I’m extremely privileged that I can spend a lot of hours doing the things that I do and I don’t need to sell them. The problem is that most of the people who paint to a very high degree, they do that for a living and they need to sell whatever they’re making. So they’re tied to the money. They can’t just take out two months and do their own thing because so many of them either are already professionals

We have a lot of professionals now, or they wanna be professionals and then they need to follow the current. So I’m doing something that is very different than most other people and I’m privileged enough to be able to do that. I mean, generally I don’t sell my pieces. I sold two pieces, I think, and those were relatively random. Because I spend a lot of time, I’m not mainstream.

I don’t have a large social media presence. I don’t have the things that you need to have in order to make a lot of money on it. I just do these things. Don’t even really do them for myself that much. I do them in order to show people a different way. I’m the risk taker and I think challenging the standards is way more interesting than doing something that everyone agrees look pretty.

Chris

Well, see, this is something that I could do a whole episode about. think at some point in the future we need to, because I should tell you there’s no money in the historical modelling side, maybe in the historical miniature side, but not in the historical modelling side. No one pays anyone to do anything. There’s no money in it at all. And yet they still put restrictions on themselves.

Tue

They do seem to.

Chris

Anyway, colour plays a big role in your work, which is why I asked you on. So where do you get your inspiration for colour from? Is it from arts? Is it from nature? What has the biggest influence on you in colour?

Tue

It’s definitely not miniatures, but it’s a very, very wide ranging thing. I get a lot of inspiration from mostly digital painting. I think there’s a lot of inspiration in oil paintings and the old stuff. I generally want more contrast than you get in the old stuff. mean, Rembrandt paints fantastic portraits, but there’s not a lot of colour in it.

And you can develop a palette that is very harmonious, like Rembrandt, and get wonderful things out of it. But you’re choosing not to use the colour contrast as a tool in your arsenal. And I would rather use all the tools that I have access to. So I get a lot of inspiration from like 10, 15 different 2D illustrators.

That’s mostly where things come from. I mean, almost all of my stuff is I see some little doodle or a half an illustration. And then I think I remember how it looks. And when I look at it again, it doesn’t look anything like I thought it did, but I’m just running with that idea. But mostly I get my inspiration from illustrators. I do quite a lot

So I would call them love letters to artists, not fan art as such, because fan art most of the time is 3D versions of 2D artwork. And I’d much rather play with their style and their palette and do love letters to their style instead of doing copies of their work. So do that a lot and study the way that they use colours.

Chris

I don’t know if you listened to the first episode with Calvin Tan, but we said in that the art is a conversation. That, you know, that when you do something, you’re starting, you’re opening a conversation and you’re inviting the viewer to respond to it with their own thoughts and so on. It sounds to me like what you’re doing is having a conversation with the artist. They’re saying something and you’re responding to that, if you see what I mean, in the same language.

Tue

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I wanna have the conversation with the viewer of my stuff as well.

I use colour a lot, but I use colour as my premium tool to steer attention. So, contrast is very, very important. But if you’re just using contrast for contrast’s sake, it’s kind of pointless to me. To me, it’s all about the narrative. It’s all about the story, the person, and you’re using all the different things: matte and gloss, dark and light, saturated and desaturated. All those things are tools that you use in order to push the narrative. But I do use colour a lot for that.

I think a lot of people think that more saturation and more colour, this is especially true in the fantasy side of things. A lot of people just think that more is better. But it means that you get miniatures where everything is taken to a hundred percent saturation and all the different colours are fighting each other and then it’s just really busy and really messy and there’s no calm spots. You need stuff that that grabs attention and have lots of contrast either value or saturation and you need areas that are more dull. The dull areas I would argue is actually more important than the bright ones because they’re the ones that set it

You can’t really have light if you don’t have dark. If you just have more light, then it’s just a wash.

Chris

I think of it when I’m editing the sound on this, or if you look at the waveform of music, good music has some high end, some mid end and some bottom end. And if you, there’s no bottom end, it sounds tinny and there’s no sort of driving power to it. If you take the top end off, it sounds murky, muddy and there’s no sort of sharpness to the music at all. It’s very sort of flat. And it’s the same, I think with light and colour, you need all three. I’ve said it before about colour, about being muddy, you know, with everything in the mid range and not enough in the top and the bottom. But I think if you don’t have it balanced, not just light as well, but as you’re saying with contrast, areas of low contrast and areas of very high contrast and so on. If there isn’t balance to it, then it never works really.

Tue

Yeah, I use framing a lot as well. And I use colours for framing.


Chris

Can you tell us what you mean by framing?

Tue
So framing is colour placement. To me, everything is about focus management. It’s about getting the viewer to look at the stuff that you want them to look at. My similar piece about that is my space camel walking library, the one with orange backdrop where I pulled out all the boats. There’s a lot of that miniature that is very rough because there’s a lot of areas that are really fine around the rider. And if you have a fine and defined section, the eye naturally goes towards that. So you can do it with colour, can do it with value, and you can do it with detailing and all kinds of different things.

So I’m using framing for that miniature, for instance. There’s a few metallic parts. The metallic parts are chrome. So it’s the Molotov Chrome. They’re really, really, really shiny. But they’re all arranged in a circle around the main focus. So I’m the focus with these metallic bits. If you have a miniature and like if you have a figure in an A pose. Then you do light on the hands and light on the face, but the face should be a little bit lighter. That way you’ll have a triangle with the focal point being the top of the triangle. And that will mean that you naturally look at the face. That is framing. Doing a light face and like a light scarf, but a black line between the face and the scarf, that is framing. So you’re basically making frames around what you want people to look at, mostly round frames. And they’re never like complete frames, but they’re like dotted frames.

Chris

There’s enough there to create the effect without being too obvious what you’re doing.

Tue

Yeah, yeah. If you’re doing a miniature that’s standing on a road, you make sure that the road section that they’re standing on is brighter or darker or anything. You’re making a circle on the pavement. It’s not terribly realistic, but hey, it’s a pavement. It could be any colour. And by making it lighter around a dark figure, you’re creating that framing to pull the eye towards that.

It’s one of my favorite things to play with. So if you do highlights, so you can do highlights if you have the same A -pose miniature, then you do highlights on the top of the sleeves and on the seam on the top of the shoulder. And if you make them a little bit more pointed there, you’re actually painting an

So the sleeves and then the shoulder thing. And you can actually just paint arrows on your miniature. And you can be very, very, obvious and brash about it. You can just paint arrows on the miniature to point to what you want people to look at. And people are not going to notice. And it’s fun to see how much you can put it.

Chris

Ha! Literal arrows! Because they’re too busy looking at the thing that you’re pointing them to look

Tue

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris

Do you think sometimes technique overwhelms purpose in miniature painting? Do think people get too hung up on technique and lose sight of what it’s for?

Tue

All the time. I think it’s very, very common.

The way that we teach people in miniature painting is technique first. So, you’re sitting down, then you teach people how to do shading or glazes or highlights or whatever else. Technique is the first thing that you teach people. And I’m guilty of that myself.

Technique is very important to have in place in order to do the other things. But that means that everyone gets schooled in thinking of technique first. Thinking of how important it is to get smooth blends or whatever else your chosen technique is. And everything else gets forgotten alongside. So, when I go to competitions, I think…the most interesting things are not in the master category, it’s in the standard category. Because those are the people who are much more free. So, they aren’t as encumbered with technique and with everything being neat and sort of living up to our shared standards.

You can [see] much more that the ideas, sort of your fancy of the moment, shine through. And you get a lot more of that in the standard category.

So, my philosophy about this [is] when you come up with an idea, you have this little spark of an idea. That’s sort of the center of what you do. You see some documentary or a painting or something like that. And that spark is what is best about your piece. So it’s the core value of it. And the longer time you spend on that piece, the more difficult it is to keep connecting to that spark of the idea. If you spend 200 hours, it’s so easy to let that idea be buried under many, layers of perfection and doubt and all kinds of other things. But that idea is so important to keep because it’s what gives you a peace life.

And lots of the really like well painted things, they lose that spark. And there’s so much more of that when you don’t develop too much into the technique. When you don’t pay too much attention to everything being perfect. It’s much easier to keep it fluid and alive and keep that spark.

So I think that in many ways technique is the opposite of what I want. Like non-metallic metal is something that everyone does right now. And it doesn’t matter too much if it’s really well blended and painted, as long as the light is in the right locations. The light placement and the light location, the reflection from the metal, it is much more important for those to be in the right place than them being neat.

And it’s very difficult to keep those locations if you are too busy with technique.

Chris

I think I’ve observed sort of fashions in technique. About 10, 15 years ago, contrast got really extreme where all the highlights were white, and all the shadows were black. And there was actually very little in between. Figures started to look almost black and white in the super-high-contrast era, which thankfully seems to have been killed by the high saturation colour in fantasy mostly, because it was more of a historical miniatures thing.

Tue

Yeah.

Chris

But also, as you say, we’ve got the non-metallic metal is the fashion or has been the fashion for a few years and perhaps it’s beginning to fade a bit now. Do you think there are fashions in colour as well?

Tue

definitely. Definitely. So in the fantasy side of things, we have like a Spanish school. There’s a very strong, very good community in Spain. And mostly it stems from Jose Palomares, who is the CEO of Big Child Creatives. And he’s taught a lot of people and they have taught a lot of others. So, most things stems from this person. And the way that the Spanish people paint, it is very saturated and they’re using a lot of the same colours and they’re painting in that way because it’s extremely effective. It’s a very quick and very good way to get cool looking, good looking box arts.

 And there’s definite fashions in colours as well. One of the classic examples is named colours. Like there’s an ice yellow that everyone uses. There’s a deep sea-blue that everyone uses. Those are fashion colours. For the old school crowd, there’s a goblin green that’s very fashion based as well. And fashion is all set by the top level of painters or the grouping with the strongest impact and the strongest sort of sway over the community, sets the idea of what colour to use.

Right now there’s a lot of green-red contrast. We had a [period] with a lot of orange and teal contrast, and we’re sort of moving out from that. So there’s definitely fashion. But also there’s fashion with just more colours. The bit that you thought about that miniatures used to be black and white and now they got really, really coloured. When I did my space camel, it’s like eight years ago or so, I put it into the contest in Monte Savino and it was just super fucking colourful. Everyone gravitated towards that because it was just bright orange and like so colourful. And most of the other things were relatively dull compared to that. Then like four years later or so, I took it to the World Model Expo and put it into the competition at World Model Expo. And it fit in because everything else was super colourful as well. And seeing that change has been really exciting. And I think changes happen really, really quick in the fantasy crowd. We’re sort of going through all the different periods of classical art. Like we’re going through naturalism and realism and surrealism and all those different movements with their associated colour choices. And we just sort of fast forwarding through them because we already know that all of it exists.

And we’re getting into sort of impressionism right now, where people are much more about painting the ambience and the colour setting and the mood of the piece

Chris

I’ve even seen it with the style because the sort of the high, highly blended style is given way slightly to sort of pointillism and stippling in transitions and stuff like that. So even the sort of impressionist painting technique is coming through as well.

Tue

Yeah, we mostly have one person to thank for that, Alfonso Giraldes, who marketed the fuck smoothness because he’s a Spanish guy and he’s loud and brash. But he’s really the one that pioneered the idea that not only should everything not be smooth, but it’s actually better if it isn’t. And I’m totally on board with that.

I think that if everything is smooth, everything is done to the highest level, then if everyone is super, no one is. If everything is super saturated, nothing really is. So that contrast between smooth and rough is very important. As important to me as with colours.

But choosing specificity to use… You started by asking where my inspiration for colours is. And a lot of what I do is not go full in. Because if you make a relatively dull piece, it’s not a bad piece. It’s just a different decision. You could do a very desaturated piece. And if you do those things then you have the option to add a little dash of full-core saturation somewhere. So if you do like a British waterfront in the fall, everything is going to be gray and brown. But it affords you the possibility of doing a little challenge with a very red apple. Then everything will be about that apple or the ball cap or the football or whatever. So you’re steering focus and you’re steering narrative with the colour choices.

Chris

Have you seen the film? Don’t Look Now with Donald Sutherland? It’s a 70s film and it’s worth watching. It’s really interesting because it does what you say. The whole film is quite drab and dark. Even though it starts off in England and it goes to Venice, it’s quite dark. It’s about a couple whose daughter dies in an accident, and they go to Venice with his job and to try and sort of get over it. But he’s haunted all the time by the colour red because she was wearing a red coat when she died. And it’s the one bright coat in the film and it keeps popping up all the way through the film as this kind of motif until it ends with quite a shocking end with another person in a red coat. But it’s similar to what you say, you know, because the rest of the film is gray and brown and black, that red really jumps out the whole way through. that’s kind of what you’re talking about, isn’t it?

Tue

Yeah, and if you’re tied down by certain things having to be a certain colour, you don’t have that freedom. So that’s the main reason why I don’t wanna subscribe to that, is that I want to have the freedom to place the colour where I can use it most effectively.

Chris

I’ve also seen a fashion in the last few years as well with the high saturation thing that all of the colours are turned up to 11. And that has a similar kind of effect to them all being dull, if you see what I mean.

Tue

Well, it’s developed, the Spanish style is sort of what is pushing that agenda. And the Spanish style is developed to be very eye -catching in the social media age that we’re in now. So basically it’s made to be memorable when you look at it for one and second. That is its purpose. And then it needs to be turned up to 11.

Chris

it catches attention. Yeah, I can see what mean when you’re scrolling on Instagram, if something comes up that really jumps at you.

Tue

Yeah, and that is its purpose. Just like the Games Workshop style is developed to be showcasing miniature shapes and surfaces.

Chris

and to sell Games Workshop Paints.

Tue

And to sell Games Workshop paints. that’s… The Game’s Workshop paint selling thing actually comes second to that. Primarily, it’s designed to showcase miniature shapes. It’s why they do highlights on the outside of all the volumes instead of where light would naturally fall. It is to showcase, “hey, this is the shape.”

Chris

I think it’s also, without getting too off -subject again, but it’s also about making it easy to paint for kids and for people that have whole armies to paint quickly. The sculpts are very much designed for that, aren’t they? They have very strong edge shapes and what have you to make them easier to paint, basically. I mean, I’ve been painting quite a few recently, as I said before we came on, I play with my son. Compared to historical miniatures, they’re so easy to paint because all the folds are very sharp or very defined, all the weapons, all the details of them are very defined.

Tue

They are made specificity so that 12 to 14 year old boys can paint

Chris

and they can get reasonably good at it quickly and not be discouraged.

Tue

Yeah. And especially with the contrast paint that they developed specifically for that. There’s another podcast: The Painting Phase. They have a Game Workshop product developer with an interview that talk about the, basically the excitement curve of painting. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-63A7cDkOm8)

where when you sit down and paint, you have to paint for a long long time before it looks good. And that’s what they made contrast for. It’s for it to look good after 10 minutes instead of 4 hours.

Chris

There’s a phase on miniatures that you always go through. And when I spoke about it on Small Subjects, Jim DeRogatis came up with the perfect phrase for it, “embrace the suck”, where you go through a stage on every miniature where it just sucks. And you just think, “why am I doing this? Where am I going with it?” And “it’s just awful”. But you have to kind of trust what your plan is and get through it. But that’s something you learn after years of painting that

part of it and you don’t need to worry about it. You just need to keep going. For new painters,  particularly when they got a squad of 10 Space Marines to paint, the suck is the kind of thing that can stop them painting. So anything you can do to take that away is a good way to keep people buying the product.

Tue

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about buying the product. It’s a way to keep people happy about what they do, content with their results, they’re about doing it again.

Chris

Well, the best way to keep people buying it is to make them enjoy it or to help them enjoy it. So if they’re enjoying it, they’ll keep coming back.

Tue

Yeah. Yep. I mean, Games Workshop is a major part of why we actually have a community. Workshop doing a fantastic job getting people into it and have been doing so for years and years and years. If it wasn’t for Games Workshop, Fantasy Painting wouldn’t be like nothing near the size that we are

Chris

I have to agree.

So ,we’ve talked about the sort of the colour and what role that can play in framing. And we’ve talked a little bit about desaturation. Do you just use desaturation to create the contrast against saturated colours or do you use it in other ways as

Tue

So desaturation is a very, very good way to set the scene, like the mood of what you’re doing. So you can invent an environment, like a cyberpunk environment, where the ambience is really bright. Like you could paint a miniature that’s entirely magenta, and then here and there, you’re painting something different.

But most of the environments that we think of, they’re relatively desaturated. when I look at miniature painting, like if you look at the surface for miniature painting, I sort of put it into three categories. So there’s a shadow area, a mid -tone area, and a highlight area. That’s true for all miniatures. I use a shadow area for a setting, for ambience. On most of my miniatures, there’s the same colour in all the shadows. It’s going to be a relatively desaturated colour, and it sets sort of the scene for it all. So, if I paint the ground orange, the shadow colour will be orange brown. If I want to do an ocean scene or like a foggy scene, it’s going to be like a bluish gray colour. And all the shadows are the same

no matter what material or whatever. Then the mid -tone, I use that for material information. It’s where I do textures, it’s where I do colour, it’s where I inform people about what the specific shape is made out of and what its properties are.

The top section, the highlight section, sometimes the middle section bleeds into that, but the top section is mostly to manage focus. So it’s where I can introduce higher value in order to pull attention. And it’s where I describe shape and volume and sort of the hardness of the material. So if it’s a hard material, you want sharper, smaller highlights on those areas. Whereas if it’s a wool coat, you want a softer [highlight].

Tue

So those are the ways that I use the different surfaces. And that is true for every surface in every piece. And I use all the desaturated colours in the shadows. I don’t want black shadows. For some things, a black shadow would be good. I’ve done some experimentation with cell shading and in cell shading you need all the colours, all the shadows to be black. But I think desaturation is an extremely important tool in order to get coherency and in order to have some surfaces be like support surfaces and other ones be focal surfaces. So if I want to paint like a green soldier guy with a red beret, then I will make sure that the red beret is just about the only thing that’s really red in the scene because it’s what I will be using to pull attention to the face.

But I will also want some reddish things somewhere. I’ll want reddish brown boots or some clay ground he’s standing on, something else. It should be red, but it should be a desaturated red. Because that will be like the colour foundation for the red beret to be really red. Because if you do a scene that’s only got the red beret as the only red thing, it’s going to be quite brittle and feel quite alone, because what you thought about music actually earlier, that you need the bass, you need the treble. Otherwise the high points, they’ll just feel brittle and tinny. So that’s where you need the desaturating colours in order to support the really saturated ones.

Chris

Who do you think in the miniature world uses colour best? Who do you look up to?

Tue

that’s a good question.

I think many different painters have their different strong points. I think Eric Swinson is really, really good with light and shadow.

I think Arnau Lazaro is very, very good with very subtle colours, introducing some pink into the skin tones, some blues and greens, [he’s] very good with subtleties.

I think Marc Masclans is very, very, very good with textures and sort of balancing that.

I think Kirill Kanaev is very, very good with metal. We all know that, but that’s just the flashy part of it. I think the way that he does realistic textures and skin tones and especially the way that he does really subtle lighting is really really fantastic. I think there’s a lot of different painters that have very strong talents in their specific field. And I admire all of them and I want to be all of them for what they do. But there’s really none of them that does everything that I want to do.

Chris

I think they would probably say the same thing. mean, if you are all different, you’re all individuals and you all have your own vision of what, you know, a great miniature would be. So yours isn’t going to perfectly align with theirs, but there are things about them that you can say they have really great at that.

Tue

Yeah. And all the people that I mentioned there, they have a lot of things in common as well. So none of them will paint a material in just one colour. So if the character has a blue shirt on, the shadows and the highlights are not going to be blue. They’re going to be something different. They’re going to be reflective of the atmosphere, of the wear, the highlights.

Like if you have a wool coat, if you do light desaturated colours, cold colours, then it’s going to look more new and crisp. And if you do… less bright browner colours, then it’s going to look more warm. You can do the same with the shadows. But none of these people, and myself neither, will paint a material just one colour. I find that really boring.

Chris

You mentioned there about ambient colour. I think that’s one way you can use colour for storytelling. Is there other ways you think that colour can be used to tell a story.

Tue

So the classic example is Schindler’s List. So there’s a girl in Schindler’s List, funnily enough, in a red coat. That’s the only bit of colour in that movie. Actually, Jaws is maybe a better example. So Jaws,  whenever there’s something yellow in the frame the shark is nearby

If you go through the movie and look for yellow, then you’ll only see yellow when the shark is nearby. So it’s sort of a subconscious danger signal that you can go for.

Chris

I think storytelling on miniatures can be very difficult because you don’t have the diorama setting to put it in. But I know it’s something you love to do,

Tue

Yeah. I went to Poland about a month ago to go to contrast and I saw a miniature there from a relatively new painter called Veronica. And it’s a fairy, but it’s a fairy with the acne. So it’s a fairy with unperfect skin. The piece is called, “Why Can’t I Be Pretty Like the Other Fairies?” And it’s a really, really good way to storytell. It’s such a small thing that is being introduced. It’s such a small tool, but it tells a lot of story about that character.

Chris

It punches like a hundred emotional buttons about coming of age and about beauty standards and not fitting in. Yeah, there’s a lot going on there.

Tue

Yeah, it does.

Tue

Yeah, so you can do storytelling in single figures, but it’s way easier if you have some more going on.

I don’t actually think that it’s very difficult to do storytelling in single figures, but I think the range of figures that we have access to that are good storytelling canvases is very small. Because you can no problem do storytelling in a single figure, but all the miniatures that we have access to, they’re made for production. And for production to be successful, it needs to have a very broad audience, so you can’t really make things that are too pigeon -holed into one thing, so they get more neutral, and therefore they’re very hard to use for storytelling. But if you make a miniature specifically with storytelling in mind, it’s not a problem to do it with just a single miniature.

So I think that it’s not that people are bad at it. I think that our available palette to paint on is bad.

Chris

Why do you think we make miniatures? Why do you think we do it? It’s a very odd thing when you think about it, to sit there and paint tiny things.

Tue

It’s one of my favourite topics actually. I think that a lot of people have very little agency in their life and they need somewhere where they can decide. A lot of people do it for escapism. A lot of people do it just to have a joyful moment in their life. A lot of people do it because they’re swallowed up by this super, super over-busy world that’s constantly fighting for your attention and being able to just put all the social media, all the other stuff aside, let you focus. And that’s why they do it. It’s why I think it’s very important to have a workshop, to have somewhere where you can go, where you can’t see the dirty dishes. A lot of people..I wouldn’t… I think self -indulgence is a weighted term, but I think it’s actually what it is. It’s having the opportunity to do this thing just for…Whereas everything else we do, we do for everyone else.

I think there’s a lot of value in it as well. Because it gives you, it sounds almost religious and stuff. It lets you have a calm mental moment where you can just focus on one thing and let everything else sort of flow away. It lets you escape from a very busy world and just focus on one thing. It’s almost like…

Chris

meditation.

Tue

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s almost like meditation. It’s a very mindfulness thing to paint miniatures. And I think that the need to be very precise and very controlled in that is very good for that one thing. A lot of meditation is about controlling your breath. And that’s not really because controlling breath is important. It’s just an important tool, it’s just a convenient tool. The breath is something that every person have, at least while they’re still conscious. So breath is, it’s the same for everyone and it’s something that everyone has that they can focus on. Whereas sitting and painting miniatures is not something that everyone has, but I think it’s got the same function. It demands 100 % focus in order to get it right. That means

your entire frontal lobe can do that thing and then everything else in the subconscious can just relax and let go

It’s very freeing.

Chris

I think we’ve opened a lot of doors that I’d like to explore another time. So if you would come back on, that would be fantastic. We’ll book that sometime in the future.

Tue

Yeah. definitely, definitely. Yeah, there’s plenty of topics that I would like to discuss, but I think that we’ve covered this one for now, I think.

Tue

Maybe tell people that being brave is very liberating.

Chris

Hmm take risks

Tue

Yeah, not just risks. Do what feels right instead of what you’ve been told is right. So paint bravely. If you feel like the uniform should be more green, if you feel like this person should have red skin instead of pink skin, do it. It’s a very freeing experience and it’s liberating.

Staying too focused on what we think is right, what… Staying too focused on what we think will get our peers recognition, can get in the way of our personal enjoyment. And it’s very, very difficult to get out of that. And taking chances and just doing whatever you feel is fine is a good way.

Probably my most common thing right now is that everyone paints for results. So whenever you sit down and paint a miniature, the expectation is to have a finished miniature that you can show to others, either at shows, online, or somewhere else. That’s the declared, in quotation marks, “final result”.

