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 20th and early 21st 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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I never miss this show, and neither should you. I look forward to seeing you there
Thank you for sharing this very interesting conversation!
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Hearing about the back story of the speakers is something I am interested in. It fleshes them out instead of just “I build planes”
I hope to hear more like this. 🙂