Hi Marijn
The plan seems very interesting
why you do not make to see more

Saluti MAB :lol:

Nice work my friend as usual. Waiting ti see thempainted as i also am really interested in animals

Extremely well done !
Fantastic idea !


cheers

Wojciech Lubicz-Lapinski

Marjin,

you aren't normal! I had this idea since our first meeting two years ago in Saint Vincent…

you are giving to our world different point of view, different vision and opportunity, different way to think at our small pieces of putty…

that’s great more than the extraordinary techniques more that the great painting skill…

you are lucky that photography was invented years ago… however how we could enjoy so small gems?

Ciaoo

See you soon

Ivo

Awesome!
Is there something you can't sculp?

Marijn, It's always a treat to see your work. The animal pieces are no exception. I look forward to seeing these pieces completed.

Mike, Fortunately there are thousands of human interest type stories that we can tell through the medium. Though depicting scenes of combat may make one uncomfortable, I think you can still sculpt a soldier without feeling that you are gloryfying war somehow.~Gary

Excellent as usual Marijn. What a unique subject.

John

Hi Marjin,
They look perfect as always. next time when you are in Karsiyaka-Izmir-Turkey with your parents in law , if you need anything related to modelling like 1/35 heads or any other parts, magic sculpt or another putty or just a model chat with beers next to Aegean sea, please inform me. I can help you anytime. keep safe
Engin

Hey Marijn,


weeral schitterend hé.

Elke keer opnieuw doet ge mijn mond openvallen van verbazing.


Wim

............you got magical hands, my respect!

Anastasios

Hello Marijn

Ecco all the other comments, just fantastic

Maybe a new price at next Euro , "The David Attenborough Trophy" for best oxpecker up to 54 mm :lol:

You never stop to surprise!

All the best

Per Olav

Hello guys!

sorry for the late reply, but better late than never...

Thanks a lot everybody for the nice words and comments! They are very much appreciated.


Thanks Mike for the superlatives!
Like Gary, I also feel it to be the worst to model soldiers without any relation to the situation around them. So I am perfectly fine with heroic scenes, as it is just a section of war and we can't show more than a one point of view per project. But personally I'm never too much interested in this type of story. What attracts me in military subjects is how men can be pushed into doing unthinkable things because of the war around him (and I am usually more interested in the negative, crazy or often even horrific, instead of the positive heroic), or on the contrary how men manage to stay human and try to keep elements of normal life while in war.
I don't think many modellers are consciensly trying to glorify war, but maybe some don't keep all aspects of it in mind while making models? Or maybe many people prefer to make a scale replica of a uniform which happens to have a man in it (like a manequin), instead of trying to create an athmosphere, put a character in that man or even have him tell a story. Just different strokes I guess.
But I am quite sure that many modellers are doing military subjects simply because they rolled into it, so because everybody else is doing it and the market focusses on it. This is sometimes a pity, because there are indeed millions of other subjects/stories around for which our medium is perfectly suited, and the possibilities are literally endless. For me personally, I have decided to take the opportunity and for the first year or so, I have no military subjects planned whatsoever!
And Mike, I really agree that the evening news is downright depressing, and that maybe some more people should be checking their motives than only us modellers...

Thanks Romain for the tip! I will certainly try out the smoke, as well as some of the other transperant tamiya colours. I'm not sure about the resin, as it is very unforgiving and difficult to "play around with untill it looks good", but with some luck it might work indeed. thanks!

Hello Marc, it is completely Magic Sculpt.

Hello Stefan. Well, in fact it's not really a big job. Both are quite small (fitting on a 2 by 2 cm base) and together took only 2 weeks of sculpting. Admittedly, I was on a holliday so I could put some more time into than usual.

Thanks Johan!
1) magic sculpt. It is more flexible than milliput when soft and crumples less when carving.
2) no real armature. I scaled down a good side-view photo and printed this, using it constantly to check measurements. Volumes where sculpted by eye only.
For the pelican, I started with the two parts of the beak (carved out of two hardened strips of MS), joined them with a ball of putty, and sculpted the rest of the head on top of this ball. Next I joined the head with a very rough and undersized base for the body (blob of MS rougly shaped) with a brass wire. The legs also have a brass wire in them. Next, it was just a matter of building up the volumes and adding the textures.
3) the feather texture was done by finishing the sculpting with a very thin layer of MS, in which the detail was pressed. For most feathers, I simply used a toothbick, often even only the blunt side. Most important is to study the size and direction of the feathers of the real bird and just mimicing the general feel instead of replicating them one by one.
The wing needed a different approach. First a basic shape of the wing was sculpted. Then, the top was coated with a thin layer of MS and the feathers pressed in. For the large feathers, I used the side of a scalpel, starting at one end and creating a slightly overlapping feel while progressing to the other. After this hardened, I carved the end of every large feather and thinned the underside of the wing with sandpaper and a knife, and repeated the proces for the underside.