But it means that everyone needs to be high performance, because all of it needs to be a high quality, because you’re putting your name and you’re putting it out, and everyone can look at your stuff and judge how good you are. So if everything needs to be about producing a finished result, there’s no room to play around. So painting miniatures without the express need to have a finished product. Just painting something because you feel like painting

or because you’re curious about this colour, or because you’re inspired by this movie you just saw. I think that’s so important. And I think that when people do that, they should definitely show it to everyone else because it shows that they have the freedom to do things that are not perfect. And you should as well. But that’s definitely about the social pressure to perform.

Chris

It’s internalised gatekeeping, isn’t it? It’s you’re gatekeeping yourself based on what you think others are expecting.

Tue

Yeah, and everything is about performance. And you want to show people that you can perform. It’s like if you go running and you’re going to this running event and you can either do the full marathon or you can do half a marathon. So if you go for the full marathon and you drop out halfway, you’re a failure. If you go for the half marathon and complete it, you’re a winner.

And effectively, it’s exactly the same thing that happened. But just the perception of completing and performing is so ingrained. But just painting stuff for the hell of it, just because you feel like painting it. Play with colours, even though you’re not painting stuff the right colours. If you want to paint a German tank green, do it.

I know that people will crucify you if you paint a grey Sherman, but if you think that it would be fun painting a grey Sherman, do it!

Chris

I’ve said this a lot and I still stand by it, that finishing is overrated. Modelling and painting, it’s not about finishing things and having them to look at in your cabinet. It’s about the act of doing it. And as long as you’re doing it, then you’re doing it right. The finished things are a byproduct. The joy comes from the act of sitting there doing it, not having done it.

Tue

It’s funny that you should say that. I think that every miniature that you start has a purpose. It’s got something that it needs to show you. And that purpose is sometimes finished before the miniature is. And that’s fine. You don’t need to finish miniatures in order to finish the experience.

But then you can’t show it to your mates and you can’t show it everyone.

Chris

And you can’t make money from it.

Tue
No, No.

Chris
All right. Well, thanks very much for joining us today. This has been a fantastic conversation and I hope people would have got a lot out of it. I think it creates as many questions as it answers, which is my favourite kind of chat. So thank you for joining us.

—————————————————————–

I think this blog has made a good pair with Jean’s interview on the last blog, and like all the best conversations, it really got me thinking about it long after recording

You can find out more about Tue on his facebook page or his Instagram. If you see him at a show I highly recommend you get chatting, he’s a wonderfully enthusiastic guy who really thinks deeply about this craft.

During the interview, Tue mentioned the Fairy by Weronika Galas. I want to read you what she posted when she posted the photos on Instagram, because I think its important to share a voice like Weronika’s:

Weronica Galas (Instagram @picky._.painter)

Why can’t I be pretty like other fairies?

As a young girl I didn’t fit into beauty standards, because of terrible skin changes I left the swimming team and absolutely quit on my favourite sport. All because I was too ashamed of my body. Popular culture did a trick on us, it shaped our perception of beauty and made many of us well… quit on things and ideas we love because of how we look.

As a little girl I learned from movies and tales that good and virtouous lady has to be incredibly bautiful. I also learned pretty fast that I don’t fit into those beauty standards, if I were to take the part in a tale I would play a foul witch, not a fair princess. I quickly learned to associate (or rather confuse) beauty with goodness.

For me body positivity is not only about feeling good in my natural skin. It is about making stories and images like this more common.

I’m really happy that my acne fairy received such a great responses at @kontrastpaintingfestival, to be honest I was feeling a little uneasy about this entry. Thank you all for the kind and warm words, you gave me courage to create more ❤️

Thank you to @ignisart.miniatures, this sculpt was a huge inspiration for me 🦋

I hope that message is one that reaches as many people in the hobby as possible

Before I go, I’d like to thank my patreon patrons:

the plastic scholar, Lee, Warren, Eddie, Frank, Robert, Stephen, Christian, Carlos, Paul, Bruce, Schaef, Pascal, Flip, James, John, Eric, Matt and Dennis.

If you would like to support the podcast and blog , please go to https://www.patreon.com/theModelPhilosopher

Don’t forget! You can listen to this interview on Podcasting apps, or at https://modelphilosopher.podbean.com/

That’s it for this one. Next time, I’ll be discussing realism and accuracy, with David Parker

Thanks for reading!

In this blog, I interview Jean André, the French model artist and dioramist.

Jean makes superb dioramas with often haunting and dreamlike scenes of solitary figures, usually women, in almost surreal environments, an element amplified by his mastery of colour.

Chris

Welcome to the Model Philosopher podcast, Jean Andre. Thank you for joining us.

Jean André

Thank you very much, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Chris

Now people might know you work on Instagram and Facebook as JBA diorama or Jean Bernard Andre or many of your other non the plume or some of them might even remember you from the old Armorama days as, I think, Nicholas Cabaret. We go back a bit there. Now for anyone that’s been living under a rock and isn’t looking at the kind of work they should be looking at, can you tell us what kind of work you make? I don’t wanna say models because I think it’s a bit different from that, but why don’t you describe it?

Jean

What I make is small vignettes or dioramas. I used to be doing some regular military dioramas, but I twisted them in many different ways. And since I’ve been moving house about seven years ago now, I don’t have any place anymore to put some big dioramas. So I’ve been setting up to do something more like shadow boxes, except that I don’t use any lights or anything. It’s just dioramas, flat dioramas that I can put under 3D frames. This is mostly what I’m doing. So the range of what I’m doing is quite wide because it can go from still military dioramas to completely out there stuff with some women usually. And that’s it really. It’s quite colourful, innovative in terms of using of colours and also some really weird balance. I try every time not to do the same thing as I’ve been doing before, even if I fail like everyone who tries to do that. But I’m doing my best about that.

Chris

It’s funny you said they’re flat dioramas because to me they’re like 3D paintings if you see what I mean. They’re kind of like fine art painting made into three dimensions.

Jean

Yes. I try indeed to do that and I also begin to cheat a bit with perspective and proportions. Just like if I was to model a room, which would be perhaps in a 1/35 scale, that would be about 10 cm long. When my frame just allows me to use only 4 cm, I will tend to compress. So for instance, if you’ve got a chair and It would be two centimeters by two centimeters or one inch by one inch. Now it’s one inch by five millimetres, you see. So I tend to increase a little bit things in order to gain a lot of space this way. But really the reason why I’m doing that is the challenge first, but it’s also a basic problem of lack of space;  stupid, but it’s the case.

Chris

It’s interesting because it’s almost like it’s put a set regular constraint on you that it has to fit this frame because you have a regular size of frame, right? It’s nearly always the same size.

Jean

Yes, except that now it’s new because I begin to work on my own frames. For instance, I’m working on a big diorama which will be about 45 centimeters long for 30 centimeters high. It will be also a sort of box, you know, but I will have to do my own box. So, no, because indeed, I was, you know, it was always the same size, it was 10 by 9 centimeters, or, 13 centimeters by 9, or 15 cm by 12. So it was always the same proportion. After a few years, it became a bit boring to be limited only because I’m a bad woodworker and I don’t like doing my own training.

But now I’ve been, you know, passing that stage and I’m now trying to do some things, you know. I want the frame to be adapted to my ideas and other ideas adapted to the frame. That’s quite new what I’m doing. I also have my step sister, who is actually a professional artist who gave me a few advices here and there and said, “the first thing you’ve got to do is to vary the size of your dioramas.” Because the eye, if one day you exhibit them here or there, People will not focus on one except or another one. So she said I must really, really vary a lot.

I believe she’s right.

Chris

I was thinking when you place a constraint on something, it forces you to be more creative in other ways sometimes. Because the ability to change the size is taken away. So you have to be more and more inventive, I would have thought, in using the space you’ve got.

Jean

I think you’re completely right. Indeed, you’re completely right. So now when I’ve got, you know, and begin to do a big diorama, and after three weeks I get bored; I take one of my frames and do the diorama. The last one was that, that was a girl in Roman ruins, and it was exactly that, you know, I got the frame and say, okay, I’m doing something on one week time. I did that one in one week time because I got the frame, the vague idea. So I put, you know, I put a A bit of paper, 9 cm by 13, I began to draw and my diorama was there. I agree with you, indeed. But it’s also laziness, in a way.

Chris

Working on a big one after working on the little ones must be like trying to build the Sagrada Familia. This sort of huge never -ending task you have to put together.

Jean

Yes indeed. And you know, it is also the problem with the people that are building some really very big dioramas. Last time I went at WME, so two years ago, I’ve been seeing a few big dioramas that just didn’t make any sense. Just for instance, a column of people just going in front of a locomotive which was, you know, visibly working, you know, things that just didn’t make any sense. And this is… So it’s a little bit off topic, but the difficulty with big dioramas is to stay focused on what you want to show and still be able to make a world work. So I will try to do more and more big dioramas in boxes because of that, because that’s a really big challenge, you know, when it comes to core management or just the idea, it’s more complicated, definitely.

Chris

I think quite often dioramas work best when you have a simple idea and you really focus on it. You eliminate anything that isn’t serving the idea that isn’t essential to putting the story across. So yeah, I can imagine that the bigger the diorama, the more risk you have of irrelevant elements, things you don’t really need. So I guess you have to make them work. You have to find a way for them to be part of it. And I guess that’s more difficult in a way.

Jean

Yes, but for years I’ve been saying that, indeed, that everything which is not strictly meaningful or useful for the drama, you’ve got to wipe out. But I’ve got a good friend who lives in Kyiv and she’s only into very, very tiny miniatures. I’m speaking to her a lot, but you know, lots of bad things are happening there, so it’s always nice to speak with one which is deep, deep inside it. And she also kind of influenced me when it comes to her idea. And she’s really good with doing some very, very tiny things with lots of details and so on. And actually, you know, it’s funny that we should mention colour later, because actually you can put a lot of things in a diorama that are only accessories. You can do that.

But when it comes to the colours, you just don’t have to make them shine the same way. You would, for instance, have 200 empty bottles on the diorama, but only 10 or 15 just at the middle of the diorama will shine and will show. And then, once the focus is just created, the people will be directed on the focus thanks to the light. Then the eye can stay and stay a lot longer on your scene because there are some details.

You know, it’s like the Belgian painter, Magritte. You know, when you look at his paintings, there’s no details. He’s not a real painter, you know. You just grab the idea, and then after you’ve got nothing else to see. You know, I’ve been to change my mind a little bit about that. So now, we tend to use on some things I’m doing, not all. More details, but using colour, you know. Then after, the eye can wonder and can look at it.

Chris

You’re someone that uses colour incredibly effectively in your work and you use a lot of strong colours as well. Is colour something you’ve always been conscious of in modelling?

Jean

That’s a good one. You know, what can I say about that? I think that my liking in colours came from the fact that I’ve been working with Games Workshop miniatures for a few years. And I really like that, you know, Games Workshop, they’ve got their blue space marines, their red, you know, their things that they sell. And at one point I didn’t want anymore, to…actually, it was quite a leftist idea, but I didn’t want to model something that was branded. I thought that my imagination was just mine and just too wide to get it centred on something that has got a big trademark on it. There was something that wasn’t me about that.

So I let that down and I came back to my first language, which was indeed military modelling, but I didn’t want to let down the colours, you know, so after that, whenever I had the chance to use colours, I was using them. But to be honest, it took me about 20 years to be more or less satisfied with the way I’m using colours in my job. It was quite a gradual move, you know. At first, I guess that I was using colours just like I would say, all the good diorama makers like, I won’t cite any name, but you know, all the good military diorama makers, no colour because they are good modellers.

But to try to put things in another way, it took me a lot of time. When you look at my first job on Armorama, for instance, my military job at the time, there’s a bit of work on the colours, but it’s still, you know, It was painful, you know, it’s not very, very good. For instance, I was already as low when the light comes from behind a person. That means that you may have a very, very light background and the person will be dark because I don’t have the word in English right now. But you know, doing some strong lighting effects. It took me, yeah, I’m 54 today. I guess I began to succeed that when I was about 45. It’s been 20 years trying to work on that. It’s quite a long process.

Chris

I think colour is something we don’t tend to think about. I can think of a lot of modelers who use it very well that I’ve never really heard talk about colour specifically. They just kind of do it. It’s like they have a natural understanding of it. But I think for a lot of us, it’s a language you have to learn. For me, it certainly is. And I feel quite at sea sometimes, you know, and unable to kind of get to grips with it. It’s a very tricky thing to learn.

Jean

Yes, indeed. And then it’s just not their priority, I guess, that lots of models want to reproduce, you know, historical reality. No, there was a history in scale in a way, you know, to tell their own historical stories, you know, because they also like telling stories, you know, it’s always, it’s often always the same, but they like to tell their own stories, but colours doesn’t come in the way, you know. If there are good modelers, scholars come. But it seldom happens.

Chris

Colour is something I think modelists usually even think about it in two ways. They either try not to think about it at all and just follow the instructions and use the colour call outs because they’re not really too interested in it. They’re more interested in the physical building of it and you know, in the form of it, which is fine. And then there are people who are very, very, I’m trying to think of a polite word …

Jean

Ha ha!

Chris

…trying to think of a good word, they’re extremely interested in colour accuracy. And so they don’t like to deviate from what they perceive to be the correct colour, which, you know, is in itself a bizarre idea because, you know, colour depends so much on the light, what time of day it is, what time of year it is and everything else.

But anyway, they just want the colour accuracy. So they don’t want to deviate. And I think quite often it’s that deviation used in an intelligent way, which makes colour interesting. If you see what I mean, used in a purposeful way rather than just sort of, you know, playing with itI think it’s more common in figure painting.it is a lot more common actually, it definitely is in figure painting than it is in scale modelling. to play with colour.

Jean

Yes, of course. Of course it’s true. But it’s always the same thing, you know. Also in figure modelling, you’ve got lots of, it’s another sport, you know, you’ve got some friends in figure modelling, but, you know, they tend to do the things that will work at shows, you know, because there’s lots of money in figure painting, you know, there’s lots of money going on, you’ve got lots of professional painters, and you’ve got, you know, so they tend to point at some sort of ideal. And in the same way, I think that lots of more creativity indeed when it comes to paint, but could be better, you know, it’s always the same tricks that they use, always the same colour scheme. It’s less square truth than it is with armor modelling, for instance, but there’s still something like that. But there’s some work on colours and creativity a lot.

I think a lot more actually if you’re painting. But you know, I would advise to every armour modeler, instead of just when they’re doing dioramas, of course, if it’s just to do a plane or a tank that we put on the shelf, no problem. You follow the instruction, you got the right RAL number and you apply the colour. It’s no problem. But when you’re doing dioramas,

Why shouldn’t they watch one of their favourite movies like Fury, Band of Brothers? They just make a screenshot of the tanks when they come through and they’re just using the little eye dropper and look at the colours on the tanks and try to do the same, for instance. They would see that the colours that they can see in Bonnet Brothers of their tanks are not the ones that they apply on their own tanks when they are doing dramas, for instance.

Chris

The interesting thing is actually both things you mentioned, Band of Brothers and I think Fury as well, use filters on the camera to desaturate the colour, to give it a more sort of documentary feel, particularly Band of Brothers, it’s quite a brown filter on the camera and there’s very few vibrant colours on it. So, you know, even the films they’re watching, they’re deliberately tweaking the colour for an effect. And yet no one would look at that and say, all the colours “are all wrong on that tanker.”

Jean

Yeah, you know, the Brothers indeed use some filters on something. But when you look at one of my preferred movies, you know, the Thin Red Line from Terrence Malick, and the use of the colour on the movie is really fantastic, you know, and there’s no filters. It just very well filmed. It just that some ambience and I do have to use this kind of tricks. But you know, the kind of things that Band of Brothers are using, you can have that in almost every series, you know, you can even from just a screenshot of the series to tell exactly the story, you know, when it’s about very dark blue or something, it’s going to be a police story, a little bit macabre or something. Well.

Chris

The Thin Red Line for me actually, is a really good example of how people could bring more vibrancy into their military modelling. Some of the colours in that really pop. That green grass on the hill when they’re assaulting the Japanese position at the top. It’s so green. It’s like emerald green.

Jean

Yes, you know, that’s a scene, you know, at one moment when you can see just a cargo ship in a lagoon, just this scene with just a big black smoke and the gray of the ship and the gray of the sea. Just, it just sticks in the end, you know, and you don’t have to use it. Actually, perhaps it’s this kind of image that I want to use to create, you know, some really strong images and using colours for that. And they don’t have to be purple or red or something, but just the world scheme, it has to work. It’s a way why you will remember one moment in the movie, it’s also because of the colour and the combination of different colours.

Chris

That’s a good example as well of why colour is important in your modeling, but it doesn’t have to be the thing that people notice because if it’s done well, it should, as you say with the diorama, it should support it without being obvious what it’s doing. It’s not the main focus, but it supports the focus of it.

Jean

Absolutely, exactly. We couldn’t say better.

Chris

How do you choose colour?

Jean

that’s quite simple, you know, I’m doing my own mixes of colours, you know, I don’t need to have a lot of paints and yet I just have them just right in front of me. I’ve been counting them just before I was waiting for you. I’ve got 140 little acrylic pots, mostly AK, but I’ve got also some, Scale 75. I don’t need those, but it’s actually such a pleasure, you know, I usually just empty completely my desk, look at my paints and say, what will I use? I usually just take about 10 and I stick to those 10. And at the end, perhaps I will change my mind, I just take another one. But it’s just a matter of looking at my paints and what could fit. I really like that. And after I’m doing my own mixes, but it helps me, to give the starting point.

Chris

Bit like you’re the dropper but with your eye instead, you’re looking at the bottles thinking yeah a bit of that there.

Jean

Absolutely. Because it’s important because, if you like, I’m just having a look at my blues, but you can see that, for instance, I’ve got some turquoise blues that won’t go well with some kind of reds or brown or something. I’ve got some more, you know, sky blue or something, which wouldn’t be so great with turquoise, which wouldn’t be so great with some sort of red and something. So it’s the kind of thing that I try to do: set up a starting base, you know, perhaps after adding other paints, better using perhaps seven or eight basic paints and after that working on that. But I need to have those 140 paint pots in front of me in order to help me at first. This is the way I’m working really.

Chris

It’s funny, I mix most of my colours too and I find the paints I’ve bought, that I go back to, are the really bright ones. They’re the ones not to mix really, but just, “I need to find a way to use that”. Or the ones I use from the bottle are the really bright ones because they’re very hard to mix like your turquoise, really good turquoise and stuff like that. It’s not impossible, but sometimes it’s easier just to pick a nice one and use it.

Jean

I totally agree with you. It’s really helpful. I mean, a lot of paints, it helps. It’s just, even if, of course, you always empty the same pot. I’ve got a few. I’ve got some, like everyone, I’ve got my preferred kind of paints, preferred shades. For instance, there’s one AK which is called, there is Tire Black, Tire like a Tire, on the printed back. It really replaces black for me most of the time. I never use black and never use white. I always use, you know, Tyre black or something, you know, those kind of base colours.

Chris

Mine’s on my desk. Rubber black.

Actually, they have a colour called tenebrous gray and I use that instead of black and that’s really nice. That’s got a sort of a reddish brownish grayish tone to it that’s much better instead of black.

Jean

But you know, why I shouldn’t advise anyone to use black? Because you know, there’s nothing blacker than black. Which means that when you work on the diorama, and at one point you will need something which will be darker. And you have been using your tenebrous gray or your tyre black. You can still in last resort, resort to black.

Chris

Yeah. when you need a bit of shadow on your other black. You need something darker.

Jean

And when black is not enough, you’ve got some black as black paint. You perhaps know that. I use some paint which is called the “Musou Black”, you know, which is something I found on Amazon, which is a kind of Chinese or Japanese, I think, paint. I’ve got it somewhere, you know, but it is some kind of black that just, doesn’t reflect anything. And it’s also so nice, it’s really good. It’s really so much blacker than everything that you can find for models. So I’m using that, you know, and it kind of helps me, especially, you know, when I’m doing my, my little frames.

Jean

you may notice that the frames themselves are really black compared to the scene that are inside because I’m using this kind of black on the outside because it helps all the false blacks to shine through in the scene. You see? But I would say when it comes to white or black, use them only on last resort. You’ve got some cream kind of paints for white, you know, some pale, you know, grimy geys from AK, it’s really good to use that, this kind of off white. Use off white, never white, because you might need it at one point. And just the same with antibiotics, you know, you don’t have to use antibiotics when you just have a cold, you wait for you to be really sick to take antibiotics. It’s exactly the same thing.

Chris

I always think of the scene in Spinal Tap where he’s talking about the amps going up to 11. And he says, you’re at 10, you’re at 10, you’re at 10, where do you go? And it’s like that with black and white, you know, you’re at 10, you know, and you don’t have a colour that goes to 11. So you have to, you have to turn it down to eight and then save 10 for when you really need something to pop.

Jean

Exactly, this is why you should always do it the most possible time you’re on mixers, you know. Never use them with the sky blue, use… Just tone them down, tone them down, because at one point you will need them. That’s a repeat for success.

Chris

I’ve spoken about this before on the Sprue Cutters Union, but another problem I see a lot with people, with colour is that they don’t think of colour in terms of a spectrum from the darkest through to the light. So when they paint something, it’s quite often missing either enough bottom end on the shadow or enough top end on the light. And it’s all in the kind of mid range and everything just sort of sinks and disappears and there’s no definition to anything.

Do you think that’s a common problem with military modelers particularly?

Jean

Yes, perhaps. I don’t know, but I’ve got the idea of when I was at WME, I believe that your job, as I prefer to understand, I was judging by the way, was the ones of Roger Hurkmans. Not always a fan of the subjects, but he’s really good, I believe, with dark colours. I believe he’s good with that, you know. He really managed to make something. We were talking about Band of Brothers or something, but he uses the shadows in an effective manner, way, I believe, yes.

Chris

He’s got quite a dark, desaturated kind of mood to everything he does. But he uses the highlights as well to make sure it doesn’t just sort of too grey. His darks are dark, aren’t they? And his lights are light.

Jean

Yeah, it works. But it works because it’s good. I thought he was really good. He was the only one really… I thought there was something there, you know. It was good.

Chris

It’s funny, he reminds me of Dutch Renaissance when they used to prime the canvas brown and you get that sort of dark effect. That kind of it comes through in his work as well. I don’t know whether there’s any influence there or whether it’s coincidence or what. But it always makes me think of that, he might have never looked at a Renaissance painting. Even at school.

Jean

because he was in Holland you know, and that made me feel something in Holland that was good.

This is the Dutch Effect.

Chris

I am in danger there of straying into the “Dutch school” and the “Norwegian school” of paint and all that modelling crap. I think Marijn van Gils as well uses light, shade and all the tones between really well and I do think that the best modelers I can think of, and the best diorama modelers are people who really understand that.

Jean

Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Indeed, I forgot about Marijn Van Gils, but he’s here. Yeah, he’s so good at talking. Yes.he shows really a great way of choosing colour. It’s not that obvious because you also have to deal with about 1000 people, you know, miniature people. But, you know, the way is great is that when I use colour, it really feels that I’m really working on it and I’m working on the colour. But with him,

It looks both accidental, completely natural and completely excellent, you know. Know what I mean? It just manages to create some kind of reality, not warped reality, just reality. It works and uses plenty of colours. There’s something so natural about the way you use colours. I like that.

Chris

He doesn’t use it in a showy way, in a really obvious kind of “look at me, look at my colour” kind of way. It’s very subtle, but very effective.

Jean

Exactly, exactly. Yes, I totally agree with that. I was thinking about another modeler which one like, it is a Lebanese modeler, Imad Bouantoun. I think that first it is excellent, he’s very entertaining with this scene and something, but every time he tries to really use something that will pop when it comes to the colours. Maybe it will be some blue house. Maybe it will be some golden dome or something. But he really tried at one point to focus the attention on something else than just a nice military scene. And I really like him because he’s played something fresh, you know. He’s not murky or dark or something. He’s got something, a more brighter way of using colours than most military models that I know.

Chris

Now you use colour very effectively to focus the eye on what you want people to look at.

That’s something that’s been particularly true on the frames you’ve done. Is that something that’s developed over time? I mean, , the first time I can remember you really doing it was with the, I think it was Khalkhin Gol diorama, with the tank and with the cranes.

Jean

okay. Yeah. This one is the first successful diorama I did using colours. I still remember, I went to the shop, and I asked for the Russian green, but they gave me some terrible green, like olive drab. And they said, no, I use lime green. They said, no, I will take lime green.

Yes, I believe this is my first really successful work when it comes to lighting, but everything connected to lighting. Yes.

Chris

But that’s something you’ve continued to develop, isn’t it? I mean, you did one for the Models for Ukraine book as well with the bell from, was it Frankfurt church? I can’t remember. But that’s a very interesting one because the ground is almost black or at least it’s, you know, it’s ashes, dark ashes colour. But then there’s this huge pop in the middle. So you’re not afraid of a bit of contrast as well.

