28mm Austin K2 'Luke Warm in Cairo'

[Tim Marlow]

Hey Tim
Y'know, you can only see those little pit marks with the ridiculous resolution of my digicam! They're practically invisible with my painting magnifyer!

BTW Is the cab interior supposed to be white/ pale like the rear or is the back wall exterior colour? According to the 1/35th job. In the film there are those dark chip marks around the door so beloved of desert vehicle modellers (and very rarely visible on photos of reality. If I ever get another Katy I'll be doing a green BEF one. Or Pricess Elizabeth's one.
Or maybe scratchbuild a Humber ambulance...

Hi mate
The holes were emphasised by the light then…..didn’t want your best brush disappearing into them LOL…..
As to the interior, early ones were mid stone at the back and body coloured in the cab. Later ones were body coloured in the cab and white in the back.

Back difference shown well here, three later ones and and early at the end……
Got no shots that show the cab in colour on my IPad, but there are quite a few on the net.

Katy is an early version, by the way, so has the mid stone ambulance back.

cheers
Tim

[Steve-the-Duck]

Thanks Tim
So that's a darker than white grey then

Think I'm going to try one of the figures first.
Apart from a brief introductory shot, 'Sister Norton' the second nurse, may not have even been on location, spending most of the time unconscious or dying in the back of Katy, ie the studio set. So I might not include her in the planned group shot display...
Or make her the publicity girl taking the photo...

[Tim Marlow]

Thanks Tim
So that's a darker than white grey then

Think I'm going to try one of the figures first.
Apart from a brief introductory shot, 'Sister Norton' the second nurse, may not have even been on location, spending most of the time unconscious or dying in the back of Katy, ie the studio set. So I might not include her in the planned group shot display...
Or make her the publicity girl taking the photo...

It’s more of a buff colour to be honest Steve. I wouldn’t go with an off white or light grey if I were you.
Good example here….

It’s actually darker than the outside…….
Monochrome filter applied….

[Steve-the-Duck]

That colour to monochrome is VERY useful. Muchly ta! The interior set, which must be very fiercely lit in the studio is very pale but not white.

I keep rewatching bits of the film for greyscaling, but I don't think there's a time the doors are fully open and turned back

And neither have I noticed tha 'X' support on the folding step in the film

As an aside, when they have their first encounter with the Afrika Corps, three 'German' tanks are visible, with squiggly camo and big crosses on the side. They're Centurions! There's a colour movie with Victor Mature called, I think, 'Tank Force', where what may be the same tanks appear. It was made a year after 'Alex' in Egypt, while 'Alex' was shot in Libya. Armour buffs note there's also a couple of Cromwells and an AEC MkIII armoured car appearing, just before, according to the credits, they were retired by the Queens Bays
The film is pretty bad otherwise, with the Centurions changing sides during the final battle
It's not in my war film collection!

For just a brief moment there I thought, 'should I do a Hollywood Hanomag Afrika Korps M3 halftrack?'
And then I got better

[Steve-the-Duck]

Hmm. Latest step

With the 'spare' Nurse Nolan figure I can experiment a bit
Clothes are fine, but the skin tone is way too pale. That and the camera blows up the figure ridiculously huge

Also, for some reason, she's holding a syringe!?

Looking at the film again (and again) I'll be painting Katy overall in a fairly light tone, probably using the same colour for the inside. But the interior has to be smooth and shiny
Oh, and the bullet holes are visible on the outside, but they don't quite match the placement inside
No surprise there

[Tim Marlow]

Greyscale really isn’t that easy is it……I think she needs some deeper shading to give her more definition and volume……coming on nicely though.

As to Katy and the bullet holes, apparently there were about three of them, so the holes that don’t line up might be on an understudy…..and I’d still go slightly darker in the back…..desert sun is very bright, so the outside highlights will be very bright compared to the interior shadow. You’ll need that for it to read properly in greyscale.

[Steve-the-Duck]

So, re-done 'flesh' tone on Nurse Nolan, slightly darker

And taken from further away to get around my camera's ridiculously high definition. Kind of 'actual size'
Mills, Quayle and Andrews have a darker flesh tone. John Mills is distinctly darker than his clothes. And they're shiny with sweat
I've also discovered the only time Mills is as the figure is when he's digging the grave.

[Steve-the-Duck]

Another detail I'm considering adding to Katy is the dashboard, as there are no controls on the model

Oddly, in some shots across the driver's shoulder, it's got KATY written on the frame below the windscreen. Might add that eventually...

[rtfoe]

Is 28mm 1/48 scale? Always think its 1/72. BTW Katy's looking good Chris.

Cheers,
Wabble

[Tim Marlow]

Is 28mm 1/48 scale? Always think its 1/72. BTW Katy's looking good Chris.

Cheers,
Wabble

28mm is about 1/56…..give or take a bit. 1/72 is small sized 25mm…….…
The trouble is that figures are supposedly measured to the eye line, but some sculptors measure to the top of the head,……..gamer figures are not consistently scaled, even across the same manufacturers ranges. Too much leeway is left to the sculptors interpretation.

[Steve-the-Duck]

Is 28mm 1/48 scale? Always think its 1/72. BTW Katy's looking good Chris.

