The Little World

Peopling the Dioramas.

Model car enthusiasts are real people, and they recognise that other real people are interested in motor cars. Wherever there is a race, rally, show, or meeting there will be enthusiasts circulating amongst the cars.

In some cases they are recognisable types. I can tell a hot rodder from a restorer of old English sedans. In turn, there are the speedway, Formula 1, and drag race sorts. The scale model trade also knows the various tribes and scales and brings out a surprising variety of small figures to add to dioramas.

Some are the products of big firms exporting out of China or Japan. They are skilled in small figurine manufacture and have enough imagination to make the results look international enough to fit in with western motor cars. In smaller scales the skill and discipline can retreat – I bought a cheap bag of 1/72 figures to populate my scale airports and they are decidedly skinny people. Mind you, I got 100 figures for the price of 6 Preiser ones, so there was value.

The average car or aircraft modeller doesn’t seem to be using the figure painting skills that a dedicated miniature painter would employ. The delicate shading and underpainting that makes the figures table at a model show so striking is missing, but then there may be 50 or 60 figures in a car diorama. Even painting one a day uses up that year pretty fast.

The thing I like about the trade figures, however, is the fact that while they can be painted with the sort of colours that real clothing has, the model painters don’t feel bound to follow the dullness of current fashions. I have seen the plastic equivalent of ugly sweaters on lots of layouts…and thoroughly approve.

After all, that’s what I wear…