Jean

No, of course not. But the same thing, you know, I must have emptied my first pot of a tire black with that one, you know, because there’s no black at all in it. There’s only some very murky colours. But it was our thing, you know, there are plenty of stones everywhere. And just in the middle, you’ve got the tractor and the girl on it. And indeed, it was, this is what I was telling you, you know, you’re doing a rather big, it’s not big, but then you focus on the girl, and then on the tractor, and then on the rest, you know, it just makes some sort of pyramid, of how can I say it? You know, I don’t use the big words, but the right words, but you see what I mean. You focus on one thing and then on another thing, et cetera. Yes, I thought it was my best regular 3D diorama. It was that one. I’m very happy to have given you to your very successful book.

Chris

The fall of masonry as well, it goes back to what you were saying earlier about having some interest because although colour -wise, it’s almost like it’s been sunk completely almost out of sight because it’s so dark. Once you take your eye away from the brighter elements and you look at it, there is lots of things there to see. It’s not like you thought, well, that’s not really relevant. I’ll just kind of, you know, half ass it. I’ll just put a bit of gravel on and say that’s rubble or something you’ve put as much effort into every single part of that diorama as you did into the main focus, but it’s there for you to discover after you’ve discovered the main part.

Jean

Yes, of course, you know, I spot every centimeter square, every millimeter square of my dioramas to just make it sure it is perfect. There’s never something that I will, you know, that I will pass, you know, every time I try to spend the same amount of time on some hidden, they are never hidden. I never model anything hidden because this is really useless.

But something that can be noticeable by the person, I will model it the same precise way as the main focus. There’s no question about that. Because really, really, about creating those kinds of focuses, it’s almost at the two last hours of the work that the focus will really pop. Because before, it’s a good example that you’re around with the bell. Once you’ve got the scene completed, I noticed for instance that some of the stones were not dark enough. So you take your airbrush with a little bit of smoke kind of paint and you just put it back. And it’s just really the last time that you can really get the focus. Only the three last hours of building there you can see it created just at the last moment.

I will be doing a big diorama soon with some locomotives. I’ve got the eight of nine bits of locomotives ready in front of me. And the focus will be for the moment only because one of them is red and five of them are green and you’ve got two blues or something. So the focus will be on the red.

But right now I can tell you that there’s no focus on that one because it doesn’t shine enough. It will be when everything will be assembled, then I will take some Mr. Paint kind of, you know, lacquers that I will begin to just wash, make some bright washes on everything and there it will pop up. But it will take me another three weeks to work because it’s a big one. And it’s only in my mind that I know that I will be able to do, and it’s not visible right now on the scene. Because, yeah, it’s really complicated to do and you have to take risk at some point, you know.

Chris

It sounds like these elements are like colours themselves in that how they act and how effective they are is really only visible when they’re in amongst their colleagues, if you see what I mean, the other parts of it. So, you know, one colour might look one way on your palette, but put it next to another colour and it looks different. And with you, the trains, you put the red one next to another one, and then you’ll know how much brighter it needs to be or what you need to do to it.

Jean

Exactly. I totally agree with you. It’s not easy. It’s not easy, but it’s really, it’s a part of the fun, you know. When you begin to work with colours, it’s something that you’ve got to build parallel with the scene, you know. You’ve got to build your balance. So sometimes, you create your balance on a piece of paper, but when you begin to build the scene, you realize that your piece of paper is worth nothing. You can throw it into the bin. It doesn’t work. So you’ve got to improvise another kind of balance.

You’ve got to increase the size of the diorama and something, and then you begin to use colour. And then you might notice, for instance, that some detail which has to be, for instance, bright red will be in the left corner. It’s wrong. It will show everyone will have a look at that place. So it’s no good. You’ve got to tone down and then to clear up and then to tone down again and something. It’s endless.

And this is really part of the fun, you know, working on colour is just like working on contrast. And, it’s another sport in itself. And I will just add also two different things for diorama making that people don’t think I believe enough of. It’s the use of the metallic colours, which can make a difference, you know. That’s another dimension. Metallic, non -metallic. Of course, lots of painters now use, the figure painters use some non -metallic paints, well, way of painting. But I prefer still using metallics because that gives another dimension to the diorama. And as a fourth dimension of the diorama, it’s whether things will be glossy, matte, or semi -matte, or semi -gloss, or something. It’s something which is absolutely, absolutely essential.

Chris

Yeah, I mean, texture is something I don’t think people think about enough, but you can really add so much interest with just a difference, like you say, between gloss, semi -gloss and matte, even on the same model or the same figure or, you know.

Jean

Yes. Indeed. For instance, right now I’m working locomotives. So locomotives are painted usually in glossy colours, of course. But when they end up being broken, so you get lots of rust that is coming in. So actually, I’m looking at what are my locomotives right now. Honestly, the paint is glossy, except where the places where the rust just ran down, where the paint just went off, where I use some pigments that I sticked with a small brush, it is dead matte. And it really works because you’ve got this contrast between the gloss and the matte. It looks, yeah, I’m looking at it right now, it looks kind of realistic. I’m happy about the effect. Reasonably.

Chris

Yeah, there’s elements to what we do in pursuing realism, which aren’t obvious to the viewer, but the more than you add, the more effective it is. And I think it’s the same with the colour that, as I said earlier, it shouldn’t be massively obvious what you’re doing. But I mean, I think a lot of dioramas, colour is used very strongly to direct the gaze to one place or another or to create a mood, but I’m not sure people looking, other than saying, “that’s colourful”, they don’t really think too much about how you’ve done that with the colour, if you see what I mean. It’s not too obvious how you’ve done it, to the point where it’s a distraction.

Jean

Yes, yes, yes. Indeed, you’re right on that. Colour must never be a distraction because it can produce distraction, of course. If you put a red hand or a rooster or something in the middle of a diorama, people will look at it. It’s always the same thing. So no, it’s just a construction. You’ve got to think about the way you construct.

colour in the same way as you build it and you pile up elements over elements. It’s the same way. It’s just another way of thinking the same thing. I believe.

Chris

Are you procedural in the way you work that you plan things as you go and as you go? You think, right, well, that’s going to be that colour. And then the next thing is that colour and then tweak it a bit at the end. Or are you someone who paint something, weather it, and then thinks, well, I need a bit more colour, I’ll go back and add some paint, or, you know, I’ll add a bit. Is it something you constantly in flux or something that you plan out?

Jean

Well, at first, usually when I start a diorama, I’ve got the colour, I’ve got the plan, I’ve got everything ready in my head. The problem is that the image in my head is usually blurry, you know, it’s not very precise. So I know that I will need a bit of red, you know, something. And then of course, when I actually it happens like an evidence when I begin to work on it and I know that this I must use this colour and this element after that, that colour.

And at the end, you know, I think that that was my goal for years, and now I’m happy because I actually managed to do that. Is that the thing I have in my head will happen in the diorama, exactly the same colours, everything, you know, and you can use some app on your phone just to draw a scene that you’ve got in your head, you know, make a basic plan, but you can’t do the same with the colour. The colour, it stays in your head.

And it has to stay in your head till the end, you know? So that’s it.

Chris

But colours in your head a bit like trying to grab smoke, aren’t they? It’s really hard to kind of until you put it on, until you start playing around with it, it’s hard to fully grasp it.

Jean

Yeah, but it’s funny, but sometimes it’s just only the colours and the scene comes after. I’ve been doing a spirit diorama, which is located in Thailand, you know, with some Buddha head in the water. This wasn’t just colours at the beginning. I just wanted to create, you know, same kind of lighting effect that you may have in Apocalypse Now, for instance, you know, there’s, you know, the sun down on the rice fields or something, this colour. I must do something with those colours. So of course, the rest came after that. But yeah, more and more, just colour scheme. I want to work on some kind of colours. When it’s been a long time that I did not work with blue, I want to work with blue. And blue is not, it’s just colour, I believe, to work. I prefer working on greens. Greens work well with some.

Chris

Yeah, I like, I like greens. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of room in green to, you know, to change it. It’s, it’s much harder with red or blue. Well, I suppose it’s better with secondary colours, but particularly with green, you can add a little red or you can make it more blue, more yellow. And there’s so many different ways you can play with green. It makes me laugh when people say that they don’t like doing allied World War II tanks because they’re all green. So green is the best colour to play.

Jean

It’s really funny because with green, you know, you can put some shadows in green and do highs in yellow, pure yellow, and people will think it’s green. While when you want to do some kind of sunny, late evening effect on some blue, it’s really more complicated because if you just spray some yellow, it will look a little bit green or something. It’s complicated, you know. I’m currently working on an effect like that.

Blue is complicated to work with, if you want to create some interesting lighting effects. Red you can work quite well with, but blue is complicated. I always thought so.

Chris

The biggest problem with red is making it lighter. You can’t really, you maybe add a bit of yellow, but you know, you can’t ever put white in red. So I always find it difficult with red to go lighter without just using another pure red.

Jean

No, very tough. When it comes to get lighter with red, I use orange and yellow quite clearly. And when I’ve got, you know, I’ve got really my strong point here, I’ve got some extra paints. I’ve got my luminous red from Mr. Paint, which is some kind of fluorescent red, which is very good to make some very high highlights. I’ve got those kind of, you know, just like black and white.

The fluorescent paints are the death star of modelling.

Chris

The nuclear option. The big red button that you sometimes have to push.

Jean

Exactly. So yes, actually with red, I’m using lots of oranges and yellows, and especially some inks, you know, the transparent inks, Alclad does them, Mr. Paint does them, and they’re really good. You thin them, you know, you’ve got to really thin them because you can lead to catastrophes. And you just, you know, wash a bit over with your with the airbrush and it really shines, you know, it will work really.

Chris

Do you think people are afraid of a bit of colour in modeling?

Jean

I just think it’s not their priority. Afraid? No. Why should it be? I don’t know. Of course, it’s really, you know, if you are doing, I don’t know, some really complicated camo, you know, like, I don’t know, late war, World War II, German. Using some lighting effects on something like that is really more difficult than to create some lighting effects on a Sherman. The more you’ve got some details, like sandbags on the tank or something, the more it’s difficult. Of course, it’s another challenge. It’s lots of dimensions to take into consideration. So I perfectly understand why they just don’t want to get really too much bored with that. It’s a lot more work and you risk ruining your scene. But you know, I’m using lots of resin with my dioramas [clear resin in water dioramas]. So I’ve been ruining more than one diorama in my entire life, which means that now I take all the risk because I know what it is to ruin months of work. Why perhaps regular diorama makers wouldn’t take the risk. But I’m taking it because the whole idea of my dioramas is to take risks using chemicals. So that’s it.

Chris

It’s quite funny, I hear it quite a lot all the time. People get to a stage on their model and they’re afraid to go further because they’re worried about ruining it. And I never really understood it because you could just build another one.

Jean

Yeah, you build another one. And at the end, I prefer one very good diorama, that nine which are not good, which take too much place in my home.

Chris

Do you think… something that’s occurred to me and I’m probably going to get in trouble with a lot of listeners for this. So I’m going to encourage you to get in trouble with them as well. Sometimes I feel sometimes I feel with figure painters. The sort of the shock of the effect or the dramatism of the effect is more important to them than the purpose of the effect. I see colour and light used really well by figure painters, but without a definite purpose. It’s about the technique, not the result, if you see what I mean.

Jean

Yes, really, figure painters sometimes make me think of those guitarists, you know, who just play endless solos. No, it’s stupid. You know, the drummers, you know, one half an hour during break and they show their abilities. But, you know, I strongly believe because I begin to know a bit more of that, the figure painters, there’s just too much money for the sake of the hobby. The famous painters, they sell their painted figures. They need to win shows. So of course, they will display. But also, I will also say that the professional painters I know, because I know at least one, is working on two kinds because he’s really passionate. So, he’s got the stuff that he will just put on at shows to win medals and just to be able after that to sell his own stuff. And he’s got also his own scenes, the things that he’s doing for himself, for his enjoyment. But there’s also all the part of the job he does, you know, to say, “I’m the best”.  It’s a real game, which one is the biggest one, you know?

Chris

It just sometimes feels that they’re technically brilliant, but there’s no real emotion to it.

Jean

No, it’s not their priority. Their priority is to win shows.

Chris

Like you say, as well, perhaps for customers: to demonstrate their technique and their ability.

Jean

Yeah, completely. I was about to say that there’s not much more art in figure painting than there is in genre painting as a world. I’m not sure. Because, you know, last time when I went at WME two years ago, I was really astonished by some of the stuff which I found which was very, very creative.

I honestly saw very, very little military genres that were anything like creative. But in the figure department, I saw perhaps a dozen of pieces that are still sticking in my head. I thought there was invention, there was creation. There was really something about them. Something which was the purpose was to do something which was beautiful, something a little bit magic. And I like that, you know. Perhaps this is also in my mind. When I’m doing dioramas, I want to do something a little bit magic. And they managed to do so.

Chris

I hate to say it, but I think, although a lot of people listening will say, well, so what? It’s not supposed to have any, but I think a lot of the dioramas, the military modelling, is lacking that magic. It’s lacking that surprise element as well. It’s, you know, I mean, it’s very, very well done, but it’s just that extra thing. It’s not there.

Jean

This is why the really best, I could rate the Per Olav for instance, or Marijn Van Gils that we’re telling about. Those ones areI think that this is latest or second to last. He’s been doing something with a whale and a boat or something. And he put this thing.

Chris
Per Olav Lund

Jean

He put the fishes inside the sea, you know, he did it. I thought it was, well, not very realistic, but I thought that it really brought something as a world to do. You know, it was, at first, it was not so obvious that he should have done that. But on second thought, I thought it was quite brilliant because it managed to make something that you would proudly put in a cabinet of curiosities, you know.

Curious Taste Cabinet. Something like a 19th century piece of art that you would be putting on the… I thought it was kind of brilliant in this way.

Chris

Although it wasn’t realistic, for me it was almost literary. It’s almost like the image you would get in your head reading a page of Moby Dick or something. That it’s not, you know, like a photograph. It’s more like, well, or even a copper plate in a book, you know, an etching in a book of that scene. Like you say, it did look, there was something very 19th century about the style of it, but at the same time it’s fantastic. Really well done.

Jean

Yes, I thought it was one of his best, actually. I believe it’s my preferred work. I hope to see it next at SMC, next October.

Chris

It’s strange, but it’s the same with yours. I find the further people move away from military things, the more interesting they become. But I don’t mean like doing cars and things or tractors, but, you know, in sort of. Well, like all my favourite ones of yours, I mean, obviously, you know, very well that I like the womb and I like the ships you did, but the women you do in these scenes with the one reaching out for the animal in the museum or the sort of animal analogue, should I say?

And the one with she’s holding the planet and stuff like that, these are the ones that really grabbed me. They’re the ones I find really original and really interesting.

Jean

thank you. I also think so. I’ve been developing an interest for locomotives for about two years. I’m doing locomotives too, because they are funny and I can use colours with them because they are red, blue, green and so on. You know, I started to do the reason why I’m doing that, you know, is that when I was about 20, I was doing some military dioramas, but I was living a life that didn’t go well with that. For instance, I was working as a rock journalist for a very left -wing magazine. Can you imagine? Yes, I’m working for a left -wing magazine. I’m building little panzers. Cool. It wouldn’t go with it.

You know, there was a contradiction into my own head about that. And then there was also a flash when I heard that Coppola didn’t make Apocalypse Now for the Vietnam War. He didn’t care about it. He did it because he got some problems with his wife or something. I thought it was absolutely brilliant because, you know, most genre makers, they are put, they are [making] their own bit of history. No, me, I put my own history in history. And this is the reason why, you know, I’ve been using some kind of, you know, some decor that everyone could relate to. For instance, I like Edwardian era. It’s my preferred era when it comes to architecture or everything. I’m a bit a fan of that era. But I will put the own thing that I got in my mind in those kind of decor, you know. It’s the same thing, you know, you’ve got some scene, could be logical but for me which has a meaning, and this is because at one point I wanted to have some meaning which was on my own, my own meanings in my diorama. This is why I moved but I could also yes also doing military dioramas in this way all depends in the way you organize the things.

Chris

It must be creatively though incredibly liberating to give up on kits and things like that. Just to start from a blank slate.

Jean

Yes. yes. Thanks to printing. It liberated me really. No, seriously. I’ve got plenty of kits behind me that I will probably never build.

Chris

Same.

Jean

Yeah, I’ve got a big number. Yes, it is liberating. You know, I want to build locomotives. I can build locomotives on my own, especially with boats. Especially with boats. With boats, you know, for instance, my earlier boat, it took me about three or four months just to build everything.

Now… First, I can even do it at my job if I’m pretty bored. And I can model a boat or something in less than one month. So I’ve been, you know, sparing time a lot by doing that. It’s really liberating, yes. And it’s also, you know, I don’t have any life enough to turn the barrels of the guns, for instance. Now with 3D printing, you just get that and there’s no problem with that. And I really like that. Yes, it’s liberating.

I can do whatever I want. No problem. I can model virtually anything.

Chris

I do find quite often when I look at this big wall of kits behind me, I mean, I like the subjects, but I go to, on the rare occasion I’ve actually got in a place to start something new, which is very rare because usually I overlap them so much, I’ve never got a clean slate, but I just look at them and think, “I can’t really think of anything interesting to do with that”, but I’ve got lots of ideas in my head which don’t involve a kit, which I am really keen to do.

Jean

Actually, I also thought, you know, I stopped building kits a long time ago, but every now and then I like taking a kit. For instance, I’ve been doing my Zero diorama of just a Zero ditched in the sea. It was really a pleasure to take a Tamiya kit, which was excellent. You know, I got the PE kit, I got everything. I’ve been doing models, you know, it’s just like a no brainer. It fits. Contrary to the stuff that you model yourself, it fits. And it was quite interesting. But now even when I use, for instance, I will have another diorama with a plane on it. I’ve been using a Soviet P02. And the engine is apparent on this plane. So, I’ve been remodeling it in 3D. And also I’m very happy to have been able to model that. You know the wings, when they are pierced by bullets, they’re just shattered with the cloth.

just going here and there and I’ve been able to model that. So I’m very happy to both mix my own work with the ICM kit.

Chris

Impressive, doing canvas.

Why do you think we make models? What is it about making these little things which appeals to us?

Jean

I don’t know if I’m right, but I think that for a lot of boys, you know, it’s when we are playing with our little plastic soldiers when we were kids, and we keep on doing that. In a way, it’s that. I believe that for a lot of men doing dioramas, it’s this way. And this is also because they really like history, and they want to create history with their hands on something that will be relevant to them. They want, you know, to have something, just like a screenshot of Band of Brothers, permanently in front of them, you know. I believe it’s that, it’s just a mix between their kids’ games and the fact that they like history so much that they want to have a trace of it in front of them. I believe it’s that. I don’t believe I’m better or different in this way. It’s just I’ve been working, but that’s it.

Chris

Yeah, that’s something I really want to get across a lot with this show, because I’ve been accused of being pretentious during the blog and this podcast. But I’m not saying that the way we talk about it or the things we talk about are better than someone who opens an Airfix kit, builds it, puts it on the shelf, does the next one. It’s just different. And I just wanted somewhere for people to talk about these things.

Jean

Yeah, but you know, it’s a bit like in the Bible, you know, it is saying to those that was given few, few will be asked for them. But if they ask for a lot, we’d be asking even more for them. That means that for me, the diorama, there are small work involved into doing the diorama that if you just build a tank or a plane and put on the shelf, it’s more work. And then you’ve got to just get beyond that.

I think this is a bit the way, you know, I’ve been, I believe, choosing the most difficult way of doing things because I, not only I’ve been models, but I also, you know, combine them with other things, other techniques in order to create scenes, which is, I believe, the most complicated thing you can do with models. But I want to do more than that, you know. It’s a bit that’s my way of thinking. But, you know, people that are building tanks to put on their shelves, it is stupid to ask them to reconsider their view on painting and accuracies. No, just a different sport completely.

Chris

Yeah, that’s not their hobby.

Jean

The hobby is to have a collection of miniature historical mechanical items and that’s a free defined hobby.

Chris

Are you trying to say something with the things you model or is it just, you get these images in your head and you want to make them.

Jean

I try to say things to myself. I’ve got the luck that some people like my dioramas, but if there wasn’t my website or social media, I would do the same things. No, I don’t try to say anything. There’s no politics in my dioramas, for instance. I don’t think there are. No, I don’t think there are. I should think about it more, as there are, but it’s not really conscious. My dioramas are a complete expression of myself. So since I’m rather politicized, even though I’m less mouthy than some about that,

I suppose that it can be sometimes seen through, but not really, I think.

Chris

All right, well thank you very much Jean

But thank you very much to you, Chris. It’s been a pleasure.

________________________________________________________

Thats it for this blog. Next time, I will be talking to Tue Kaae to get the colour perspective of a figure painter.

In the meantime, don’t forget to follow my Sponsor, Scale Model Challenge. You can find details of the show, the competition, the venue, and more at https://www.scalemodelchallenge.com/
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This week, my guest is Ivan Cocker.

Ivan has a highly informed view on history, as keeper of models at the Malta Maritime Museum for Heritage Malta, and as a world renowned modeller in his own right with a long history of award-winning models and some seminal pieces that were a big influence on me as a returner to the hobby on the pages of military modelling magazine, and at Euromilitaire.

He is also a reenactor of several periods including medieval and Napoleonic, and head ordnance judge at scale model challenge

We talked about the relationship between history and modelling, historical accuracy, historiography, and much more…

Chris Meddings

Ivan, welcome to the Model Philosopher. A lot of people will, I should hope, recognise you from your contribution to modelling over many years, especially in dioramas and armour. I remember particularly covers of articles in military modelling and all over the place. But you’re also a committed historian. You work in history and museums and you’re a re -enactor as well. Can you tell us about your connection with history?

Ivan Cocker

Thank you so much Chris for the invitation. I’m humbled with such an intro.

History is a passion for me. So… Could be where I come from, because Malta is practically every stone is a historical artifact. So, I grew up like that.

Chris

The island’s saturated in history, isn’t it?

Ivan

Yes, sometimes it’s too much. It’s too much. And after a period, I ended up working in history as well.  work in a museum, so, in a way, I’m now connected. And yes, I’m also a reenactor. And reenactment taught me a lot.

Honestly, I entered reenactment to cut out from modelling in a way. To make it more fun or a little bit more relaxed. But it ended up different because it taught me a lot. It’s something totally different, when you wear the things and you try to mimic what others went through and the past, you start to understand more.

Chris

Well, they call it living history, don’t they?

Ivan

Exactly. It is playing soldiers that’s true, but when you start living the past, you start understanding more, even what a soldier felt sometimes. We used to do long hours marching for example, you understand the fatigue, even taking care of weapons and the weight of things. For example, I used to do Napoleonic and medieval. So both things are different, two different academics in a way. You totally start understanding even when you see model figures, what’s good or wrong in a way. Even how they wore things.

Chris

But also, it’s your job, right?

Ivan

Yes, I’m a Keeper of Models. It’s a very interesting job. In a way, I take care of the national model collection. And it’s quite a selective thing, we have models from 17th and 18th century. So, part of my job is to study those models and conserve them and take care of their conservation.

And obviously when the curatorial team will come up with new ideas and especially for this place and heritage interpretation or new sources, new models and dioramas come in play. So, we use a lot models and dioramas to disseminate new information and try to reach out to people with our sources. So sometimes it’s not only that you write papers, or you write books. Dioramas and models are still quite an effective tool in museums.

Chris

Why do you think they’re still effective in this age of kind of VR and interactive displays?

Ivan

VR and AR is quite good in a way, it’s something very innovative, but what’s different is at the moment technology as it is, VR and AR, allows you at 15 minutes to view. or else your mind [it] will be too much and what is different is you’re seeing a video or you’re entering a rendered virtual world.

A model is a tactile thing. You’re seeing a 3D object in front of you. There’s more connection. And what I have found, is that models can help out. Mind you, I don’t see one as better than the other. People say models and dioramas are dying out from museums, for example. I don’t really agree with that. I think the good thing about a diorama or a model in a museum, for example, in a showcase, is that you’re allowed to stay there, watch it as long as you want, check out what details you want. They can communicate to a young person and to an old person, and there’s no difference in a way. So I think there needs to be a balance in between. One is not killing the other. I don’t think so.

Chris

Do you think there’s a perspective that models can bring as well, with a big diorama, that you don’t just get the sort of… experience at a close level of one person on, say, a battlefield or in an area, but also the topography, the foliage, villages, towns, other people, everything else.