Cheers,
Wabble

The scale thing came up in another thread a while back. I think that was me too

So, background and history, a quick primer, as it's always worth clarifying.
Airfix figures, plastic, nominally 1/72 / 1/76. Realistic propirtions and some 'chunky', like the Napoleonic French. 1/72 works out at about 20mm, metal figure wise
In the'seventies you get metal wargames figures appearing, called 25mm, basically an inch tall. You can get larger armies in the same table space with smaller scales, hence the appearance of 15mm (1/100 ISH) 10mm (1/144 ISH), 6mm and smaller like 1/300th. One company invented 1/285 for a slightly larger, more detailed ‘1/300'

And so, by the same reasoning, we get 28mm. 25mm mutated into that thanks to the appearance of the chunkier figures in the 'eighties from Guess Who and others. Then came the foot-to-eye thing, apparently so there was some kind of consistency in comparative sizes. Is a Napoleonic figure with a tall shako the same'height' as a WWW2 figure in a soup bowl?

Anyhoo, where does 1/56 come from. Well, 25mm used to be about 1/60th. So, we get this weird figure. Arbitrary? Kind of. It's ball park. This does mean you get inconsistencies. Look for my comparison of the Perrys Morris CS8 radio truck and the Warlord CS8 GS. About as different as 1/72 to 1/76, Airfix to Esci, while the A13 cruisees from Blizkrieg and Warlord are identical.
Cue They Might be Giants song 'Actual Size'
Many wargamers don't worry too much to comparative 'scales' so long as they've got the gear they want. Igot some British BEF BSA motorbikes which were '28mm' AND 1/48. Painted and sold because they looked too huge

Figure wise I've gone for 'chunky' for Europe and 'realistic proportion' (Perrys) Western desrt

So, I go for consistency in size by theatre

Thinking about it, '1/56' may have first appeared when Italeri started a plastic kit range for Warlord with a Firefly

[Steve-the-Duck]

And just to coda this, comparer and contrast


Renault UE from warlord and a 3d print one, both nominally 28mm. The print version is 'scaled to the figures', you also get vice versa

A13 Cruisers, metal Warlord (ex-BEF Miniatures) and resin Blirtzkrieg, same 'scale' figures slightly 'oversize'

[Tim Marlow]

The scale thing came up in another thread a while back. I think that was me too

So, background and history, a quick primer, as it's always worth clarifying.
Airfix figures, plastic, nominally 1/72 / 1/76. Realistic propirtions and some 'chunky', like the Napoleonic French. 1/72 works out at about 20mm, metal figure wise
In the'seventies you get metal wargames figures appearing, called 25mm, basically an inch tall. You can get larger armies in the same table space with smaller scales, hence the appearance of 15mm (1/100 ISH) 10mm (1/144 ISH), 6mm and smaller like 1/300th. One company invented 1/285 for a slightly larger, more detailed ‘1/300'

And so, by the same reasoning, we get 28mm. 25mm mutated into that thanks to the appearance of the chunkier figures in the 'eighties from Guess Who and others. Then came the foot-to-eye thing, apparently so there was some kind of consistency in comparative sizes. Is a Napoleonic figure with a tall shako the same'height' as a WWW2 figure in a soup bowl?

Anyhoo, where does 1/56 come from. Well, 25mm used to be about 1/60th. So, we get this weird figure. Arbitrary? Kind of. It's ball park. This does mean you get inconsistencies. Look for my comparison of the Perrys Morris CS8 radio truck and the Warlord CS8 GS. About as different as 1/72 to 1/76, Airfix to Esci, while the A13 cruisees from Blizkrieg and Warlord are identical.
Cue They Might be Giants song 'Actual Size'
Many wargamers don't worry too much to comparative 'scales' so long as they've got the gear they want. Igot some British BEF BSA motorbikes which were '28mm' AND 1/48. Painted and sold because they looked too huge

Figure wise I've gone for 'chunky' for Europe and 'realistic proportion' (Perrys) Western desrt

So, I go for consistency in size by theatre

Thinking about it, '1/56' may have first appeared when Italeri started a plastic kit range for Warlord with a Firefly

…..and you never mentioned the OO/HO dichotomy of the early Airfix figures at all…….

25mm metal gaming figures were available in the mid 1960s, from both Minifigs and Hinchcliff. Other manufacturers joined in towards the end of the seventies, but these were ”industry standard“ for years. The other figures used extensively by gamers were 30mm Spencer Smith (still available ) and flat tin figures sourced from Europe.

28mm figures were first termed “Heroic scaled“ 25mm, but as users and sculptors realised that more detail could be incorporated on the larger size they quickly took over as the standard size during the late 1980s and early nineties. I believe there are now 32mm sized figures around…..growing out of 28mm for the same reasons…..

Interesting you mentioned 15mm as well……they’ve grown to 18mm, and shrunk to 12mm…..

In essence, the gaming figure world is just not really suited to scale modelling. It’s designed around gaming and painting, not display :tongue-out3:

[Steve-the-Duck]

What he said
HO/OO please no..! (Insert laughing emoji)
Oh yeah, 32mm is definitely a thing now, and often a 3D print option

Wait, if game stuff is 'non-scale' does that mean I can't come out to play here?
But, but, I DISPLAY mine

Srrusly tho', I paint and sell a fair bit of 15mm stuff on dreadbay, and recently got some that were, indeed, decidedly 10mm, but weren't mislabelled. Apparently

Oh yeah, and anyone remember Dragon's Monte Cassino Commonwealth Infantry, which had alternate headsto do six foot tall Ghurkhas?
'She's actual size but she seems much bigger to me...'

[Tim Marlow]

Scale creep…..where would we be without it……
Won’t be long before some marketing genius brings out “true scale“ 25mm figures, because you can get more on the table…….bit like minifigs did with the original 15mm figures…..