Thanks a lot for the refenrences, but probably I'll be doing some other animal than birds next! :lol:

Thanks Ivan! You are right, I always liked to include animals in my scenes! But now, they deserve to be the main actors! In fact, I have really been wanting to become a biologist for most of my elementary and highschool time (reading about animals a lot!), but at the end figured out that an interest in animals might not be enough to become a biologist, so I chose archaeology instead.
Thanks fopr the painting tips also!
I won't be casting them. It is too late now, but I probably also won't do it for future projects since it would slow me down way too much, and I already feel I need 10 times more time for modelling! :lol:

Welcome to the forum Sébastien, and thanks a lot!

Thanks Ivo! That's a very nice compliment you gave me!

Thanks Patrick! Yes, everything I didn't sculpt yet! I will have to learn those while I'm doing them...

Hello Engin! I wish I was better in my administration and didn't lose the paper with your email, otherwise I would have certainly contacted you when in Izmir, just to talk modelling a bit (we should have taken already more time for that in Saint Vincent!). Can you send me your email again? Thanks a lot!

Merci Wim! En waar gaat ge mij binnenkort weer mee verbazen? Tot in Ransart?

Thanks Per Olav! Great name for a trophy! :lol:
I've always been a huge fan of Attenboroughs' work!


Thanks again everybody, and best wishes,

Marijn

Danke Marijn for your thoughtful reply. Talented and philosophical too!

As for the war thing...... well, what is our fascination?

I don't know. For me, I think I 'fell into it' as you say. My first obsession when I was a child was with models. I loved models of cars and airplanes period. End of story. I spent fully half of my youthful model building years making model CARS. Hot rods and dragsters mostly. And guess what folks, I am still building them! I just haven't finished any of them in years! Here are a couple of my custom car models to show that I am not making this up!




The other half was doing aircraft. Naturally the only model airplanes available were mostly military. I think the real fascination for me was with the models first and the machinery second. I never though much about war. I really started sculpting figures as additions to my models. At some point I decided the figures were more interesting than the models. They only ended up being military because that is the kind of modeling I was doing.

But I am older now and I have been examining my life. I think our cultures fill our heads with a lot of ideas that are ultimately destructive and unhealthy. The glory of war is just one of many. I think we glorify war because the alternative, acknowledging that war is little more than institutionalized murder of our fellow men, is perhaps a pill that is too hard to swallow! But sorry folks, that IS what it is!
War is heinous business. If we had any brains we would try to figure out how to live without it.

I am thinking that the Rodney King credo, "why can't we all just get along?" is a much more healthy way to direct your lives. And this makes me wonder what I am doing making models of little murderers........

Hey, how about that Batmobile model!! :lol:

Just some food for thought.

Archaeology huh? Sounds interesting! Perhaps we have a subject for some more interesting banter....

Cheers!!

Mike

Ah Marijn

I know the feeling of having a dream that would still be embedded in you ... when I was young I was like you fascinated by animals, animal documentaries, antopology and breeding tropical fish ... ending in adream that I longed to be a zooligist! But alas no work was planned for me in our tiny island, so had to go for a vet but chemistry made me go nuts and saw that I was more inclined to art and ended as a designer!

To end this whole story, something that would be embeded in your boyhood dreams can still be realised and yes Marijn you expressed yourself in a great artistic way!

Mate you are inspiration!

Ivan

Apologies folks. As one member pointed put to me, not all military men are killers. This was not a nice thing to say and I apologize for any distress this statement might have caused.

MIke

Mike,

The discussion examining our motivations and the ethics of modelling military subject could easily take a whole forum of its own to fully cover. I have asked myself the same question and my wife and I have discussed it at length. I'm primarily an aircraft modeler, and have sometimes used the justification that the really "hotrod" aircraft are by nature, military aircraft. While it is unfortunate that they have guns and bombs attached to them, they are still the "race car" equivalents in the aircraft world (with the exception of a few racing plane subjects). I know this argument does not completely hold water, but it's one way to look at it.

There is one indeniable good that comes out of military modelling in that it (like other forms of art) promotes discussions just like this. It is also a medium for the retelling of history, and this is important.

Your comment is well taken, and this type of self-examination is important. I do believe that the modeling of military subjects can co-exist with a sound set of moral beliefs as long as this self-examination occurs and one understands and accepts one's own motivations.

Best regards,

Brent

OK, as I am sure everyone can see, this is leading in a completely different direction.....other than of course Marijn Van Gils' EXCELLENT sculpting of some birds. So, let's get back to the original purpose of the thread.......

Thanks again ,
Jim Patrick

Sorry for getting O/T - sometimes I can't help sticking my foot in it.

And, yes, the birds are extremely well done.

Hi Marjin,
Beautiful work, simply beautiful! I agree with others you should cast these and market them! Best Regards, Kevin

Hi Marjin,
Beautiful work, simply beautiful! I agree with others you should cast these and market them! Best Regards, Kevin