Ivan

When you’re doing historical dioramas for a museum, it’s totally a different concept than… [what we modellers do]. You’re not that free like we are, doing model making at home. You have documentation, you have to abide by that, but you find gaps. You find gaps. And so, the first thing, that you go through: is you collect sources. Let’s say if it’s a battlefield or a particular battle, you try to get sources from both sides. Sometimes it’s difficult, but it’s ideal to get from both sides because historians are biased. So sometimes you get sources that are totally, totally keeping what they wanted to tell in a way. You try to combine that. You also consult archaeological finds when you get them, because through archaeology today, and especially with new technology, you can get even the weather, the terrain, anything. The sky is the limit today, what you can get with all these things. But still, when you collect all these things, the job is to create a storyline. From there you get a storyboard, like a movie in a way. And yes, artistic license still is important, a factor, because although everything is historical, you still have to balance things, especially to give the proper story.

Chris

You’re used to a concept of history that’s more based in sort of an academic idea of history, where you see things a lot more in context. Do you think modellers are maybe too specialized in their knowledge of history or their concept of history, say based around a single vehicle or single army?

Ivan

I still think history can play a good part. So unfortunately, sometimes I notice that a good amount of modellers, because of time, or because they lack to ability to find things, don’t consult historical sources. And nowadays you can pretty find anything, or you can talk to people over social media. You can connect with historians today, with experts. So sometimes I’m a little biased on this, honestly. I’m a little biased. So I feel that sometimes they need to put a little bit more effort in, but it again depends on taste and what the modellers would like to find.

On the other hand, maybe there are modellers who don’t like to read or don’t like to search, but I still find that modellers need to keep their eyes open, even look at pictures and original photos, for example. You can notice many things. You can really, really go through, scrutinize and explore a photo, and basically you learn as well, you really learn.

Chris

I think it’s not everyone’s aim to be historically accurate or to tell history. Some people just want to build a model. But there are people who say that they build models to “honour history”. And I think if you’re saying you honour history, I don’t actually know what that means. But if you’re saying that you’re doing something to teach history, there’s a lot of modellers use it as a kind of a fig leaf for why they build the things they build. I kind of feel like they don’t actually put much history in it. It’s just like, “well, there was a tank that looked like that. So that’s history”. If you see what I mean.

Ivan

It’s quite a strong thing. Let’s say, honouring history sometimes it’s… It depends. I think it depends from a modeller point of view. It really depends. What’s the aim of what he’s trying to fulfil? A modeller needs to really go through that his connecting to a viewer.

I don’t like to say it. It is an art. It is a visual art. Or let’s say visual communication, because there’s another can of worms that can get out of hand. So it is a visual art. And you know where I stand on this. I’m quite artistic in a way.

Chris

Well, it’s definitely a craft at least, maybe an art, but definitely a craft.

Ivan

It is a visual communication tool. So, and I think in that aspect, but it’s always depends, depends what one needs to do. For example, myself, once I came up with this idea, I found that in 1945, Czechoslovakia and Prague, there was an uprising, for example, and I was intrigued with the story. And, I came up with this diorama.

I found this, it was, a camp that was originally liberated by the Soviets. But my idea, what I came up with was I created this particular Hetzer, that the insurgent captured. And I don’t know if you remember it, Chris, I think you might remember this one.

Chris

of course I do, yeah.

Ivan

and I created this idea of this Hetzer opening up this gate of this particular camp and the people like rising against the… the Nazis that were there. I remember once I posted this on Facebook and I was practically being pinpointed by, especially people from the East that told me, “No, no, no, that’s not really historical accurate. This is not what happened.” Yes, I’m aware about that, but my intention was a little bit different. It was a little bit of an artistic thing, based on a historical thing. But my storyline was ‘rage against the machine’ in a way, that the idea, the people uprising against it. At that time, I remember the news was filled with the uprising in North Africa, especially in Libya at that time. So these ideas were on my mind with people rising up against dictators and these things. So, this is something you cannot end up with, with model making. You come up with a different story, different concept. You’re not really rewriting history, but you’re giving a communication thing, a message in a way. And maybe that’s something modellers can really look into.

Chris

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and it’s quite hard to articulate because it sounds heretical as soon as you say it. But I think sometimes modellers obsess too much about the details of history and not about the spirit of history. So, in your case, that diorama represented the spirit of the people rising up to liberate themselves and their countrymen, particularly in the camp. And maybe the actual event didn’t happen, of the Hetzer going through the gate, but the uprising did and that emotion and that movement of people in Czechoslovakia wanting to liberate themselves definitely happened. So, it’s historically truthful, but not historically accurate. If you see what I mean.

Ivan

Exactly, exactly.

Chris

But I think it’s important to get that kind of spirit of history into the things we do, the emotion of it, because the emotion’s quite often the thing that’s missing in models.

Ivan

I think so. There are two particular types of model makers; There are those that go into the technical thing and they enjoy building up the model and put all the details and be very, very, very, very accurate. So I think for them, if we’re speaking about machines, that will be the main factor that they are seeing.

And there are others that can be a little bit also artistic in a way, but try to convey a message or try to come up with some ideas as well, or play out with colours. I don’t always see it that you’re trying to downgrade history or trying to come up with rewriting history.

This is another factor: you can give certain messages or do some propaganda with it or something like that. This can happen with books and anything. So, as I say, model making is a medium.

On the opposite side, I think that’s something we don’t sometimes look at. We have to see what other people think when they see our models.

We like to say we build models for ourselves. It’s true. We built them for ourselves. But we want to show them as well.

Chris

If you just do it for yourself, why not just finish it, put it in a box and put it away somewhere? If you’re showing it, it’s because you want people to see it and then that’s the communication.

Ivan

That’s true. This is quite a conflict for me because in my line of work, sometimes I have to be quite strict in a way, because model making in museums is quite a compromised thing. You can be free in a way, but sometimes you have to be quite selective.

So recently in my studies, I made a case study of a particular model that was in the Imperial War Museum. [As part of the IWM London’s Holocaust Exhibition, by Gerry Judah ] Sadly, recently I heard they took it off. It was about the Holocaust, it was the Auschwitz camp. It was a 1/72 model. Large, I think about four, six meters, something like that. I thought that was huge. But what was impressive is we all know it’s a sad story, quite a horror story in a way.

But the model makers came up with a brilliant idea. They, and the designer of that exhibition, they placed it in a room that was dark and they created a grey diorama that was almost white, no colour but they created something that was quite, quite impressive in a way.

Going back to model making, the hobby of model making. If you do something like that in a competition, for example, it is accepted or not. I feel we need to open up to someone coming up with this idea and be innovative in a way. Sometimes I feel we need to think a little bit out of the box. Although things are historically accurate, for example, let’s say. The Auschwitz diorama was very historically accurate. I managed to connect with the model maker who made it and they told me they studied photos of the period to create the proper place and the proper buildings and even the amount of people they inserted. So it was quite a well -sourced documented diorama.

But on the other hand, they were artistic as well.

Chris

I think by removing colour, kind of subconsciously, you think of black and white photos and black and white photos we associate with the real, because they’re documentary, they’re not, you know, we’re used to seeing black and white photos of the war. So in a sense, it made it more realistic on a subconscious level by taking the colour out.

Ivan

I think so. And if you continue on this concept, what Spielberg made in Schindler’s List as well. So I think sometimes, yes, playing with colours is another topic that we can go through.

Chris

Yeah, that’s a whole episode on its own.

Ivan

Yes, yes, yes. And I did an experiment once. That old Euro military days. That was quite a shock, I remember, the guys judging it.

Chris

I remember. Yeah. Was it a BT5 or a BT7? A Spanish Civil War diorama, wasn’t it?

Yeah, that caused, I would be in danger of going off the subject, but I’m gonna stick with it anyway. That caused quite a stir when you posted it online as well. I’m Missing-Links, I think. A lot of people reacted quite, I wouldn’t say negatively, but they didn’t get it. They didn’t like it and they didn’t get it.

Ivan

Yes, that’s true. Some thought it was black and white from Photoshop in a way. Others had some negative things about the Spanish War, I know it is a harsh topic to discuss as well. So that’s true.

Chris

Especially in Spain. Well, that brings us back to history. I mean, the sort of the perception of history in Spain is, it’s a very, it’s a living thing, if you see what I mean. There’s constant sort of push, pull and debate in Spain about the Civil War.

Do you think that models sometimes represent that, from a historiography point of view? Since you know, you’re an academic, you know this stuff very well. Do you find that models are often indicative of the attitude of the time towards what they’re depicting? Do you think that changes over time?

Ivan

Yes! That is true, that is true. Going back to my work, when I go through, especially our national collection, and especially see old models, and you have to understand why they were built, and who built them. So, and I think even today, that continues, subconsciously, subconsciously, even us modellers, sometimes we don’t realize we’re conditioned to ideas and concepts that would go through could be inspirational. I think it is an academic topic to go into this more than that and it’s quite philosophical. I think model making is quite philosophical.

Chris

Yeah, well, that’s why this podcast exists! I mean, I think a lot of my generation and the previous, I mean, I’m late Gen X and I think early Gen X and the baby boomer generation. I think a lot of our models are very heavily influenced by the war films of the 50s, 60s and 70s rather than history. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a conscious thing, although people do often obviously try to make models based on movies, but they’re consciously making it about the movie model. But I think also subconsciously, our idea, particularly of World War II and World War I, is based on the cultural understandings of World War II and World War I in the West from the 50s, 60s, 70s. And actually, if you look at how history looks at those periods now, it’s a little bit different from how we think about it.

Ivan

Totally agree, totally agree. And this evening I noticed that even going through exhibitions around the world. You see, people of certain age are more inclined to certain topics. Youngsters today are moving out. They are moving out. It’s strange. This is something strange, because for example, people coming from the 50s, 60s, even myself, from the 70s, we’re still inclined to World War II or Cold War subjects.

The generation of today, they like, they are still seeing things that, historical things, let’s say, unfortunately, war. There is a war going on, so we are all aware that we’re seeing multiple things, but it seems they are not inclined to build those models. They go into the fantasy realm, or else try to be more futuristic. Then again, then I see from my kids, if they’re inclined to a particular video games, they sometimes inclined themselves to see, I remember, I remember some years ago, it was our model exhibition in Malta and I saw this grandfather with a young guy, a kid maybe 12, 14 year old and he was looking at all the tanks and was really picking up each tank one by one. “This is a Panzer I, this is a Panzer II.” and going through “King Tiger.” I said, “How come?” And I went to speak to them, and I said, “You’re a model maker?”, “No, I play World of Tanks.”

So that’s another thing. So in a way, it’s quite complex to say why generations are inclined to particular subjects and not. And maybe, what sometimes I miss and…why historical stuff are not getting fancied by the younger generation.

That’s quite a question nowadays.

Chris

I mean, culturally, we were raised on, you know, comedies like ‘Allo, Allo’ and movies like ‘Battle of the Bulge’ and stuff like that. So, you know, with parents or grandparents as well that were involved in World War Two. So we grew up in a culture that was, and I’ve said this last episode, so apologies to anyone who finds me repeating myself, that we grew up kind of saturated in World War Two culturally. But they’ve grown up with Avengers and Star Wars and sci -fi, well we had Star Wars obviously, but you know sci -fi and fantasy. more so culturally just because that was the fashion in movies and TV.

But like you say, I was one of the people when ‘World of Tanks’ came out, I hated it because of the, you know, the fantasy things it did to tanks as you go up the levels and so on. But it has had an effect that kids, my son played World of Tanks, he plays War Thunder now, it has had an effect that kids have got into that stuff and they know what it is.

So, if anything, I think it’s had more of an influence on them than modelling certainly has, in terms of historical interest.

Ivan

It’s true, it’s true. I totally agree with that.

We are two nerds, maybe. That’s maybe the proper word. We like details, we like to be realistic as much as possible. We are sometimes… I think crazy about the proper FS colour, RAL colour and then these things and could be we are putting off the new generation. They are not that strict as we used to be in model making, so we need to allow their creativity to come in and accept what is there, what they want to say to us. I think we need to accept that. Okay well we can discuss that.

If you want to build a realistic model it needs to go into a particular direction. But then again, if it’s their will to do something like that, I’m not against it, honestly. I’m not against it. I used to be, honestly. I think we go through that, but I’m mature enough that today I accept people to come up with any kind of ideas, honestly, as long as it’s pure model making and they are showing their skills. I think we should allow more.

Chris

I used to be a rivet counter, as you know. I got right down to where the welds are placed around a nut on the idler of a Churchill and so on, at which mark of Churchill produced when and all that. I used to be really into that stuff and I still am. I still like to find those details because you find the details, you can paint the details, right? You know, it’s part of the fun. But at the same time, I come to think that we obsess too much about the details and we spend more time worrying about the exact size and position of the driver’s hatch on a Tiger I than we do about what a Tiger I did and what happened to it. There’s too much about the engineering and not enough about the history in a lot of ways.

Ivan

That’s true, that’s true. On these ideas, reenactment taught me a lot. One thing is, for example, uniforms. Even in our units, for example, you don’t find one uniform identical to the other. Even colour, we don’t go to war, we try to take care of them because they cost us a lot of money, so we are quite restricted, but you still notice even we ordered this batch this month and in a year’s time another batch even from the same tailor you get different colours for example. I think we’re sometimes too strict. We need to allow more, to be more creative and think out of the box.

Chris

Do you think modelling has much of an impact outside modelling circles? How likely are non -modellers to learn something from our models?

Ivan

This is quite a good question. I think it has impact. It always has impact. As I said earlier, models are a visual communication tool. So, people are looking at the models. There are different… identities of viewers, how they look at things. So even someone who is not a modeller, so they can pick ideas, they can pick detail, and you can even teach. I’m going to do an academic thing, so I went through my research at work.

Chris

I mean this is your thesis, right?

Ivan

It was my thesis, in a way. It was my thesis. It was about dioramas being a didactic tool and if it’s still relevant today, yes it is. And from my research I came up with quite a concept. There is an academic that views visitors that come into a museum into different identities, and no one person is the same. And even that same person can change his perspective, how he’s looking at things.

And there’s another thing, models, from what I managed to find from my research, models have one particular… thing that we overlook. Models speak to different ages, to different people. There’s no particular language barrier. There’s no age barrier. So yes, it is an educational tool. So, in a way, we have to be aware what we’re doing and what we are subjecting in our models.

Maybe someone who’s hearing this, some people, some modellers say, “What we’re up to? What? So we’re not enjoying models? Or else we have to be aware what other people are saying about our models?” I don’t think that’s the idea. I think it’s more what I’m saying with my model. We have to be aware what I’m saying with my model. And no model is the same. We can all build the same model, that’s a good exercise, I think. We can build the same model with the same scheme and none of them will be the same

Chris

That’s something I used to think about a lot at art college, because I always wanted to make art that communicated. And all art does anyway, whether you want it to or not, but I was quite interested in the idea of how well it communicated, that it was up to me to do it in such a way that the viewer understood what I was trying to say. And I think it’s the same with models, that if you want someone to understand, what you’re saying with your model, it’s up to you to build it in such a way that it’s understandable. Which doesn’t mean that you have to want someone to understand it. You can just, if you want to just build it for yourself and show it and have people look at it and go, “that’s a nice model or people that know, you know, all those tracks are the perfect tracks for that period on that date” and what have you, that’s fine. But if you do want to say something with models, it is your responsibility to think about how you say it.

Ivan

Totally agree, Chris. Totally agree with this. And maybe something that’s only for dioramas to be storytellers. I tend not to agree with that. I think even a single model can say a lot.

That’s something I learned from museum practice. Traditionally a museum used to be a collection of artifacts and just building up a collection. Nowadays, there’s a different concept how we look into artifacts. Each artifact tells a story. It has to tell a story. Each artifact has a story. So I think it’s the same thing about a model. So as I said, it can be a technical one. It can be, as I have in our national collection, for example, dockyard models. And then that or models that we have, for example 17th century models that were built for the nautical school.

So, still, it has a story to tell, even the detail they put into, or the effort the bundle maker went into. So I think even nowadays…I remember some years ago we used to speak even styles about models. We used to say that’s the Spanish school, this is the Italian school. This model I used to remember, Nordic, Belgian, and any kind of schools coming up. And yes, I feel it was a school of thought. It was a school of thought.

Today, it has become worldwide almost united. It happens even in contests. I’m a head judge and I might come up with this big issue that happened especially last year, for example. And there was quite an argument. But it’s true that we have quite an identity nowadays that all models almost look the same. We can’t blame that.

Chris

We’re in danger of straying into another episode I’ve got planned that basically, modelling has homogenized the style. Yeah. I remember the first time I went to Shizuoka a few years ago now, you could still see the Japanese style, the Masahiro Doi style, the sort of no modulation and like. airbrush dust and stuff like this, but a lot of precision, a lot of careful colour separation and everything. But now when I go, I’m not sure whether, I think it’s because Mig has been spending a lot of time in Japan as well in magazines and things, but all the models there look like the models here now. And that’s kind of sad in a way.

Ivan

It’s true, it’s true. You get inspired, I guess. I guess you get, it’s easy. This is like traditional art as well. When new ideas come up, everyone starts following them. And honestly, now with social media and the internet, the world became quite a small pond in a way.

Chris

that they all look the same, you know?

Ivan

Even if a new style comes up it starts flowing and followers going through and then people start copying, this is copying in a way and then following up and that’s why many things become very very very united in a way.

For example, SMC is an international show nowadays, but sometimes you watch a selection and say you can’t spot this is a Japanese modeller or this is a Nordic modeller. And it is, it is. It is a good thing, in a way. I’m not against it, but it’s a way how it evolved. And it is evolving very, very, very fast.

Chris

Well, historically, put us back on subject. Historically, it always happened anyway. I mean, a big thing here in the UK in the 18th century was ‘Japonisme’ with the goods being bought from the newly reopened Japan where the ports have been forced open, were coming over wrapped in old Ukiyo-e sheets and things. Artists would unwrap them like Van Gogh and stuff and look at them and go, “wow, that’s amazing. I want to paint like that.” So, they do it.

But now with the internet, instead of that taking a decade to happen, it takes a week that something just goes whoop around the world as fast as you can see it.

Ivan

I used to remember you used to wait for a magazine or some big exhibition and someone come up with a new idea and then you spend the whole year trying to mimic what this guy tried to do or try to understand that so it changed it changed and I feel it’s a good thing in a way so it’s part of thing what I wish to maybe people push in is a little bit more of research and keep things that are… How can I say? Not play around with history because sometimes we need to keep in line what it should have been, especially model -wise. But then allow that bit of…art coming in. For example, I love, even when I go abroad, to go to see military art. I love it. I love it myself. I get a lot of inspiration out of that. And I don’t only see, for example, Neville and I follow a lot, for example, modern artists that keep realistic doing this kind. Keith Rocco, Don Troiani.

Maybe these two gentlemen are one of the guides, I think. And still, they are very, they have artistic license, but they are quite in line with historical subjects. For example, uniforms are quite, even the posture of the persons and the elements they go into. So, I think we need to look into these ideas.

And don’t forget that that can be realistic and still creative as well.

Chris

Do you think modelling is inherently linked to history? Do you think modelling and history are something that has to be kept together or do you think history is an optional part of modelling?

Ivan

I leave it the choice of the modeller, honestly. Look at how many Tiger Tanks there are. How many brands come up with Tiger Tanks for example. So I think there is a historical fact that we still…come up with that there’s still a connection. There’s still a connection. But on the other hand, it’s up to the modeller in a way. And I think that is his freedom where he needs to go to.

More than anything else.

And it depends what he’s inclined to, in a way. And what’s his perspective. Or else what’s the line here? There is always this argument how realistic is a model and how much I want to be so historically accurate.

Chris

Well, that brings me on to my next question, actually. You’re the head ordinance judge at Scale Model Challenge and you’ve been judging yourself there with Dioramas and Armour for a long time. We’ve judged together in the past there. Do you think historical accuracy is a valid criteria in judging scale models?

Ivan

It is. I cannot say it is not. It is. But…It’s a hard question. So I cannot penalize. You know how I think about model making. When I do my instructions to the judges, I always keep up with this motto: “Look at the good things of a model, rather than seeing the negative.” There is no perfect model. There’s no real, pure, historically accurate model. So, first look what the modeller wanted to convey, I think that’s the first thing I have to see. Obviously if there is something that is so inaccurate in history, that’s up to the judges to consult between them and see if this is a problem.

And I think that’s what makes, for example, the colour of the medal. That can benefit what was the colour of the medal in a way. But it depends. What is the story and what he wanted to say with this model. Actually, it can be an inaccuracy, who is the most accurate model maker? I don’t see anyone can be.

So, mind you, I always leave the judges free in these decisions. But, and there is an element in the criteria that historical accuracy is one of the things. But when in doubt of something, and this is something I learned from Shep Paine: Leave it to the benefit of the model maker. When in doubt and if it’s not so clear that this is an inaccuracy, why should you penalize for something that is very very minute? Not something that changed our history with this concept.

something I want to say as well. Being a head judge.

And thanks to Robert and Martin, we like to team up the best model makers that we can work with. And I think that’s something people need to understand when going into competitions. I know it’s another hot topic, and always dealt with and there’s always arguments about that. But the way we always try to work it out is to team up three different minds in each section. We always select master modellers, that’s something we like to push. And you try to combine different abilities, different ideas. So, from that concept, I think so far it always worked fine.

I think it was one of, I can’t boast about it, our successes in a way.

Chris

I think last year there was a really big controversy over the judging and I don’t want to get into that. I’m just bringing it up because that’s more or less the only time I can remember a big fuss like that over the judging at SMC, certainly in ordinance anyway. And I think that says a lot about the judging and about the team and about your’s and Martin’s organization because other competitions have this kind of a furore every year. And the fact it was so unusual at SMC is a really good sign.

Ivan

It happens, it happens because as we said there are different interpretations and we can come up with the story, it’s been on the net as well, so it came up with this idea because there was like a homogeneity of a certain style all over the AFV section which in fact, I cannot say it wasn’t. It’s true. It’s true. When you go through, you know, how you look at all the master section, especially it was because that was it, the master section. It was true that that was quite a very similar concept of style.

But when you start looking one by one, then you notice differences. Then you notice that they could be minute. These minor things. It is different than, let’s say, 20 years ago. 15 years ago. Yes, it was true. You had that what we used to call “the wow factor”. That was the particular model that come up with a boom, and it used to be standing out from the others. That’s true. But nowadays it changed. It changed. And I think it’s for the good because so many modellers today have reached the utmost of their skill. That every benchmark is very, very, very hard to see something that stands out from the other.

On the other hand, and here maybe I can pinpoint something. On the other hand, on the dioramas, I can point out a different concept. On the dioramas, we’re seeing a little bit of a different transition going through. On the dioramas, we’re seeing a lot of the same, a lack of stories.

And I feel that some that enter into that section have this philosophy. I think they think it’s I’m putting the model and surround it with a… Let’s say I put it more simply. I like this tank and I surround it with an ambience.

Chris

Well, we I was joking about this with a friend of mine. And basically, the dioramas seems to have solidified around “tank, building, figures”, where you have a building in the background, a tank in front of it and a couple of figures on the ground. And that’s, you know.

Ivan

Yes. Mind you, it might be and because there are certain rules in other competitions that dictate this. So I hate, I hate this, I hate this idea.

Chris

It’s very formulaic. Yeah.

Chris

I think actually it’s because of the popularity of a few modellers. And I don’t want to say who, because they might feel like I’m accusing them and I’m not. It’s just they’ve done it and they’ve done it very well. And others have said, I’ve had to do that as well. But they haven’t necessarily picked up on everything that was in the original, if you see what I mean. I am going to say one, actually. I’m going to say Roger Hurkmans, but there’s always something more going on in his, there’s all the figures, the way they’re interrelating with each other is the story. But people aren’t necessarily, they aren’t necessarily picking that up. They’re seeing the figures, the vehicle, the building, and they’re copying that, but they’re not copying everything. They’re missing the story.

Ivan

Exactly, that there is a body language, there is a connection.

Most probably, and this is another topic I think, a lot that go into dioramas, think that buying a stock figure is enough. But they don’t realize figures sometimes are a tool that tell a story. So you need to convert figures to tell your story. You need to restyle a little bit. Small conversions, they don’t really need to be… to create a good language between the connections. So just a tank officer inside a cupola standing there staring. But then if you put the binoculars in his eyes, it’s different. I think it’s already telling something, and this is quite a simple thing.

And I think this is what people going into the dioromas they’re not seeing. And they go into the skills of doing the best trees, best houses, best tanks, best groundwork. But there’s no connection. There’s no connection.

Chris

I think a good example from last year’s SMC, which also gets us back to stories, stories to history, was Peter Usher’s, it might have been from the year before actually, “Divine Intervention”. And he had a Sherman next to a building, but the Sherman in the building weren’t the story. The story was to the tank commander and the nun who climbed up the tank to point out Germans to him. And it was just the look between them or him looking down her finger to where she was pointing. That’s where the story was.

And also that comes from history. It comes from a story he found that may be apocryphal or something from a historical source. And by bringing that into his diorama, that’s how he created the story. So history can really help people find the story as well.

Ivan

That’s true. So that diorama was quite a learning curve in a way because it revealed something. Let’s go into the basic things. So it had the usual pointing figure. Those that ring the bell, we used to call them.

Chris

Yeah, but not the usual because she wasn’t German, haha.

Ivan

He came up with the concept that we have seen it. Not something new, as is the usual, pointing commander. So, but what? He was wise enough, Peter was quite wise. He came up with this story. And the first thing, once you see it, you say, “well, what’s the nun doing there?” So you go into in depth and it was quite a revelation, more than it was a direct storyline. You need it.

Someone needs a little bit of to explain you the real story but it makes you intrigued why?What’s the story behind it the scene? Let’s go into the historical fact; it is quite a fantasy thing. the story it is a historical subject, but it has a lot of fantasy in it. If we explain it a little bit better, this diorama, it was like a ghost. So, the storyline was narrated by this commander, they saw this nun and told them where the Germans are and where the artillery are. And originally it seems it was like a ghost. So it was real or not.

Chris

I think afterwards someone said “there’s no nunnery anywhere near here” or “there’s no nun, that nun doesn’t exist” or something, wasn’t it? So, yeah.

Ivan

Exactly. So, there was something behind it. In a way, it is thinking out of the box and it’s quite a fantastic subject in a way, but still it’s historical. So why not? Why not? People think about such ideas and does it need to be a real source in a way, but connect with the historical subject.

It’s like a historical movie. So. we see a lot of movies, even the recent Napoleon.

Chris

That’s got nothing to do with history. That’s the only film I’ve watched and afterwards felt like I knew less about the subject than I did before.

Ivan

I was a crew because I work in the movies as well. So, I knew what was coming up before everyone. But still, it’s the director’s vision in a way. So, all right. So, in a way, model making can be something similar, Chris. Why not? Why not in a way?

Chris

Well, I think also there’s an idea among model makers that history is an immutable fact. That if they’ve read a history, that’s the truth of it. And if you deviate from that, it’s not truthful. But history is kind of our best interpretation of things that happened in the past. It’s not actually 100 % accurate.

Ivan

That’s true. That’s true. When you consult sources, as I said before, even history books, many, many historians are biased. So that’s human nature. We cannot blame that. And even sources, original sources, and sometimes you have really to see in between the lines what’s in it. Even pictures. Sometimes we study original photos is it true they are accurate or not? Were they staged? There was a reason, if they were staged, so it is a hard topic for me, those that say “I try to be as realistic as possible”, I think.

It’s a tough bone to bite in a way. You cannot really be that realistic as much as possible. On the other way, being creative. I remember Chris, for example, I was amazed about your Diorama last year. I loved it, I loved it. I really loved it.

Chris

Thank you.

Ivan

You build up all those wrecks up to them, and convey all the figures coming up and then the last figure with the Ukrainian soldier with the white dove in his hand. So that was a very good message for example. Very good message. Maybe some see it as propaganda or political inclined. I don’t see it like that. It was really a message of peace in a way.

Chris

Well, politics in modelling is another subject that’s a favourite of mine. It was a political model, but I also think that people that say there is no politics in modelling, or there shouldn’t be politics in modelling are naive. I think that any creative endeavour is political in the same way that everything we do is political.

Ivan

There is politics in modelling, for sure there is politics. Not just political from historical point of view, I think even politics about styles and about fashions and about what I like and what I despise in a way.

Chris

Yeah, yeah. The ‘great weathering debate’ is the most political thing, ever.

Ivan

Exactly, let’s not go into that subject. But it is a factor to consider. And it is still part of our remit, in a way. It’s the modern world Everyone has his own way

Chris

Yeah, very much so.

Chris

All right. Is there anything I should have asked you that I haven’t?

Ivan

Hmm. Hmm. That’s a hard question.

Chris

Well, I’ve got an even harder one for you if you like. I’m gonna ask this to everyone. I asked it to John Rosengrant at the end of the last episode. I’m gonna be asking everyone from now on:

Why do you think we make models? What is it about the hobby that keeps us wanting to make these little miniature things?

Ivan

Oh, boy.

If I speak for myself. I think in part it’s a passion I think we are in a way, in control, I feel. You’re in control of what you’re doing so you’re building something that is in the back of your mind or it’s something you enjoy, or you something you fancy, or something you want to say or do.

So, you’re really in control what you’re doing there. And there’s another thing, it’s something minute, small. I’ve been involved into museum dioramas, that are 1:1 scale. Or into film props as well, that are 1:1 scale. I don’t feel the same thing.

Chris

There’s that famous Peter Jackson’s Weta studio work for the museum in New Zealand as well. They were sort of what? 3:1 scale? It was huge, wasn’t it?

Ivan

They made something, the Gallipoli experience, they made something gigantic in front instead of minute. But that’s a really good concept. I was coming to that. It’s the scale factor. Scale is something very important. It’s something very important because when it’s small, I think it depends. It depends on the size. If you’re going too minute, too small,

It’s a little bit destructive. So, you have, let’s say, a battlefield in 1/1000… You’re not seeing the people inside it, but you’re seeing the overall picture. But when you’re building up the scale and especially because, in fact I studied it as well, what Peter Jackson did, this thing about the Weta-made gigantic. They wanted to evoke the story. So, they made it something more impressive. You’re seeing something gigantic and like you want to explore more. You’re like… it’s a different concept. You’re not into control of things. You’re minute to the story.

I think when we’re building up, let’s say I enjoy 1/35th, 1/32 scale. That’s my scale I prefer. I think. I feel I have control, I’m seeing them in my hands. I’m building them and but still I’m seeing their facial expression and I’m like Gulliver in Lilliput, in a way. But when you’re seeing something bigger, I experienced myself going into a film studio. Lately in Malta they were shooting Gladiator.

And when I entered the film set and seeing, for example, I felt I’m in Rome. I felt the extras running around me like I’m the odd person out instead of the people and the actors dressed up.

I felt really I’m ino Rome. So I went into the subject and I think that’s something I see in modelling, especially when I’m building things. Even… Honestly, I think building especially things sometimes, it’s a bit of a horrific experience going into those tracks and those minute things building up. Some enjoy it, I don’t. Honestly, I don’t. I want to get into the finish. But still, you’re building up that experience. I think it is an experience. It is an experience. And it is feeling part of history. And we go back to living history in a way. In your hands.

Chris

I think, with danger of straying off philosophy into psychology, but I think control is a big part of it. I think particularly if we have lives where we’re working for other people and we’re constantly in demand from other people, to have something you’re completely in control of is very relaxing. It takes away the sort of anxieties of it. But at the same time, when it’s a creative thing like that, you have total control because you’re not just telling the story how you want, you’re creating the story and everything. So that’s very enjoyable to have something that starts with nothing, maybe a kit, and ends in something you totally created. I think that’s very satisfying.

Ivan

That’s true. I totally agree with it.

Chris

I think with the Peter Jackson Gallipoli thing, I wonder whether that’s part historiography as well, because the way when the centenary came around and the way Peter Jackson sort of reacted with that with his World War I films and so on, there’s a kind of a tendency in our societies to memorialize and monumentalize World War I.

And I wonder whether that’s part of it, that it’s great big monumental scale. It’s like a worship or a homage of that history.

Ivan

So true.

It was so true because you can go into… there’s a good YouTube channel and it does explain really what they went into the story. The idea is because New Zealand, although they entered World War I, they still have… so they went out of their way, in a way. They went to Western Front and other places or Gallipoli, which is quite a strange, exotic place for them. And what is more monumental for them is because it seems that everyone inside New Zealand has a connection with World War I. They have someone that’s… There is some kind of connection. So in a way, there was a feeling into that exhibition.

A strange factor was, people aren’t really aware about this. They made a war experience inside an art museum. That was in Topaka. It’s an art museum. Originally.

Chris

That’s very important as well, the setting, the venue.

Ivan

So, if you [look at] how they planned out the story, these gigantic statues they created, they went into miniatures videos and anything so they made a whole concept of how practically your mind plays when seeing these things and they selected these few artifacts or stories, and then recreated their idea. But they ended up with quite a nice thing to, like a connection. They ended up with this figure of an ANZAC in the Western Front, all drenched with mud, and they asked the visitors to take a poppy and write something and throw this poppy, a paper poppy, and they made a case study from what they came up with and strangely enough a lot of from the younger generation wrote what they experienced when they saw this exhibition.

So, this is something we need to be aware when we do models in a way. And other people are experiencing something, what we are showing. Not just it could be artistic, it could be evocative, it could be revealing something. And so we need to look into this philosophy thing behind what we’re doing.

Chris

I think you don’t have to think about what you model, but it can really enrich your modelling if you do think about it.

Ivan

That’s true

Chris

I do think a lot about why we do it. and it’s a strange thing.

Ivan

Talking to my club mates in IPMS Malta. By the way, I’m IPMS, so maybe… I’m not that kind of man. I’m very, very more open -minded, unlike the traditional strict or “lifting things”. That’s the other side.

Chris

Ha ha.

Ivan

I see different concepts how people, how members in my club look at models. There are those that are stress relief. They are into stressful jobs or want to escape problems, life problems. So yes, modelling can be quite a good tool.

You relieve anxiety, even myself. I have a problem with anxiety myself. I cannot. And I find model making that helps me a lot. As long as it comes good

Chris

Some kits increase your anxiety.

Ivan

I saw tanks flying in my studio so I cannot blame that. So yes, there are many. So it is quite a theoretical thing what is model making for everyone. And I feel it changes as well. There’s no one strict way.

Might be this week I’m feeling I need to destress. In fact, recently I’ve did it myself. I was building dinosaurs. Believe it or not, I was building dinosaurs. Just I want to do a habitat diorama. I felt I am enjoying doing this instead of the usual strict subjects or something like that. So I think it’s up to a personal choice. So, you change, you change. This is an evolution.

Chris

And it’s a great hobby for that. You can get so many different things out of it.

Ivan

Yes.

Chris

Okay, I think we’re pretty much at the end.

Before we go though, we had some really sad news yesterday and I wondered if you wanted to say a few words about it.

Ivan

Unfortunately, yes, quite a tough thing. Yesterday, one of our founder members in our club passed away, Luis Carabott.

He was not just a master modeller for us, he was quite an all -rounder. But apart from that, speaking for myself and even for my brothers in arms in the club, he was not just a friend, he was our mentor, our father, our kid’s grandfather. So he was quite one of a kind.

We lost a treasure in a way, one of our pillars in our club. But unfortunately, that’s life. What’s good about it, he really left a legacy. And I think even his model making and some of our models are in our national collection in the VHU museum so people can still enjoy his work and remember him.

And for sure, for sure he will be part of the Maltese society of modelmakers.

Chris

I only knew Lou a little, but he seemed to be someone who always really understood the joy of model making and was really good at spreading that to other people.

Ivan

That’s true. He really enjoyed model making in a way. He started, for example, with aircraft, then passing to figures, then passing to building ship dioramas, exclusive ship dioramas. And lately into his 70s, he was doing cars. For example, recently he just had built the Airfix Bentley, a horrible model for this age, but he managed to, just really reconstruct it and he used to really, he was passionate, passionate, very passionate about model making. And one thing, he was a real master, a very real master, but he passed on his skills even to a younger generation, even to novice. That’s something, something to be really honoured about him and something, we should, all of us, learn from. I think something will lead to pass on.

Chris

I really do want people to have a look at Lou’s beautiful dioramas and models. Thank you.

Ivan

Thank you. A tribute to our dear Lou. We call him Nanou, grandpa.

Thats all for this blog and discussion. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Don’t forget, you can listen to this one on all good podcast apps, just look for “The Model Philosopher”

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INTRODUCTION:
Like many of us, John Rosengrant started modelling as a young child, in his case; historical and classic  monster models. After studying at art college, he moved to Los Angeles to break into the movie business, and after a period of hard work and hustle, he managed to get into the famous Stan Winston Studios where he learned his trade in character design and effects, working on movies like the Terminator series, Aliens, Predator, the Jurassic Park series, Ironman, and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

He went on to co-found his own effects studio; Legacy Effects where he continued to work on some of the most famous movies of the late 20^th and early 21^st century, including Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hunger Games, Avengers movies, Iron Man series, Pacific Rim, and a personal favourite of my own, Guillermo del Toro’s the Shape of Water.

Lately, he created, and operated the puppet of Grogu in the Mandalorian, a character that was intended to be CGI until he convinced Jon Favreau to try a puppet, and it became the character we know and love today.

Throughout his film career, you could say that what John has always delivered, is characters. Creatures and characters that have suspended disbelief to connect with viewers on an emotional or visceral level, to serve the story of the films he worked on.

alongside 40 years of work in the film industry, he has always continued to work on scale modelling, as a personal pursuit and for companies like S&T Products, and Warriors Scale Models, with Chris Mrosko.

As with his film work, John has always imbued his modelling with character, and pathos. His superb grasp of anatomy, pose, and expression has allowed him to produce some truly memorable and iconic pieces, like ‘Leave No Man Behind’, ‘The True Face of War’, ‘Valley Forge’ and his tired and shell shocked Pacific Marine.

In all his work, there is a story, a point, communicated from author to reader, and I was very happy indeed when he agreed to this interview.

Chris

Thank you, John Rosengrant for joining me on The Model Philosopher.

John Rosengrant

It’s my pleasure, honestly.

Chris

Can you tell me how you got into making models? What was it about making them that first appealed to you?

John Rosengrant

I started when I was five years old and my model making journey probably ran in tandem with my sci -fi, special effects makeup, and animatronics. I was interested in all those things at once. But the first model kit, my dad, I’m sure he stayed up all night long building this thing. He hated things like models and art and all that. But he did a King Kong, the old Aurora kit for me, because I really wanted that. And the first thing I noticed is it’s missing some of the palm trees. And he’s looking at me… Now, in hindsight, I can look back and go, “Santa Claus wasn’t happy doing this!” So anyway, that was my first real interest in models. But then I really got into them. At seven, eight years old when I think my dad did a few with me but then you could just tell he didn’t have the patience or didn’t want to do them so I started building them and I did a lot of airplanes, I did ships, did a B -17, P -51, you know all the typical stuff but then a little later I got real serious with it.

When I was probably 12, 13 years old, I started getting into reading about history and I got into 1/72nd scale aircraft from World War I. And I read this book called ‘The Canvas Falcons’ and I was just fascinated with World War I aircraft. So, I was always going to the hobby shop, and then I think around 1973, I saw the Tamiya kit of the Panzer II F with the Afrika Korps guys, you know, running alongside.

Chris

I can picture the box art now.

John Rosengrant

Great box art, great box art. And at that time, the figures seemed fantastic to me, but you look back on them now, they’re little blobs. But at the time, you’re young and you have this imagination, and you start projecting some of that upon them and they were more miraculous than they actually were.

And then not too long after that, I discovered Shep Paine and I realized that he was sculpting and converting figures and I bought a magazine that had that the two Hanomags in there, the 251s. And I was just, I couldn’t get enough of that. That was just incredible to me. And I ended up buying that Shep Paine inspiration piece.

Then I started buying all those Monogram kits just to get his tip sheets out of them. Terrible kits. And the scale felt wrong to me because I was so entrenched by that point, in 1/35th, it’s like 1/32nd, but I didn’t care. I wanted the tip sheet in each and every one of them. And I just, couldn’t get enough of what he was doing.

I was just really fascinated with being able to create my own figures. I’m, you know, self -taught, and there’s a lot of trial and error, and green stuff, putty, and, you know, stuff that didn’t really work that well. But that’s how you learn. You really do. It is just dive in, make mistakes, and just know the next one will be better, and you realize, well, there’s got to be a better way of doing this. And then you’ll read in a magazine, or somebody will have a little blurb of “I used an epoxy putty” and, you know, then you start going down that path and you start figuring it out. You know, I bought some Milliput silver yellow it’s just… how does anyone work with this? But Roger Saunders sure found a way to do it.

Chris

I still feel that way about Milliput!

John

You know, it’s just what you get used to. I use mostly all Magic Sculpt now. I do some things in clay and I’ll mould them. But mostly I even find myself doing more and more just in Magic Sculpt because I’ve learned you have to go back and carve and tune it up. But I’m getting sidetracked here, getting into technique. But, yeah, Shep Paine.

Big influence, big influence on me.

Chris

What is it you enjoy about sculpting?

John Rosengrant

You know, I think it’s creating characters. And now that I’m doing it more and more since I’ve been retired, I feel like, and I’m not saying this from a braggadocious standpoint, but I feel like I’m getting better at it. Because, you know, the more that you can do it, it’s just, it’s becoming more fun even. I’ve always had fun with it, but it’s even more fun now. And I think now I don’t have to worry about a job or deadlines and all these other things. So now I can just take this stuff on and do it. But I enjoy creating characters. And for me, I still like building vehicles and whatnot, but I like populating them with soldiers and people. I think that’s what tells the story, not just some big hunk of steel, but it’s the people that had to endure these things. like telling a story with them, creating a character.

Chris

There is a lot of emotion in your sculpted work. I’m thinking particularly of the soldier with the mask (‘the True Face of War’). Some of the other stuff as well. Is that something you try to put through, more sort of character and emotion into them?

John Rosengrant

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I really look at photos and I study them, because I wasn’t there, I didn’t do it, but I try to think about what that would be like. You know, you’re 19, 20 years old and you’ve been whisked off with all these patriotic ideas and then you get in the middle of it all and find out. This is really…horrible. I did a portrait for a collector of his dad who was in the Hurtgen forest and he sent me a bunch of pictures and what I noticed was you know a bright -eyed young man before he went [to Europe] you know, when he was in the army initially; and then, looking at photos of him after he had come back from the war, he had aged 10 years. So for me when I was capturing his portrait, because I had a lot of pictures of him as a young man, but I also used some of the things after the war because…

I think it takes a toll, it takes a toll on you. Not sleeping, not eating.

Chris

I imagine that the family member as well, would know the man after the war better than the man before the war as well.

John Rosengrant

True, true. Yeah, because he looked so young beforehand and when he came out, it’s probably all of 22, maybe 23 at the most. But he looked 35. I mean, he just… And there’s something about those young men of long ago. I think they were a more serious generation and they all looked older to me, and they still do when I look at them in photos. They don’t seem like they’re 19.

There was a friend of my dad who was at Omaha Beach on the 29th and you know talking to him about it it’s just like “I don’t know why I lived I don’t know why I didn’t do anything any different”. And I think a lot of them kind of had that feeling. when they came back it’s just like well why me? I’m grateful but at the same time they probably lost so many friends and people you were close to. So anyway, I try to incorporate that into the figures: all of the thought process that might be going on.

Chris

Of course, creating characters and what have you, has been your trade for 40 years.

John Rosengrant

It has, yeah. I had the fortune of working with teams of great artists, great people, and we had the opportunity to create some really iconic characters for film. So I think that must be ingrained in me. But also when I was a young man in high school, I was really fascinated with Howard Pyle,  N.C. Wyeth and those American illustrators because they were being asked to tell a story, to illustrate a book and so with a painted image, they sometimes outdid the book with their artwork and it became much more intriguing to look at their artwork.

That’s how they saw it. And the film business is a lot like that. You know, you’re creating a story, but you’re also projecting an image and you’re creating it.

Chris

There’s an extra layer added, I guess, with the interpretation of what you’re given to do. The way you sort of translate what the director or the writers want, into what people see.

John Rosengrant

It is and there’s a bit of performer in all of us and then of course once we made and created and built this stuff, we took it to set and performed it as puppeteers, but You do put yourself into the character and I do the same thing with the miniatures It’s important to sort of project into the character and to think of it not as a single dimension but a little deeper than that, because I think there is some emotion that does come through when you are in a performance or when you think about more than just it’s outside appearance and rendering what’s going on inside.

It really doesn’t think it’s a villain. You know, I’m sure Hitler didn’t think he was a villain.

Chris

They say everyone’s the hero of their own story.

John Rosengrant

I think they are, they probably are, but that’s ego talking.

Chris

Haha, somewhat solipsistic, yeah. But I think if anything, that’s something that’s possibly missing a bit in models. People focus so much on the technology and the machine, that sort of depth of emotion. Even if you don’t make something which is very emotional in appearance or very sort of, you know, full of character, if you’re thinking about the character and you’re, creating that character as you do it, it’s going to come through in pose or in face or in something.

John Rosengrant

It will. It will.

Chris

And do you think that’s something we could do with more of in modellers’ work?

John Rosengrant

Well, I think that helps it transcend from just a model into some form of art. I mean, art is something that’s really not necessary. We do it to, because I don’t know, we’re trying to tell a story or you want it to be beautiful or not really in the case for what we do, but we’re trying to create interest and some…reason to really look at it and think about it. I think the best compliment I got was a couple of times when I had a Vietnam veteran and a World War II veteran who saw my work at a show come up to me, wanted to find me and say that I really captured the look of what they had gone through. And to me, that was the ultimate compliment because that’s what I’m trying to do. Just to hear that back from them. And, you know, [they said it] “brings back smells and things I hadn’t thought of in decades”. It’s like, okay, well, then I’m trying to connect on some other level.

Chris

Well, that’s what art does, doesn’t it? It connects the artist and the viewer. And if there’s not enough there, then they can’t connect.

John Rosengrant

It does. It does. Yeah, if that’s missing, if you don’t take that double take and go back and look at it, it’s because it didn’t move you.

Chris

I’ve heard you say that you put an equal level of effort and commitment into every film you worked on, every project you worked on. How do you find a way in when maybe the script or the project isn’t as engaging or has much meat on it as you might hope?

John Rosengrant

Well, I guess that’s the fanciful young boyish idea you fall in love with it and you think “somehow this is going to rise above what I’ve just read” is not good, but at the end of the day, your work, or your team’s work, is being looked at, and nobody is looking at it and putting the caveat on it “well this movie stunk” They look at it and [ask] did they do a good job? And, at the end of the day, that’s all I could come up with was that we need to make this great and if everybody on the project comes in at that a level, or A -plus level, then maybe it will raise the whole thing up, but I don’t think I’ve put that much thought into it. I think it was just like “no, we’re gonna make this great. This is this is what they’ve hired us to do is to bring this thing to life”.

Chris

Is it a work-ethic thing then that if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it very well?

John Rosengrant

Probably, you know, it’s a work ethic thing Yeah for sure. There’s that, but it’s also just the want to just do it well.

Chris

Is it the same with commissions? Because I mean, in that case, it’s not so much the team, that you have to support, but if you’re going to spend your time doing something.

John Rosengrant

With my model commissions, whether they be for a collector or if it’s for a manufacturer, I won’t do anything unless I’m interested in it. And that started way back when I started doing this stuff as a second job for, purely for fun.

And it’s like in the film business, it’s collaborative, but at the same time, you’re being art directed in some way by a director or producer, God knows, you know, an accountant or a lawyer, you know, and somebody’s got an opinion and they thrust it upon you. So when I was doing my model work, like you say, commissions, the first rule of thumb, if I’m not interested in winged Polish Hussar from 1918, whatever, I’m not gonna do it. I don’t have any interest. And I prefer it if they say I would like a Revolutionary War, American Revolutionary War figure, or I want a World War II British figure, and leave it up to me. Because I’m very upfront, I tell them that. I’m not going to be micromanaged.

It happened once where the guy wanted a photograph and I felt like the photograph, I don’t know, the guy was firing or something. You’re not connected to the figure. And I said, “I will do the time period and do something similar to that. But I feel like he’s got to be engaged. You got to be engaged. You got to see him. And if he’s covering his face up with a rifle, I am not interested in that.” And so, we proceeded. And, if you don’t want it at the end of the day, it’s fine, somebody else probably will or I’ll just keep it. I don’t care, It ended up, you know, he didn’t care for it because it wasn’t that photo at the end and then I ended up selling it to somebody else and it became a successful figure but I it’s just different philosophies and that’s why I don’t Want to get into that with somebody.

If I’m doing this for fun, I just want to have fun and live or die by my own sword. If I make a bad choice, that’s on me and it’s not somebody else. I did that for years with the movie business. It’s like, there would be times where you kind of go, “what are your art credentials? Cause your ideas suck.”

Chris

Yeah. But that’s a fully commercial transaction, isn’t it? I mean, you’re doing the job, they pay you to do the job.

John Rosengrant

It is and they don’t call it show play or show art. They call it show business so You better understand that too And I would have that issue with my artists that worked for me through the years, you know Well, they didn’t pick mine and all it’s like who’s better Monet or Rembrandt? They’re all different and this producers taste happened to lead into this. And it doesn’t mean you’re not a good artist. Our artists seem to have very fragile egos and shouldn’t have any ego, but you know, as humans we do. And, but there’d be times when you’d almost have to reassure them that it’s, it’s, this is not an attack on you personally as an artist. It’s just, they made another choice. And this is the direction, this is what appeals to them. They like apples, not oranges. So don’t take it personally. I had to learn that lesson myself. That’s why I can give that advice out. Because I remember as a young man starting out in this, you know, you pour your heart and soul into these concept drawings or whatever, and then the guy next to you, his would get picked and yours wouldn’t.

just had to come to grips with it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not good it’s just it’s not what they wanted. And that was it.

Chris

And they might be wrong, but it’s their money. So.

John Rosengrant

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I would hear that all the time. “Well, this is a much better design.” “Yeah, I agree with you. It probably is. But guess what? They’re paying for it. And this is what they want.” And there’s a whole host of reasons why they might have gone with that. It’s not offensive. It’s not this. It’s not this. It’s not blue enough. It’s not green enough. Who knows? You know, so I gave up worrying about that.

Chris

Yeah, I suppose everyone that lasts in the industry gets used to that, like you did.

John Rosengrant

I think you sort of have to. You have to sort of realize that it is a business. First come, first serve with the money and give them what they want. And if you’re lucky enough to along the way be able to be creative, which I have to say a lot of times we were, that’s why they did come to us,  they wanted our creativity. And then, you know, on the flip side, you work with a director like James Cameron that has a lot of great ideas. He could do it all himself if he had to anyway, then it becomes very collaborative and it’s enjoyable because you’ve got someone that’s challenging you in a great way. Each experience is totally different. I mean, I had a young director wondering what shots in Aliens were CG. And it’s like, none. It was all old school.

Thank you for the backhanded compliment. But no, none of them were. But it’s just a generational thing too. Everyone is, you know, I’m going to be 66 in June. Been around a while, you know, and working with people half your age, you realize they just haven’t had the same experiences or project their own experiences on, of course they have CG.

Chris

The pendulum seems to have swung back the other way and it’s more practical effects again. Is that something you saw before you retired?

John Rosengrant

Yeah, it does. From my perspective I think they’re both really necessary because there’s things you simply can’t do with Practical effects, that you can achieve. I think was pretty effective in the Mandalorian with the little character, “Baby Yoda” to the world, Grogu. But it was by having it there and performing, you gave the other actor something to react to. And acting is nothing but reacting. You react to somebody’s way, they say something or the way they look at you or don’t look at you. So it gives you something to as an actor to play off of.

So I think in a lot of ways, if you can get what you can in camera with something, great. And then you know you’re going to embellish it. With the Mandalorian, Grogu, if it wasn’t for ILM removing all the rods and cables and things, you’d see the game.

But now that stuff has become so second nature, that it actually makes the puppeteering a little easier to do than back in the day of, say, Aliens where you had to hide everything because you don’t see it. Or if it was a clever filmmaker like James Cameron, he’s lighting it and smokes up the set and you paint it out. He’s always been very aware of what he has to work with. And with The Mandalorian, I was very upfront with Jon Favreau. “This is its pluses, This is its weaknesses. This is how I shot it. You can, and I’ll show you with all the rods and I’ll show you without them.” And I’d rather them see what the toolkit is and let them decide how they want to use it than to surprise, you know, you show up on set and it’s like, “what the the heck is that? You know, it’s like you didn’t tell me it was gonna have a cable bundle hanging out of it and rods and whatnot.” So I’d just rather everyone know going in, so there’s no surprises. It’s like, “okay, that’s what it looks like. Yeah. All right. Great. So we’ll shoot it like this.”

But then there’s always somebody wants to push the envelope, I’m game for that. It’s like, “can you do this?”, “I don’t know. Let’s see.” Give it a try. And worst thing you can do is fail. So there was no expectation anyway.

Chris

It sounds like you like a challenge, but given you’ve done so much, do you still find much that challenges you in sculpting or modelling now, after you’ve retired?

John Rosengrant

I think for in my sculpting and modelling now, I just want to make it more realistic. I’m doing some LRDG guys right now, 1/35 so they’re tiny. But you know, in looking at all the photographs and you know, I got one guy just holding a cup of tea, just leaning against the vehicle. But if you do it right, that’s much more captivating than some guy running with his weapon, screaming and yelling and all of that. Because, say 90% of the time, that’s what they were doing. They were probably sitting there.

Chris

Well, they say war is 90% boredom, 10% terror.

John Rosengrant

Totally, totally. I believe that. For the most part, I seem to prefer to show the boredom and the strain of, “when’s it gonna happen?” You know, I felt it in one sense in the movie business on set. You’d be tired, you’d be there for hours and just not knowing exactly when you’re going to go on and when you’ve got to perform and do your thing. So there’s a lot of sitting around and waiting and then, all right, hurry up, go, go. And I can imagine, except for no one’s shooting at me, trying to kill me, there’s a similarity there.

There’s the physical exhaustion of going to the location and schlepping all the gear and doing all of that. And there’s preparing, getting ready, and then there’s, “Hurry up and wait”. You know, a lot of that. Yeah. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.

Chris

And of course, when you are called to do it, you have to give your A game, no matter how tired you are or how long you’ve been waiting, you have to.

John Rosengrant

Exactly. Yeah, and the adrenaline pumps and you go, and you jump into it. Exactly. I hate it now. I won’t do it now. But I remember early in my career being up all night the night before trying to get something done. Sometimes it was because they changed the schedule and you had to accommodate them. Sometimes it was just everyone’s lack of understanding the schedule and how long shit takes to make, But now, I’m not the ‘burn the midnight oil’ guy I used to be, you know in high school, procrastinate with every art project until the night before But now it’s like no, I don’t like that feeling I’m too old for that.

Chris

You can only do that so long. I was always a “burn the candle at both ends” guy until I hit my mid-forties. And then I just thought, I don’t want to do that. I just physically couldn’t do it anymore.

John Rosengrant

I agree, I agree. Yeah, and probably my mid -40s I was, you know, I was working for Stan Winston at that point, but he was turning over more and more to me and the other guys to do and run. And so I was always in the mindset, “let’s just get this done early”. So we’re not up all night, the night before trying to get it done.

Because inevitably, you know, if you do do your best work, you’re not going to feel great afterwards. You’re going to be exhausted. I don’t like that anymore. There’s no fun in that. There’s no fun in that.

Chris

Well, it just ruins the next day. You think, that’s great, we got it done, but it’s just the next day, you know, you just can’t do anything.

John Rosengrant

Yeah. Well, and on set, the next day is just as action packed as the day you just did. So you string those along, a few of those days and you’re pretty exhausted.

Chris

I imagine the film business is very much one of those jobs where, when they want something, they want it yesterday and you know, long days, full days working. Is it nice to work at your own pace now, to sculpt whatever you want?

John Rosengrant

It is nice to work at my own pace because you’re right, the film business was that and that’s all they care about. And whatever your personal life is or whatever you got going on, your kids, family always had to seem to take a backseat to what they wanted, when they want it, how fast, how, you know, when, where, you know, always front and center.

And that does get exhausting. You know, you’re always accommodating. But now, when I get up and I work on my own stuff, I figure out what I’m going to take to a show, and I’m going to get that work done, or what’s a paying gig, what’s not what I’m doing just for me. But yeah, and there’s no crushing deadline. Nobody’s going to be sitting there, you know, $300 ,000 a day on set, the whole film crew waiting for you to show up and do your thing. None of that exists anymore, so it’s nice.

Chris

I mean, the model business has changed in a similar way, I guess, to the film business in that computers have changed it with the advent of 3D. And I know you’ve worked with some 3D stuff, but how do you feel about 3D versus traditional scratch and modelling?

John Rosengrant

I’m surprised 3D took as long as it did to get going because I know we started doing 3D stuff 20 something years ago in the film business and we had switched over so a lot of digital 10 years ago for sure I mean with all the hard edge suits and endoskeletons and all these things it just really lent itself to sculpting it in 3D and rapid prototyping and printing. And I mean the whole time we were doing this I figured it just would be a matter of minutes before the model industry would catch on. Now everything’s: this is 3D printed, that’s 3D printed. But it feels like it’s late. You know, it took a long time for it to reach. I have no problem with it.

[But there] is no easy button to push. It’s like, all the best sculptors that I had working for me in 3D came from a traditional background. They did it the hard way first. And now they have symmetry, and you can take symmetry off and do all this and sculpt. No, I think it’s opened up more opportunities. I mean, I use a lot of 3D parts when it comes to upgrading kits and whatnot.

Although a lot of people seem to get scale wrong. Scale, to me, is a fixed thing. If your model’s 1/16 scale, so should your figure. And…this measuring from the bottom of the feet to the centre of the eyes, it’s like, I don’t know where that came from. But to me, you would measure a human from the top of his head to the bottom of his heels, the same way you would measure a vehicle from the front of the fender to the back of the fender. However, it’s all the same. I learned that lesson years and years ago when I was working for S &T Models, Jim Sullivan, and I was under the impression, I don’t know why, just because that’s what it was out there, it was 1-16th is 120 millimetres. And it’s not, it is not. 120 millimetres is huge.

I started sculpting figures to go in a Tamiya Tiger 1 in 1/16 scale. And I test fit the figure I was doing and it’s like, “this is wrong. This is huge. This is freaking huge”. And then you start doing the math and it’s like, well, 1/16 is not 120 millimetres. 120 millimetres, it’s gotta be seven foot tall. And yes, there’s some humans that are seven foot tall, but they didn’t exist in Tiger Tanks in World War II.

Chris

If you look at World War II photos, those guys were really small. Because a lot of them grew up in the 30s when there wasn’t a great diet. They weren’t particularly tall and they were certainly not particularly wide either.

John Rosengrant

No they were probably 5’6”, 5’9”, hundred and thirty pounds ringing wet and yeah and anyway how I got off on that tangent, but you know you would think in digital you wouldn’t make those problems the same mistakes, but they do. I see a lot of figure companies that will do things, you know, they’ll be pretty nice looking figures, nicely detailed. I’m not sure they do their research though, you know, you find things that is just like, “that’s not what it looks like, that’s what the liner looks like, that’s not what the helmet looks like.” But I think you’ve got a generation of maybe people that understand how to work the program really well, but maybe they haven’t made the mistake of making something too big to fit a kit or they’re told make it 120 millimetres and that’s what they do.

You know, you look at lots of 135th figures, they’re huge. They’re actually, big. They look funny.

Chris

I remember the Verlinden figures were always more like 1/32.

John Rosengrant

Easily 1/32 second or 1/30, they were. Anyway, that’s something. And if you do a tall figure, you know, there were people over 6’1”, 6’2” back then, but make sure that they’re skinny and lean and they look right next to the vehicle because it’s all part of, to me, what it takes to tell that story and make it look real and make it believable. Have it scaled properly.

Chris

So realism is something that’s really important to you.

John Rosengrant

It is, it is, and It’s probably not to people the same way it is to me. I mean, there’s a young generation that grew up on video games. So, I mean, I noticed, going back to my film days in the first Jurassic Park, they were very concerned about gravity and weight and the dinosaurs and weight transfer and all. And then that seemed to go out the window. Things were just anti -gravity, huge. Dragons flying through the air and leaping and, to me, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should. I mean, I always felt like what we were doing was making the unbelievable believable. And making the unbelievable even more unbelievable just wasn’t my thing. I remember James Cameron saying something. “He goes, you can suspend belief with an audience for mere seconds. If you tread beyond that, then your people are going to start to question what you’ve done.” But at the same time, you do want to soup it up a little bit because that’s why people are watching it. They’re looking for escape and they want to see. Keanu Reeves jump across to a building that they couldn’t do from one to the other. There is a limit. You can stretch that disbelief a little too far to where people go, “all right, this is a bunch of malarkey.”

Chris

Is history important to you as well with models? Do you think models can tell history?

John Rosengrant

I do. And for me personally, I have such a book collection and I collect information and I collect uniforms and gear and all these things. For me, it’s important. That’s how you get the realism. And when I sculpt, I will put that uniform on or I’ll put it on my son and take photos or I’ll get my wife to take photos of me in the pose because each type of material and cut folds a different way and it has its own unique look. That looks like wool, that looks like leather, that looks like cotton. We’re [all] doing the best we can, but I try to incorporate that into each piece so that when you look at it, people know if it looks right or not. They’re drawn to it because it’s like, “the drapery on that looks right”. Well, there’s a reason, because I put that uniform on and that’s how it really does fold. So it helps inform you as an artist.

But back to your question about history. I think yes, it all goes hand in hand. I spend as much time researching what I’m going to do. Or if I don’t know, it’s like this LRDG thing. I knew more about the SAS than I did the LRDG. But I bought a bunch of books and I got immersed into it when the idea was brought to me to sculpt figures for it. I liked the idea, so I took it on. It’s like I had an interest in it. I always liked the photos and then you say, “well, that looks interesting.” But you do have to understand the battle or whatever it was.

I just recently went to Gettysburg, and I live now in Tennessee, and nearby is where the Battle of Franklin was. But it helps to walk the battlefield and to see where this happened. And boy, there’s some things in Gettysburg I’m looking at and it’s like, well, wow, the Confederates came charging up from there to here uphill. It’s like those guys are different stocks than we are today. Those guys were. Not only are they in shape, but for you to do that, you had to really believe in that cause or just feel like you had no choice, I don’t know. But I was amazed. It’s like,  you’re trudging up, you’re coming uphill and people are firing at you and you’re moving forward.

I remember I worked on a movie called The Revenant and I took my wife to see it and she looked at me afterwards, she goes, “I’d rather just be dead than to go through that.” But yeah, no one’s medevacking you off a mountain back then. And if you break your leg, you’re probably gonna die. But it’s interesting to me, I look at it from the standpoint o,f you actually thought you had a chance to go maybe be killed by Indians or animals or disease or hardship.

You think you have a better chance of going and becoming a trapper or a mountain man than you do living in the city. So it kind of would always kind of put a perspective on things to me. It’s like, wow, you did this by choice. You went out there. So, something in the back of your mind must be telling you: this is better than what you’ve got. As brutal as it looks to us today. It’s like trying to judge somebody on their beliefs or what went on 200 years ago. It’s sort of impossible.

Chris

There’s never enough context.

John Rosengrant

You don’t have context. You don’t. No, no. I mean, when I saw the Carnton Plantation, which was turned into Confederate Field Hospital during the Battle of Franklin, you can still see the blood stains on the floor up in the children’s room, which became the hospital. But you realize they’re cutting limbs off of people with the same saw and there’s no cleanliness. They don’t know. They just didn’t, and this is 1864, they had no idea that infection, how infections would spread or what you had to do. So it’s just a different world, you know, just a totally different world. And the further you go back, they didn’t have a clue. They really didn’t.

They didn’t even have a clue 80 years ago. I mean, we’re talking here it is D -Day 80 years ago. They didn’t know half these things we know now, but they knew some things we don’t know now.

Chris

What fascinates me, I was listening to D -Day commemorations this morning and there’s a lot of testimony from people that were there. And also when you’re talking about that Confederate charge, the thing that always gets me about that is there’s this popular idea in culture that these men were somehow different. They just didn’t feel fear and they went and did it. But the thing that’s really impressive about them is they were probably absolutely terrified, but they did it anyway. And that’s the courage is overcoming that terror. When I think of those Confederates as well, the way they would advance, it wasn’t like skirmish like people do now. Great mass ranks of them into massed fire coming the other way.

John Rosengrant

No. Yeah. Yeah, the Battle of Franklin, they’re coming. It was the battle lasted five and a half hours and there was 9 ,000 casualties. 2 ,000 of them Confederate dead. And you’re going up a slight grade, but you’re still moving up a hill. And they’re all coming, all 30 ,000 of them at once.

And I can’t imagine what it felt like on the other side, the union side, to say, they’re really doing this. Okay.

Chris

Well, it might be them doing it tomorrow. So that’s the other thing.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, it’s all pretty stupid. Didn’t accomplish anything, did it really? None of these wars seem to… We do them all over again. The first world war is the war to end all wars and then World War II. Here we are. Yep, we still keep doing it.

Chris

bigger and worse. But how do you put that into a figure? How do you sort of distil all these thoughts and all this sort of empathy?

John Rosengrant

That’s why I did that one where “the True Face of War”. I mean, it’s a little abstract, but I think that whole idea is a little abstract. It’s like on the outside, you’re wearing a mask and you’re masking all the pain that’s really inside and back. You know, World War II, they didn’t call it PTSD. They had it. They just were told to be quiet and deal with it.

I remember there was a guy who lived across from my grandparents when I was growing up. He used to go play with his sons, but Dad was a war hero. I think it was Iwo Jima and he came back with a Japanese sword and flag and all this. He had a problem with the bottle. And that was the way that he, I don’t know, the way he dealt with his situation, you know, of seeing all that horror and whatever. And, you know, he ended up not good. And it’s just a shame, but it uses up people and some people just can’t. I talked to a man the other day who was in Vietnam. He said, yeah, I had an all -expense paid trip to Vietnam. I was the second lieutenant. The first day he was in Khe Sanh or something, rockets came flying over his head. I guess the average life of a lieutenant in Vietnam was like six weeks or something. But he said the way he learned to deal with it all was he learned to close doors. He just closed that chapter. Close that door and move on.

As humans, we all deal with these things differently. One of my good friends growing up, his dad was on Iwo Jima. And he was always pretty calm, nice guy. And then one day, there was some policeman pulled my friend and I over for riding our dirt bikes where we weren’t supposed to. And then I remember his dad just getting so pissed off at that cop.

The policeman was saying, “you haven’t seen the death and destruction I have.” And then he was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Talk about death and destruction. They were bulldozing bodies into holes where I was. These are good boys. Just leave them alone. Just go away.” But you know, you probably learned to shut some doors.

But sometimes they pop back open.

Chris

Do you think it’s possible to communicate that through models, through what we do?

John Rosengrant

I think there’s a way to do it and I’m still striving for that. I don’t want to… It’s very rare that I want to show someone that’s dead or, you know, the real horror of it all. I don’t want it to be mistaken or glorified in some way. I guess that’s up to me as the sculptor or the painter or whatever, to make sure I convey the right idea.

Chris

I do worry with military modelling, that it presents a particular almost sanitized image of war that’s very much ‘the pipe and drum’ and not what actually happens sometimes.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, yeah. I had a discussion with somebody, at a show, I had done an Israeli piece from the Six Day War. And it was like, well that was too close. It was like, well it’s 1967. It was too close. I mean it was too close for someone in the Crimean War too, when they lived with the turn of the century. I, yeah, I’m, I’m,

I think you’re right in that it’s like, that happened so long ago. It’s a Napoleonic and you got to show this guy in his fresh blue outfit.

Chris

Things I’ve read about Napoleon, Napoleonic Wars as well. Half the time they lived in the uniforms for weeks on end. They didn’t fit very well. And, you know, the image of one, the other is a bit dissonant really.

John Rosengrant

yeah. You have typhus and all these diseases. And when I was at that Gettysburg Museum, there’s something I saw is that more men died in the Civil War of disease than they did when being shot or killed. Just because they had no idea. Don’t drink that water. It’s like, well, why not? Yeah, Napoleon, there’s nothing nice about any of these wars.

Chris

I mean, I’ve done a couple of things. I’ve just finished one today actually about the Ukraine war. And I think it is possible to model almost any war as long as you’re, for want of a better word, responsible about it. As long as you’re aware of what you’re doing and you’re not just… Because I also worry that with current wars, it’s like a form of consumerism, of entertainment to make models about them unless you’re really thinking about what you’re saying with the model.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, yeah. No, I can see that. You have to be, you have to be careful. Yeah, and can [be] a bit raw.

Chris

Well, like anything, you can do it badly or you can put a bit more thought into it.

John Rosengrant

I’m also working on 1/16th, the famous couple of guys in those SAS jeeps. I mean, it’s very heroic images. But I like the image of I think it’s Kennedy and McDonald with their shemaghs on, blowing in the wind, driving the Jeep and all that. They’re cool. And there’s that attraction to that. I Remember famous directors saying “don’t tell me you’re doing it because it’s cool. You know, give me a reason.” Sometimes it’s just cool.

Chris

The things that make it cool though, are interesting. They were very tough, very hardy men who decided to not think about, or I suppose they thought about it, but decided to know about the dangers, not just of the war they were in, but the desert and being out there without water and potentially running out of fuel and things. And just do it anyway, quite piratical in a sense.

John Rosengrant

I think, yeah, I think so. And I think some of it’s just being young and not realizing the danger. Yeah, I think of the things I did when I was young. It’s just like, I don’t know, you just don’t have the same respect for things because you haven’t lived through it. You haven’t done it yet.

Chris

Yeah, the confidence of youth. Yeah.

John Rosengrant

I’m sure some of it was blindly going down a path and then you find yourself in the middle of it. But as humans we find a way to cope with whatever situation is thrown at us. And those SAS and those LRDG guys in the desert, like you say, no water and they’re conserving fuel. Back when they used to teach dead reckoning, so you knew how to get home or you could look at the stars in the sky and figure out where you were. You didn’t have a GPS to tell you. Make a right turn.

Chris

Maybe a sun compass. But even so there’s no features to navigate. Well, very few features to navigate by out there. I guess one looks much like another. Yeah, you had to know what you were doing.

John Rosengrant

You do have the Sun Compass, yes. Those guys didn’t even have radios. They couldn’t even communicate.

And you know you try to convey that idea of why the flag bearer was such a big deal back in the Civil War or whatever it may be. It’s because people are looking towards that flag to understand whether they’re moving forward or what regiments doing what. Because they couldn’t talk. They didn’t have a loud hailer. And I imagine once that cannon fire got started and those muskets are going off and you couldn’t hear a darn thing and your eardrums are probably blown out. And yeah, you’ve got, you’re looking at a flag to tell you what to do.

Chris

Literal fog of war with all that black powder back then as well.

John Rosengrant

Hmm, yeah, yeah.

Chris

Why do you think we make models? What do you think it is about making little miniature things?

John Rosengrant

That’s a great question. I don’t know that I’ve ever really contemplated it to that level. My wife will ask me that. “Why don’t you do an angel or a beautiful thing?” And it’s like, huh, that’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m just drawn to this. I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s something to do with, I keep hearing the word, the hardship of it and what these people went through and…I just, for some reason, seem more drawn to seeing humans against adversity than not. I don’t know. It’s a really good question. Why do we do this? Yeah, because it’s a strange little hobby when you think about it.

Chris

Maybe it’s a creative way to tell that story. Maybe it’s a way you can, from nothing, make something that speaks about that.

John Rosengrant

Well, for me, I do like that, starting out with thin air or a model kit and building around it to tell a story. I do like that. Maybe I’m just meant to tell these men’s stories from the past. I don’t know. I’m not sure. That is the essence, though, of why do we do this?

Chris

I think it’s the one question we never ask ourselves. And sometimes I wonder whether it’s like the forbidden question, because if you question it too much, you might start wondering why you do it. Maybe it’s best not to ask haha.

John Rosengrant

Haha Sure.

Yeah, why am I obsessed with how many bolts are on the Tiger Tank Cupola, you know? It’s weird. It is. It is strange. Maybe that’s also why at these shows why there’s such an overwhelming look at the fantasy world, it’s exploding. Maybe because people just aren’t as interested in that history and how many bolts are on the Tiger tank, and where’s the seam run on a World War II British great coat from 1939. I mean, these are all, it’s different.

It seems like this younger generation just wants to create something fanciful. For me, I like the military thing because I created fantasy for 40 years. Everything I did was fantasy. So now, I like it being established and you’re just trying to recreate something that that already happened, it’s different than the fantasy thing.

Chris

I wonder as well, it’s because we grew up around people that fought those wars. Like you were saying, your friend’s father was on Iwo Jima, my father was in the Falklands war, my grandfather was in World War II, and maybe that’s it. It’s because we’ve got that close family connection to the things that happened, and the younger generation don’t have that.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, it’s true. When I was driving to Gettysburg, I was talking to my dad who’s 93. He goes, “You know, you had a great, great grandfather that fought in Gettysburg.” And it’s like, “Really? You never told me this.” So, this was a new piece of information. But when you think about it, great, great, it’s not that far removed.

Chris

No.

John Rosengrant

It’s really not. I mean, that was my dad’s great grandfather. He actually met him when he was five or something, but it’s like, it’s not that far away. It’s only 165 years ago. It’s really not that far gone. But, you know, each generation keeps coming along. It does. It gets further and further.

And people don’t know it the same way as we probably do. There’s something to what you’re saying. I mean, we grew up with people that we really knew, fought in World War II, that were somebody’s dad and somebody’s parent and a grandparent, and we knew them. So there was a real connection.

It’s like long, long, long ago. And you know what’s interesting with the fantasy thing is, there’s a lot of painters, not so many sculptors.

Chris

Yeah, yeah. I was listening to the Plastic Posse earlier and they were talking about, talking to Eric Swinson, I think it was, and he was saying that you don’t see people converting or sculpting so much in fantasy, like you’re doing, I mean, historically it’s very common to convert or sculpt your own miniatures, but they seem to be more painters than sculptors.

John Rosengrant

Yeah.

I agree with that. Eric is a very talented guy and a very talented painter and idea man. I think, I’m not sure if he sculpts, but he partners with guys that do and they execute together their ideas. But I might have that all wrong. I mean, I don’t know. I know Eric from a couple shows. He’s very talented, but I agree with him. I see a lot more painting in that world than I do sculpting.

Chris

In fact, I’ve heard them call themselves painters rather than modelers. It’s more common to call themselves painters, which says something.

John Rosengrant

I think there’s a tendency each generation that passes, they just, we had to create things growing up. There was not the market. There wasn’t, I mean, now there’s a thousand figures you can go buy.

Chris

Even so, I sculpt because I can never find the ones I want, to tell the story I want, if you see what I mean. You can never find the right poses.

John Rosengrant

Me too. Me too. Yeah. So, and you know, I got that from Shep Paine. It’s like he took those little Tamiya figures and turned them into something great. I mean, at that time, they’re spectacular for 1973. Do they hold up today in the same way? No. But he was the innovator, and he was coming up with that stuff when none of us were. So hats off to him.

Chris

There should be more sculpting. People should do more of it.

John Rosengrant

They should. I think when I talk to people about it, they seem intimidated.

Maybe it was helpful when I got into it. It wasn’t at the same level. Now, if you enter into the sculpting game, you’re competing against digital sculptors, you’re competing against people who have been doing it for an awfully long time, have a lot of knowledge. I could see how it could be intimidating.

But at the same if you don’t do it…

Chris

But then again, you can make anything you want.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, you can make anything you want. And if the man who does nothing makes no mistakes. So it’s like, put it out there. Just do it. You will get better. I mean, I think most of us have artistic talent, but you just have to try to tap into it.

Musicians will say you gotta go back to the woodshed. You gotta go learn those chops. You’ve gotta. If you don’t do it, if you have a Zen modelling experience and collect all these things, think about how you would do it. “I think it would be that shade of Gray. It’s perfect. I’ve embellished it with all of the things on the market.”

Chris

Just do it mentally haha.

John Rosengrant

It was like this Thunder Models kit that I just did, and a Miniart kit. They’re not fun. I felt for people that were young and just getting into this is like you’d leave half the parts off because you’d lost half of them. There’s a little tiny thing, ping, flying.

And I don’t know, I had to scratch build several things out of plastic because of the photo etch, it’s like I hate that stuff. They turn out good, but they it’s like, it’s like 20 parts to create one, Tamiya, to me, is the king of engineering. I’ll leave it at that.

Chris

They’ve got a really good balance between detail and fun.

John Rosengrant

Yeah, yeah, and you can certainly embellish them. You know, people give those Dragon kits a bad name, but I think all the instructions, trust me, a lot of these instructions aren’t that great. Yeah, I never thought the Dragon kits were that horrible.

Chris

No, me either.

John Rosengrant

It’s like, okay, yeah, you’ve never built one of these other ones. They’re in your stash, they’re in your collection, but go build a thing if you want.

Chris

I do think “try and build a 1980s Italeri kit, or Academy kit from their early days.” You’ll become intimately acquainted with filler and all kinds of other things. At least these kits go together, even if they’re a bit over complicated.

John Rosengrant

Ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, there’s that.

Chris

All right, well, thank you very much. I’ve really enjoyed this. I hope you have too.If you have any feedback or any questions, please do write into info@insidethearmour.com or leave your comments on the blog for John.

And John, thank you very much.

John Rosengrant

You’re very welcome. I enjoyed this.



I hope you enjoyed that chat as much as I did. And I hope to speak to John again in the future.

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Competition is a big part of the modelling, whilst not being, in any way, essential to the hobby. If all competition ended tomorrow, people would still be making models and the shows would still happen, albeit somewhat differently in some cases.

But we do have competition, and its often a central part of many shows. Certainly, many people love to debate the merits and demerits of this and that show and competition. But we don’t often look into why we do it, and what it means in the hobby beyond the results.

One of the first competitions and shows I went to, which really made me reconsider what was possible in the hobby, was Euromilitaire. My first year was 2005, and one of the models that year that really stunned me, was the vignette of a Belgian observation ballon crew under attack, which won Best of Show. That model was by Marijn Van Gils.

I followed Marijn’s work avidly from afar, over the internet, but eventually I would get to speak to him in person, and found out just how deep his enthusiasm for, and knowledge of modelling, runs. A man who seems to have never lost the the rush of discovering something new, and making things. In addition to his award-winning models, I found someone with a love of looking at the work of others and a highly accomplished and skilled judge at competitions.

So, when I wanted to tackle the subject of competitions, Marijn was top of my list.

Before we carry on, remember you can listen to this interview on the Model Philosopher Podcast at https://modelphilosopher.podbean.com/

Chris

All right, so what do you think are the current systems for competition? Should we go through them and enumerate them, so to speak?

Marijn

Okay, the problem with that though is that there are a lot of systems and usually when you hear about the different systems, especially on the podcasts nowadays, almost every podcast has been talking about the difference between the different competition systems and it usually gets reduced to or IPMS system or AMPS system or open system, usually as used originally by Chicago show or the World Expo for example, but there are a lot of variations to these systems. For example, not every IPMS show is done the same way as the IPMS nationals in the USA for example. There’s a lot of variation to that.

The problem with discussing according to these systems is usually also that there are a lot of aspects to the organization of a show and the way a system is made. Usually, these aspects are all thrown together in the different systems, in the discussions about the different systems, and it gets confusing really quickly what we are talking about exactly and in which system. So I think maybe instead of going over like “the IPMS USA National System is this kind of system and this is the pro and cons” and then the next system maybe it’s more interesting to talk about the different aspects of the competitions and of the judging and what difference, what variation there can be because really there are almost as many systems as there are shows and I think that’s very good, that’s excellent because I don’t think there is a best system.

There are good reasons why there are different systems. On the one hand, there are certainly practical reasons. Not every show is the same. Some shows have two days, which means there is plenty of time to judge. Some shows only have one day, which means that time is a real constraint for judging, because after judging you also have to [complete] the administration of the competition in order to prepare for the award ceremony. Maybe you have to take photographs to embellish the award ceremony and you need a bit of margin in case errors are made and need to be corrected. So on a one -day show, typically you have one hour, one hour and a half to do the judging. That’s it.

So that’s a big difference for example already and that has consequences to how you organize your judging. On the other hand, also the type of models that you have can be very different. Sometimes it’s really mixed but sometimes it’s very specialized like APMS is very specialized in armour. Other shows are very specialized but maybe not exclusively, with only a tiny amount of other stuff. For example, a figure show. You can easily work with the typical open categories of painting and open. Open is then anything that is extra on painting. So modifications, conversions, scratch builds, dioramas is all in open. Just subdivide in those two, maybe different levels, maybe fantasy historical if you like. And everything that’s not a figure can easily be put in the ordinance, class, ships, tanks, airplanes, all together because there are only a few of them at the show anyway.

But… for example at IPMS USA nationals, you can’t do that because there are too many aircraft, too many tanks, etc. to all put together in the same class and have them judged by the same people. So a lot depends on what type of show you have practically, but also philosophically. Different shows attract different kind of people. Some modellers are more geared towards the, let’s say, engineering mindset where there is a certain way to do things where stuff can be quantified, other people are more geared towards artistic idea about modelling where quantification is not so not so simple or impossible and most people are somewhere in between, but some shows cater more for one direction, other shows cater more for the other type of people. Some shows cater more for people that like very competitive competition, for those shows 1, 2, 3 system may be the best. Other shows consider competition more as a juried exhibition. For those shows I believe Gold, Silver, Bronze is much better.

I myself, I have a very clear preference for the type of show I go to and for the judging systems and everything, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only right system. There are different people with different opinions, with different ways of enjoying our hobby, and it’s okay to have shows and systems that cater for them. Not all shows have to cater for me and you, of course.

That said, we can of course go into certain aspects and we can of course talk about our preferences too. There’s nothing wrong with that because with everything philosophical there are also reasons and arguments why we adhere to a certain philosophy and it’s okay to discuss those of course.

Chris

I think in some cases too, cultural background comes into it in that if you have a very competitive society, it tends to produce competitive modellers who want to win and to exceed others. So that’s not a bad thing, it’s just something you could point to as the reason behind why some national shows are more based on a 1, 2, 3 system and that sort of thing.

Marijn

Exactly.

Chris

But also within modelling, we tend to talk about modelling as a monoculture, but it really isn’t. There are lots of different cultures within modelling. And as you’ve pointed out, particularly on the figure side, they’re more into the idea of a juried exhibition and so on. So, and less, as you say, engineering based. It’s great that there are all these different cultures in modelling.

Occasionally I come across people who take the same model to one show and do very well, take it to another show and don’t do very well at all, and blame the show, say, “the judges didn’t know what they were doing” without realizing that there are different philosophies at each of those shows and a model might do very well in one philosophy and not do very well in another. It doesn’t change how good the model is.

Marijn

Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more.

Chris

It just changes how maybe you could look at it in terms of, well, OK, it’s strong in this aspect, but not so strong in that aspect and so on. So I think it’s very important for people to understand this idea that there are different cultures before they enter, because then their expectations will be adjusted based on that.

Marijn

Exactly, yeah that’s very true and well it can also affect your choice of shows that you will visit.

Hopefully not too much because there is much more to shows than just a competition. Anyway, just as a sideline, the discussion we’re having now about competitions and judging, in the scope of the hobby it’s just a small discussion. Most modelers never enter a competition, most probably even never visit a show. But amongst the people who do, it’s a discussion that pops up regularly.

As you can also see on the different podcasts. And well, it never fails to be entertaining. So I don’t mind having this discussion at all. It’s always fun.

Chris

Well, the reason I wanted to have it is usually when it comes up, it is in the context of this system is better than that system or what’s wrong with this system or, and I wanted to kind of not have that discussion because , A: it’s been talked out, but also B: it leaves out an awful lot more that we could talk about, about why we compete and so on. So, I mean, why do we compete? Why do some modelers like to compete in competitions?

Marijn

Of course, I can mostly talk for myself, but I think most of the things why I like to compete will also appeal to other modellers in a certain degree or another, because there is more than one reason, I believe, certainly for myself.

Maybe first the obvious competitive aspects. It’s nice to be able to see where you stand, where your level is. We’re passionate about our hobby, we want to improve, so we like to have some kind of feedback on how we are improving, how it’s going, and there are different ways of doing that, and competition is one of these ways. It has its flaws.

For example, detailed feedback on how you can improve further is very difficult. There have been suggestions made or attempts made, but so far I’ve seen nothing that really does the trick. I feel the only way to really get that kind of detailed feedback on how you can improve further and what exactly may be not so good about your model and what you can do about it.

I think you can only get it one on one while being in a conversation with other modellers. Scores on a score sheet is not going to tell it to you. Little comments made with that score sheet on a judging is not going to tell it to you. One of the last episodes of the Plastic Posse podcast also commented on it. They kept it very positive. But yet they were having fun with these comments on the score sheet when coming home from AMPS USA. And to be honest, I had exactly the same experience with that kind of system of feedback. You don’t alleviate the questions that the competitor has, you just make the questions more detailed. Instead of thinking like, what’s wrong with my model? You see like, what’s wrong with my chipping?

Chris

I mean, it’s bad enough when they say “too much chipping or not enough” or something like that. But when it just says “chipping”, you know literally nothing about why they didn’t like it.

Marijn

Exactly. Exactly.  But well, of course, giving criticism is very difficult, taking criticism is very difficult, and written form is usually the worst way to try to do it, and both of the directions of this communication. So I think the only good way is personal communication that can be online, that can be personal, in person, at a show, at a club. So competition is never going to replace that kind of feedback, I think. On the other hand, it can give a kind of feedback that is pretty honest. For example, the people at your club or at the show may be afraid to hurt your feelings about where you are exactly as a level. They may give you good pointers about what to improve on certain aspects.

But to get the big picture of where you are, competitions can be much more honest. So I think competitions can be quite effective for that. But you should never look at the result of one competition. If you think” I want to know where I am, I’ll register. “In one competition, it’s a bit hit and miss. You can get exactly what you deserve. You can get a bit more, you can get a bit less. There can be a fluke and it can be way off.

It can all happen, it’s normal. It’s part of the way judging happens. It’s human’s work. Mistakes can happen. Anyway, it’s hard to be too precise also about the judging results. Difference between a silver and a bronze, or a bronze or nothing, can be sometimes really small.

and can be sometimes matter of opinion of the judges on that specific day. So you shouldn’t think too much of the results of one competition. Instead, go to 10 competitions and then you will see where you average out more or less. And that will tell you really where you are, I believe.

Chris

There’s also the issue that in the 1,2,3 system, it doesn’t really tell you how good you are compared to last year or what have you, because your result is based on who else is in the room on that day.

Marijn

That’s a big advantage of gold silver bronze, indeed.

Chris

But even with gold, silver, bronze, there’s that kind of nebulous, “the level of the hobby at the moment”. So it’s only ever the best assessment of the judges. So like you say, go to more than one show, particularly if it’s something you’ve worked on a long time and you’re really, you know, you’ve invested a lot in, don’t just take it to one show and get one opinion, take it to a couple of shows and see what people think.

Marijn

Absolutely. And you also need to take into account that also with Gold, Silver, Bronze system originally as conceived in the USA with the Open system, the idea is to judge against the level of the hobby at the moment. But you can do that when you’re at top level shows with the top level modellers of the world in attendance in all categories.

You can’t do that with smaller local shows, because then only a couple of people will win a gold and nobody else will. It’s only normal that at big international shows the level is simply higher than at smaller local shows. So at anything but the biggest, highest level shows it is necessary not to just look at the level of the hobby, but it is necessary also to look at the level of the competition.

That doesn’t mean that in every class something needs to win a gold, but you have to take into account in a certain way what is on the table and adjust accordingly to what is necessary, which level is necessary to get the gold, get the silver, get the bronze. So in that way, judging against the level of the hobby is a little bit abstract for many shows. But for shows like Chicago show or MFCA or World Expo or SMC, yes there it is possible to judge against the level of the hobby. And that makes those shows interesting I think. If you’re interested in the evolution of the hobby, where it is going, what is new, what are new developments, new techniques, new styles.

These are the shows where you can see it and where it will also be reflected in the awards to a certain extent.

Chris

That makes me think of another benefit to competing actually. It’s not just finding out where you are, it’s having your work on show, particularly in the US where they have a lot of shows where there’s no display. It is a form of display. You shouldn’t only enter a model in order to win something. You should enter it for the fun of entering it and for showing it, sharing it.

Marijn

Absolutely. I was starting with the obvious competitive aspect as a reason for entering a competition, but for me personally putting your model on display is more important. Maybe that’s probably the first reason for me. To me there are  more reasons. First, well besides the competitive aspect, and second is to show your work. The third reason is to use the showing of your work as a kind of tool to meet other modellers, as a conversation starter, let’s say. And thirdly as a learning tool. From the feedback you get, through the competition, partly but mostly also by seeing your own work amongst other people’s work at the table and get inspiration from all the… well that’s basically a fifth reason. Basically just to get inspiration, see what’s new, what can be done better by studying other people’s work in the flesh, because it’s different than on photographs, especially small photographs on social media.

Chris

Very.

Marijn

it’s not the same as seeing models in the flesh in reality. And then talking with the people who built them, asking questions to them about how they do this, how they do that, why they do it like that. That’s a goldmine of information, a goldmine of inspiration. It really charges the modelling Mojo 100%.

So as a learning tool, as an inspiration tool in that way, to show your own work, whether you win something or not. Because, well, you know, the competitions, they are the place where a lot of models are together. The new models, people bring their latest, their newest work, their best work. So it’s a place where a lot is on display, is to be seen. It attracts a lot of attention from the viewers. If you want your work to be seen, it’s a great place.

It’s not the only place, you can also bring it to a club stand or Special Interest Group stand. You can also not go to shows, show it online only. But the competition is one of the places where you can show your work and I think it’s a great place for it.

Chris

I think everyone looks at the competition. So, if you want it to be seen, that’s the place to put it. But also, as you say, it’s kind of interesting, colours change when you put one against another. Sort of how you perceive the colour changes completely. And it’s the same with your model. You put your model next to other models and suddenly you can see your model the way other people see it. I quite often get kind of snow blind looking at my own models you know, you get so into it and you look at it so much that you kind of lose perspective on it a little bit. And when you put it next to other people, that perspective snaps right back and you can immediately see, that wasn’t quite as good as I thought it was. Or, that’s actually better than I thought it was because you know, you’re seeing it against other people of a similar level.

Marijn

Absolutely. And in that way, you can also more easily compare what’s the difference and why it looks better, or not as good. The other models maybe they have more contrast. They are painted in a more contrasted way, or they are displayed in a different way, or their colours are more bright or lighter or whatever. This kind of things…They pop out at the competition table, but not on your own workbench or on your own Facebook page.

Chris

Mm -hmm, and that can really help.

Marijn

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, of course, there are also different philosophies. Some people have the opinion that, well, online, so many more people are going to see my model than will ever see my model on a competition table. On a competition table, maybe hundreds of people will see it, maybe even thousands or thousands, but online it can be many, many thousands. So…those people feel like,” well, my model just needs to look good on the photograph. That’s what I’m working for”. A well photographed model that looks good on a screen. Perfectly fine. But you can also be off of the idea. And that’s my personal opinion. That’s well, I’m not a photographer. I’m a modeler. I make small, three dimensional objects. And one of the great things about it is that it is three dimensional, and that you can look at it all around. And that it is small, that you cannot necessarily blow it up on the screen. That it is something small, that makes you go into it, get closer to it, be drawn into it. And that’s why I prefer to model in a style that I try to make my models look as good as possible in the flesh. I don’t care how they look on photo, I want them to look good in the flesh. And that style of modelling will look at its best, especially at the modeling shows.

Chris

I think if you’re good at making your model look good in photos, you’re good at photography more than you are at modelling. It’s a very different experience to seeing it with your own eyes.

Marijn

Yes, it is, it is. And when you look at other models and you’re trying to learn from them, you’re always thinking about “What can I take from this model that I could apply and that will make my model better”. And it’s easier to judge that when you see the model in the flesh, I think.

Chris

Yeah, I mean, no matter how intellectually you know the size, let’s say of a 1/35th figure and you’re looking at a photo on a screen, no matter how much you think, I know how big that is and you understand the scale, it’s not the same as being in the physical presence of something that is a different scale. And it’s only when you’re actually there with it that you can really appreciate all the subtleties of something, I think. I think quite often as well, even when people’s photos are good, the camera is never quite as good as your eye, there are subtleties. Something I notice a lot with your work and with a lot of other people’s work is there are a lot of tones that get lost in photos. And I can appreciate the colour and the blend and the subtlety of it a lot more in person than I can on a screen.

Marijn

Yeah, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. And well, if you love models, it’s just fun to watch them in reality too. You don’t need to always think only “how can I apply this to my own modelling” to just enjoy going around the competition tables and enjoy everything that’s on display there. So that leads me also to another idea. The competitions, they are not only there for the competitors.

There are more reasons why a competition is a valid thing to organize. Of course, first of all, like we just said, just for the sheer joy of watching models, it’s not only for the competitors to go around to watch models. Every visitor of the show can enjoy the models there. And it’s a great way of concentrating a lot of great models together.

And also they are grouped by subject, which is often something that’s important to people to look for the subject matter that they like. It’s an attraction point at a modelling show to have a big bunch of models together ready for viewing. So just for the general audience, it’s also a good thing to have a competition.

Is it necessary? No, because there are other ways of displaying models at modelling shows and some shows are doing that and very successfully like Shizuoka or also the… I forgot the name. There is a show I think in the north west of the USA or was it in Canada? I’m not sure. Where they’re also working with display only, no judging. and it also, I also forgot the numbers, but it was in the 1000 or 2000 models they have. So it’s not the only way, but it’s a way that works. It does attract, it does attract modellers. It’s not necessary to attract modellers, but it is a way to attract modellers to bring their work and put it on display. And in that way, it’s also, functional not just for the visitors of a show, but also for the organizers of a show.

There are certainly variations to this, but in Western Europe we often have like a kind of ‘Holy Trinity’ of stuff at shows and they’re all equally important. That’s the thing that binds all of them.

The ‘Holy Trinity’ is trade stands, one, club stands or special interest groups, second and third the competition. And they’re all equally important and they all reinforce each other.

The club stands, they provide people to enter the competition and to go and buy from the traders. The traders attract the people that come to buy, so they also attract people that want to come with club stands. The competition also attracts people who want to see great models, who also go and do some shopping on the site. They all reinforce each other. So that’s why most Western European shows nowadays have some of each and try to have a good balance of each or as much as possible of each. It’s also not necessary to have all of them. I have been to shows with no club stands or with very little trade or like we just said with no competition. So it’s perfectly possible to do it in another way. But to have this ‘Holy Trinity’ of trade stands, club stands and competition, it works for many shows.

Chris

What do you think competition does to the culture of the hobby?

Marijn

Well, as with anything, there can be positive and there can be negative aspects to it, as with anything.

Maybe quickly the negative aspects. If the competition aspect is taken a bit too far, it can create bad feelings with people. It can also create some overly… competitive atmosphere between people or also between modelling clubs or also between modelling shows, which I think never helps. It does nothing to further our hobby or the social aspects of it, on the contrary. So I consider those to be negative aspects. On the other hand, competitions can do a lot to improve the contacts between people. It can do a lot to improve your personal modelling, as we discussed before.

It can be simply fun to have the thrill of entering a competition for the competitive aspect. And it can also be a kind of stimulant for people to not only do their best work, but mostly also bring and show their best work for others to see. And that can be a bit of a driving force to the hobby. Certainly not the only one, plenty of people can come up with great and innovative stuff on their own without ever entering a competition and also spreading it to the world. Jean Bernard André is one of them. He never enters competition, but he’s providing a lot.

Chris

There isn’t a class for him is there really? “Small picture -sized water -based dioramas”, it’s quite a niche class.

Marijn

Haha, indeed, indeed, but it’s very innovative work that’s providing a lot of inspiration for a lot of people at the moment, I think. But no competition has been needed for that to happen.

Chris

He doesn’t seem to be that interested in competition, but that’s fine. I mean, a lot of people aren’t for sure.

Marijn

Yeah, of course. Absolutely, absolutely. But another new styles and trends and materials and techniques have been spread around the world by first being seen at competitions. So competition can be one of the driving forces to further the hobby and to spread new ideas, I think, especially because it also brings people into contact with one another.

Like I mentioned before, having your model on the table can be a great conversation starter when you’re looking around on the competition table and you meet somebody. One of the first questions to ask is, “do you come here often?”

Chris

hahaha

Marijn

No, I mean, “do you have a model on the table?” And if they say “yes”, “okay. show me” and you go together and look at their model and discuss it and you made a new friend. It’s that simple. And the same can happen.

Chris

There’s been a few times where I’ve seen a great model on the table and I’ve, you know, I’ve asked around who made this and you end up becoming friends with the person who, you know, who made it.

Marijn

Me too, absolutely me too. Of course, this can happen also at SIG tables or club stands. It can happen there too. Competition is not the only way to meet other people, but it is one of the ways and it’s a great way. It helped me a lot.

Chris

Occasionally I meet people who build for competition. What do you think of that?

Marijn

Well, to each their own. Personally, I don’t. I build what I build and when it’s ready, I place it on the competition tables. Before I had children and I had more free time and I could, let’s say, plan my time a bit more freely. In those times Euromilitaire was still one of the biggest competitions, I would use Euromilitaire as a kind of deadline for certain projects. Not because I wanted to compete, but mostly because it was just a stimulus to get it ready, to put in some extra hours, not to rush it, that would not be so good I think, I wouldn’t enjoy that, but just as a stimulus to, okay.

It would be fun to have it ready and on the table then, because I like to show my work, not for the competition, but mostly to show my work, which could be fun if I would be able to show it there. So let’s put in some extra hours now. Nowadays, it’s not so easy to just say, let’s put in some extra hours for weeks on end because of family life. So, I don’t do that anymore. But for me, that was a fun way.

But really building just for the competition with the idea it has to reach that standard so I can get that level of medal at that show. I never did it. If some other people do it, great. I have no problem with that, to each their own. As long as they don’t get too disappointed if they don’t succeed in what they’re aiming for.

Chris

I think for me, it goes back to what we said earlier about the different cultures, different shows. It kind of feels like chasing a phantom to try and build for competition, that you’re trying to achieve something that you perceive to be what the judges want, when you can’t ever really know what they want. And for me, that’s kind of a rudderless way to go about building a good model.

Marijn

Exactly. yeah that’s also the reason why I don’t do it because chasing a medal it’s all about let’s say form or the shiny packaging and it’s not about content. When you model for content you model just to make the best model you can make, to make the model you wanted to make.

I think that’s more important than the medal because indeed, medal doesn’t have so much, it can have a certain meaning but it shouldn’t be the ‘be-all-and-end-all’ of what you’re doing as a modeller, absolutely.

Chris

It might depend what kind of model you are, a modeler you are though. I mean, if you’re the kind of modeler who can only make work that you deem yourself to be good by sticking to, you know, sort of the inner, I can’t describe it, by being true to what you’re really interested in and what you’re really motivated by in terms of the subject and the methods and the form and so on. Then, you can’t build for competition, but maybe some people out there, are just more motivated by making a model that ticks the boxes they know fits. And I guess it just depends on your motivation, what you get out of it.

Marijn

Yeah, indeed, indeed. And probably that will reflect on other aspects in life too. Different strokes for different people. But the thing you mentioned about you never know what the judges want is indeed also in a way very correct. Not that judges just do whatever and are completely, well, making everything up on the spot. It’s not like that, of course. But I think it is true that an award is nothing more, but also nothing less than just the opinion of the judges that judged it on that particular day. Just the combined opinion of the two or three people that judge your work. That’s the award. And there is no more meaning to it than that. But also, no less meaning. If you respect the people that judge it, that can be very meaningful. If you don’t really respect those people, then of course it’s not so meaningful anymore. So it can also be a good idea to go to competitions where you respect the people that do the actual judging.

And that can also bring us to, well, what aspects of judging are important for a good quality judging.

Chris

I was going to say, you’ve got a lot of experience judging, many years. What do you look for as a judge?

Marijn

Excellent question.

So, most importantly, maybe let me start with what I think we should never look at. It has been discussed on other podcasts, I think, or other episodes, so we shouldn’t go too much into it. Accuracy, historical accuracy, or whatever kind of accuracy is not something to be judged, because simply a judge can never know everything about everything that’s on the table. He can know everything about Shermans, and judge the Sherman models on the table accordingly, but he won’t know anything about the modern French tank that’s right next to it, for example. It’s impossible to be consistent in judging when you use that criteria, so I think it should never be used.

What do you look at is, in two big groups, on the one hand more technical aspects; and on the other hand more artistic aspects of the model. So technical aspects, well it mostly comes down to how neat you work, how sharp you work, how detailed you work, how precise you work. So for construction, how neat do you work? Are there any seams left? If you filled any gaps, is it done in a way that you don’t see the gap anymore? Is there any glue spots left or not? For detailing, it doesn’t matter if you use photo -etch or not. It matters if you do it well. That’s always the thing. You always look for not what is done, but mostly how well is it done, especially with the technical things.

The details, are they sharp? Are they glued on in a precise straight way without glue blobs and stuff like that? Painting, airbrushing for example, is it a smooth coat or is it a rough coat with grain in it? The transition between the colors, is it as sharp or as blurry as it was intended to be? How precise has the model been working?

Again, the same with weathering. It’s not important how much weathering there is, it’s important how well is it done, how convincing is it. Is it applied in a neat, precise way? That doesn’t mean, does it look clean? It can look very dirty, but does it look dirty? Can you see that it is intended to look that way? And does it look convincing? Is the texture consistent with what the modeller is trying to do?

So, all these different technical aspects, you look at them and you look at every part of the model, both construction, painting of vehicles, but also figures, groundwork, anything on the model. You look at all of those. And then there are the artistic aspects on the other hand. On one hand, it can be about storytelling. On the other hand, artistic can also be about purely visual aspect. Does it look good? So with the storytelling, does the model say what it is trying to say? With dioramas that can be narrative, a story can also be much less narrative. You already had a nice write -up about different ways of storytelling, so people can go and read that one again. (https://modelphilosopher.com/the-demise-of-the-original-story/)

Chris

And that’s a subject we’ll be coming back to on the podcast in the future as well.

Marijn

Yeah, indeed. So, and also with single vehicles or figures, there can be storytelling to certain levels going on or not, if models are clearly not trying to tell a certain way, a story of a certain kind or a certain atmosphere that doesn’t need to preclude them from getting a gold medal, for example. Just if there is an intention to tell whatever level of story you judge, how well they are succeeding in doing it, how well the model is telling that type of story. And then the other artistic aspect is purely visual, how good does the model look. And that comes down mostly to the aspects of, in my opinion, to contrast and harmony. If there is not enough contrast, a model will look very flat and lifeless. It doesn’t have any punch, it doesn’t really speak. A model needs to have a certain level of contrast in it, in the paintwork, in the detailing, in the composition. It doesn’t just need to be dark light colour contrast, it can also be the hue, the brightness of the colours, it can be also the dynamics in the composition. This is all aspects of contrast that bring models alive.

On the other hand, there also has to be a certain level of harmony, because if it’s all contrast and no harmony between colours or in the dynamic shapes or lines in the composition, then it just becomes an assault on your eyes. Then it becomes too much gaudy, garish. I’m not sure if these are the exact words that mean what I’m trying to say, but…

then it becomes too much and just looks ugly basically. It looks out of balance. It’s too much screaming instead of telling something.

Chris

It’s noisy, there’s no kind of clarity to it.

Marijn

Exactly, exactly. So you also need a certain level of harmony. You can use bright colours, but you cannot use bright colours all over the piece everywhere for everything. For example, you can have very dynamic sweeping lines in your composition, but you will also have to counterbalance these with other elements, so it doesn’t look like it’s toppling over. So you need to have both contrasts and harmony in your model to make it visually pleasing and to… well…basically just make it look good. So these are more artistic aspects, but of course these artistic aspects can never really be seen separately from the technical aspects, because for example in order to get a high level of contrast it’s not just artistic choices that you’re making, but you also have to be able to technically apply the right paints, right shades of paint in the right place for example. There is also a technical aspect of that.

I always feel for example that, let’s say in the paintwork of a model or a figure, you can never have too much contrast. But you can put it in the wrong place, and then it looks out of place, and then it doesn’t look good. But if you know exactly where to place the maximum contrast, you can get away with anything. So there is a technical artistic aspect to all models.

They also intertwine with one, another and it gets more complicated because there are still some more things that you can look for. One thing is originality. How original is your model? Is that something that we should take into account, or not? There are different opinions about that. I think it should be taken into account because that will stimulate creativity and in the end that will stimulate the advancement of our hobby and of the artistic side of our hobbies for sure. But it wouldn’t be right to punish people who just want to build a nice model and enter it in the competition. If they do, if they build a very nice but beautifully done and technically outstanding model, why shouldn’t they win an award simply because they haven’t created something really new or really original? So I think originality should be awarded or should be rewarded in the judging, but we shouldn’t go really too far with it. Still, technical and artistic aspects should also be taken into account still. And certainly, it should be only done in a positive sense. It should only add for the models that are original. It shouldn’t…let’s say, detract points from models that haven’t tried to do that.

Chris

Maybe it’s a way to earn bonus points if you see what I mean. So it’s not a requirement, but if you do something original, it can be rewarded.

Marijn

Exactly. If your technical level for example is not gold level standard but you create something really original, maybe you can get the gold because of the originality. So exactly, the bonus points is exactly what I was trying to say. And there is one other aspect like that: the, sometimes-called ‘scope of effort’. How difficult is something, how complicated or how big or how ambitious is a project, should that be taken into account? And I think here the same goes as for your originality. If you do, if you are brave enough to throw yourself into something very ambitious, very difficult, with a lot of work, with a lot of technical challenges, yes, you should be rewarded for that. But the person who just wants to build a great kit and make a beautiful model out of it, with not too much effort or time invested, should also be able to gain a gold medal.

Chris

The only problem I have with scope of effort is effort isn’t a concept that comes with a connotation of quality. You can put a lot of effort into something, and it can still be awful.

Marijn

Absolutely, absolutely. So that’s why it shouldn’t be an aspect that really makes the big differences. If your technical level is not high enough to get a bronze, by making a huge diorama you shouldn’t be able to get a gold.

Chris

But are we saying, maybe, that if it’s a borderline case, that maybe if they’re bronze, maybe bronze, maybe silver, but there’s a lot of effort, you say, “okay, silver”.

Marijn

Indeed. Because of course it’s not really out of the reasoning that, well, the modeller did so much effort, it is so much, look at all the work, it’s so much work. It’s not just to reward that, it’s to reward people taking chances, to reward people making efforts, trying something ambitious. Otherwise, we will end up with competitions with only very simple builds of great new kits.

Chris

I think I’m gonna get myself in trouble here, but I think one of the biggest problems with modelling is there is not enough originality and not enough risk -taking.

Marijn

Well, I would also like to see more, but then again everybody wants to take something else out of this hobby and I feel most people simply don’t feel the urge to try and make something new.

Chris

Yes, for sure.

Maybe that’s a big enough subject for another day, I think.

Marijn

Absolutely, absolutely. But you saw with the technical aspects, the artistic aspects, scope of effort, originality, all of those combined, it becomes quite complicated. Especially because there is a lot of variation between models, as we have also touched upon. Not every aspect is equally important for each model. Some models use a great kit with little building effort as a canvas for fantastic paintwork, while other models are completely scratch built but then carry a rather basic paint job. Neatly done, but not trying to go far artistically with not just weathering but any kind of telling something with it. So, and these are both very valid ways of making a model.

They should both be able to be rewarded in a competition if done well. So all the different aspects that we have just discussed, they need to be balanced always and it will be different for every model again.

So it’s quite a complicated affair. And that’s where I think sometimes the judging systems can be helpful or can be a bit counterproductive. As we said before, the results of a competition, the awards, are basically the reflection of the opinion of the judges at that specific moment. So I think a judging system should enable that opinion to shine through directly in the reward. It should enable that indeed what the judges think is exactly what the award will be. If the judging system somehow obstructs this, then it can be counterproductive.

To give an example, my preferred way of judging is to just get together with two or three judges, look at the class that you’re judging, preferably individually, just look around, scan everything, take a first look at everything, and get an idea of what the level is, especially at the smaller local show where you also have to assess what level is present at the show, get a feel for it, get an idea which you think are the best models, form your own opinion to a certain extent, then get together with the other judges and start like, “okay, let’s start from the top level, what do you think could get a gold here?” Somebody says, “I think this model”. Somebody else says, “I agree.” Third one says, “I agree.” Okay, easy. The golds are always the easiest ones.

“That one too? okay, yeah, it’s not as good, but yeah,” if we say, “okay, which ones would get a silver? Yeah, this one, that one, okay, yeah, I agree, I agree, yeah, but that one, okay, it’s clearly still one step up from the silvers, not as good as the first gold we gave, but still it’s closer to that one. Okay, that one also gets a gold, that one is in the same level, it’s a step up from the silvers” we have defined, and you work your way down from there, discussing together, in that way.

My least favourite way of judging is with a score sheet, where you have a set of judging criteria, like construction, detailing, airbrushing, decals, and each gets scored to a certain amount of points, and then they’re added up and subdivided. Because in that way, you can get for each of these aspects, the honest opinion of the judge and they can score the airbrushing really honestly to what they think the airbrushing is actually worth. But there is no flexibility in how these different aspects are balanced to one another. So instead of leaving room for both the model that has more emphasis on painting on the one hand, and on the other hand to the model that has more emphasis on construction, you all make one unity of it. And basically you say there is only one right way to make a model in this class. Usually that’s not the goal of these systems. The goal is usually of making sure that everybody judges in the same way and try to make things as objective as possible.

But I think it doesn’t really help so much with objectivity. I think it just makes everything more uniform. And I think that’s not a good idea because of how complicated all the aspects of modelling are and how different models can be, even in the same class. And I have judged also in competitions where you do fill in score sheets and at the end you hand them to the chief judge and then the administration is done. But while you’re judging and while you’re giving points, you have absolutely no idea how this will translate into a certain award.

Chris
Yeah, I did that at Moson. It was a very odd experience because even we judges didn’t know until the award ceremony who got what.

Marijn

Exactly, it’s very weird. As a judge I never have a good feeling with that system. It is possible that the opinion translates correctly to the awards given. It is possible, but I think it’s a system where mistakes can sneak in very easily, much more easily than just a couple of guys together saying I think this model is worth that award. That’s very clear, that’s very to the point, that’s very direct..

Chris

I think for me the problem with it is it doesn’t allow for something that I’ve seen happen a lot when I’ve judged at open shows where we’ve gone through and we’ve made selections and then thought, you know, I think we’ve been a bit harsh actually, we need to go back and lift the scores up. Because I mean, in the open system, you’re there to reward modelers not to take away, it’s an addition rather than a subtraction system. You’re trying to look for the good, not punish the bad. So you quite often go back and go,” you know, we’ve been a bit harsh on this” because you’re trying to be good and you’re trying to spot things and everything else. But at the same time, maybe you can be a bit too tough. If you just fill out a score and hand it in, you don’t get to revise your opinion.

Marijn

Exactly, exactly. That’s also one of the reasons why I’m not really a fan of judging systems that take really long and especially where multiple teams are judging the same class of models. That’s something that’s often done with AMPS.

Sorry guys, I’m a big fan of the organization, a big fan of the type of shows you put on, but this aspect of the judging I’m not a fan of. I have to admit I’ve only judged and competed according to it only once, but for half a day people are judging models that are coming in. You haven’t seen the totality of the class yet, because they didn’t come in yet, so you have no idea of the general level that’s present. So you start judging and indeed at a certain point you may realize that you have been a bit harsh, but at that point it’s not possible anymore to adjust. It’s too late. And even a bigger problem, there are only a few classes, so you’re in a team that’s judging a certain class, but on the next table there is another team that’s judging the same class. Or maybe after an hour or two of judging you stop, and another team takes over and they continue judging the same class. But they may be a bit harsher or a bit less harsh. Even if you’re using score sheets, well, one team might give a 7 for a quite neat airbrush job, another team might give a 9. It all depends on… well, that’s a problem. I don’t think modelling is very quantifiable.

In order to be consistent, I think the same people should judge an entire category and they should be able to keep an overview of what’s in that category while they’re doing it.

Chris

I think, you’re always trying to be consistent when you’re judging. And I hate to keep going back to IPMS USA, but that’s why they have the system they have because of the consistency they believe it gives them across it. And, you know, no matter what else I might or might not think about the system, that’s kind of their motivation. And I think the only way you can be consistent is to have the same judges at least across the same class, if not more than one class. That’s the only way really.

Marijn

Absolutely, indeed. By the way, I’m a firm believer that we’ve talked now a little bit about how certain systems can have an impact on the quality of the judging, but I’m a firm believer that by far the most important aspect for the quality of the judging is the judges.

Chris

Absolutely, yeah.

Marijn

The system is mostly there to make things happen. Some systems can, as we discussed, can be a bit counterproductive. Often, they’re there for good reasons, but it doesn’t always work out in my opinion.

Other systems work perfectly, I think, in making it happen in a smooth way, but mostly the system should be there for practical reasons, to make it happen and to make it happen as good and as smoothly and as quickly as possible. But what really makes the quality of the judging is the judges themselves. So I think that’s also one of the reasons why it’s important to have a judging system that is efficient and fast.

I’m not saying that judges should work very fast and not look very carefully. I’m just saying that if you have a system that necessitates the judge to look at each and every individual model, even though it’s clearly a gold or if it’s very clearly not going to win anything; and fill in an entire score sheet for each individual model on the table, well, you will have your judges there for several hours on end. In some competitions I’ve seen it happen for five, six, seven hours of judging. If you let the judges just write down which ones get the gold, which ones get the silver, which ones get the bronze, you cut down on the administration time, your judging team has to do by tenfold and you can get the same judging done in an hour, or maybe two, with less judges. And that’s an important point. The less judges you need, the more easy it is to get enough judges for your competition. And the more feasible it is to actually invite people with a lot of experience in modelling and in judging, people that have a good eye for it, people that are respected by the competitors, because again, if you respect the opinion of the judges that judge your work, your medal has some value to it. If you don’t respect these people, your medal has no value whatsoever. So if you have a very efficient, fast system to work with, you can do it with less judges. You can get better judges or you can make sure that there are, well, that your smaller group consists only of good experienced judges, and I think you can have the better quality of judging.

Chris

How do you think we can improve competition for competitors, for judges, for the hobby?

Marijn

Well, I think the most important thing is to have a good atmosphere. And when I hear other people talk about it, and I agree, when you think about the competitive aspects of a competition, people mostly just want to know that their model has been looked at and that it has been assessed fairly, no more, no less. Of course, there are always those people who just want to win no matter what, but I think this is a very small minority and we shouldn’t take them into account. We just have to make sure that the judging is done as well as possible and because it is done by humans, it’s never going to be perfect. There is always matter of opinion in it, there is always going to be discussion about it. But the more you can rule this out, the better it will be for the long -term atmosphere around the competition. That’s, I think, one thing. On the other hand, there can also be the social aspects. I really like the way figure competitions are doing it now for decades already, but maybe it can be expanded a little bit beyond that, how models of individual modelers are grouped as a display. Because that makes it easier to go to your display or to the display of the person you just met and go and check out their latest work or talk about your own latest work at your own display, without having to go like, “yeah, I have something here on this table and I have something on the other side and over there I have another model.” I really like the displays, it makes it easier and just more fun to mingle with the other modelers around each other’s work.

Chris

I think for having your own sort of level in the hobby assessed as well, it goes back to what we’re saying about going to various shows and getting a range of opinions on your work, where you’re giving a range of your work. So it’s easier for the judges to accurately assess where you are at the moment in terms of your abilities and your skills. Because if one of the models is not so good,  that’s not the one model they’re looking at. They’re not going to say, “he’s a silver level modellist at the moment”, they might look at the other one and say, “well, that’s a gold.” And in which case they’ll look at the silver one and go, well, it’s not as good as this one, but he’s obviously capable of doing something really great. And so, you know, you get an accurate picture of where you are if you supply more than one model and put it in.

Marijn

I think so too, indeed. Well, of course, if they would be in separate categories, you will… Well, no, that’s not so relevant, because this place will also be split up for several different categories, of course. There is a good reason to have different categories. Of course, with the open system, if indeed theoretically you judge against the level of the hobby and you judge completely open gold silver bronze you could put everything in just one category. Theoretically that is possible and I think the new show in the Salt Lake City area is going to do something maybe not completely like that but close to that with very, very few classes or categories I believe, so I’m curious. Absolutely, I’m interested.

(Marijn is referring to the Rocky Mountain Hobby Expo https://rockymtnhobbyexpo.com/)

Chris

It should be very interesting to hear what comes from that.

Marijn

But once there is a certain amount of models, it becomes of course a bit difficult just as a quantity. Well, we have discussed how it is important, for consistency reasons, to have the same people judge the same class all over. And of course, once there are too many models, you need to split up the models somehow to make it possible for a judging team to get it done in time. On the other hand, if you want to have capable judges, nobody knows everything about everything and I’m not talking about historical accuracy, but I’m talking about the current styles and techniques in certain genres. These can be very different from automotive modelling to figure painting. For example, there are big differences and it’s impossible to find judges who know enough about each subject of each genre, to be able to judge well. You need to split it up a little bit also, according to genre, simply because the styles and techniques differ. As a judge you also need to know a bit about what materials are used, what kits could be used or are available, or figures or whatever, so you can recognize what [extra work] has been to it or not. So you cannot be up to date with every genre you’re able to judge, well enough I think.

Chris

I think in a way you already answered the question about what can be done to improve shows. I think the number one thing is to invite really good judges, to be selective about who you ask to judge.

Marijn

Absolutely. And I think some of the best shows with the best atmosphere that I have been to, do exactly that. Euromilitaire used to do that. SMC is doing that. World Expo is doing that. Moson is doing that. MFCA, Chicago Show are doing that. KMK Show is doing that, of course. Well, no, basically we do the judging with club members only because we don’t need such a big team as, for example, SMC. We can do the entire work with 12 to 14 people, and we have plenty of people in the club that have enough experience with judging and with the different genres that we can get it all done within the club which makes it easy to say, “okay, we’re not competing ourselves as club members. We do the judging.” And in that way, there certainly won’t be any bias that we’re trying to help our own club members more than others or whatever.

Chris

I think it’s fair to say you have an unusually high number of world -class modelers in your club as well, which helps.

Marijn

at risk of… what’s the word? Of tooting my own horn too much. I think you’re right. But it’s an asset both for club life and for developing modelling within the club. And it’s also for organizing the competition at our show. And it’s not just for those reasons, it’s because there are plenty of other people around that we could also ask from other clubs in Belgium, and outside, that visit the show that we could also ask to do the judging; together with us, or instead of us. That wouldn’t be a problem. The thing is, if you do it with your own club members, it’s easier to make sure everything runs smoothly and efficiently. You know everybody very well. It’s easy to communicate. It’s easy to keep the time, to check if things are running out you can very easily say to people like come on it’s time to round it up because we still have to do all the other stuff before the award ceremony so it’s just a very efficient way of working and for me that’s one probably more important even a reason to do it with club members alone otherwise we in the past we did it with people from outside the club too and as a quality that doesn’t make a difference. [There are] plenty of good modellers around. But you’re right, I think inviting judges rather than just using whoever feels like judging at the day, whether it’s their first show or they have been around for decades, it’s important to have a grasp on who is doing the judging.

Marijn

One aspect to improve the competitions from the point of view of the general public is to provide good lighting, provide enough space to circulate and don’t make the tables too low. Try to elevate them to a height that is back friendly. But of course, every show has their technical challenges with the venue and with whatever can get organized. So it’s of course understanding that not everybody can do it as well as the next show. At our show too, we also have to find a balance between the space available and the materials available and what we can provide for the visitors as a comfort.

So for example, at our new venue, we have, I think, a very nice central location with very good natural lighting, but that can depend on the weather at the moment. It’s on a kind of multiple level stage area, which makes it possible to put the tables at the edges of the levels. And in that way, you’re able to view it from one side more top down, while at the other side, the tables are much higher because it’s on a level that you’re not standing on. And you can look at the models much better without having to bend down. But there is one big disadvantage, only the first level has a ramp, the rest has steps. So for wheelchair accessibility, it’s problematic. [We have not] found a solution for that yet, which is really a pity I think. So we will continue to think about that for the future. But just to illustrate, there are always pros and cons and technical issues to overcome.

Chris

Absolutely.

Marijn

things will rarely be perfect, but just thinking about these things is already important for an organization of a competition, I think.

Chris

Well, Marijn, I think that’s a good place to end. Thank you very much for this conversation today. And I hope listeners enjoy it. Do write in if you have any comments or questions for Marijn. Thank you.

Marijn

Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you.



I hope you enjoyed this discussion.

I have one last thing to ask, putting together this blog and podcast comes with some cost, If you can, please do support the Model Philosopher by becoming a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/theModelPhilosopher

A little while ago, I decided to add interviews to this blog, starting with Calvin Tan’s fantastic discussion on Art and Modelling To make that I had a video chat with Calvin and used an edited transcript to produce the blog post.

A few people asked if it would be available as a podcast and at the time I wasn’t sure. But in the end, I thought, “its not a lot of extra work, so why not?” and the Model Philosopher Podcast is now a thing!

The Podcast will not replace the blog. I will continue to post these interviews in edited transcript form, with illustration, on the blog. I will also continue to post my editorial style blogs, but for those that prefer to listen, the interviews will be available as a podcast.

I hope you enjoy it.

I often think “Sorry I haven’t been posting much, guys.” Posts are kind of lame. For one thing, they assume people were missing you posting, which is somewhat presumptuous, for another, they don’t really add anything to the general conversation. I always resolved not to make that kind of post.

But here I am. Making an apology for being absent.

The fact is, I’ve been very busy. (I know, everyone is busy, get over myself already.) As you may have read here , I had to call it a day on my publishing business due to the decline of hobby publishing, and Brexit. Of course, I can’t just sit on my hands if I want to eat and pay the bills so I started learning Fusion 360 CAD, and starting designing stuff.

What a frickin’ rabbit hole! Not only has the design sucked me in like like a duck into a jet engine, but the business has taken off and its an endless round of design, send to print, package and dispatch. It is still early days, but it looks very promising. You can see, and shop, what I’m doing at https://www.insidethearmour.com/shop-1

Some of you may know I was a big scratchbuilder (I even published three books on the subject as ITA Publishing, and co-wrote a fourth recently for AK Interactive) and my journey into CAD as a scratchbuilder has been eye opening. A blog will follow on that soon.

So, anyway, between learning Fusion, the new business, building models for others to publish, and recording and editing the Sprue Cutters Union Podcast; there have not been enough hours in the day to do a blog as well. However, you should know by now that a new blog was published recently, a discussion with the incredible Calvin Tan, and more in this style will follow in future, where I take a topic and get a modeller with a particular insight to join me to discuss it.

Thank you for your patience (if you noticed I was gone! And if you didn’t, I hope you enjoy the new blogs upcoming anyway) and thanks for reading