Where did it all begin for you ?

[lespauljames]

hey folks, I was browsing photobucket and found one of my first figures from about 10 years ago,
i was building a lot of tanks and really didnt know where to start.
what were your first attempts? or what got you in to the figure game?

 

[Graham]

I don’t have any images of my early figures but I have always had an interest in military modelling, usually tanks and around the end of 2010 I got bored with them and wanted a challenge.

2011 I found this forum and despite the massive amount of support I got from here, I just could not grasp the principles of figure painting so I gave up. Fast forward a couple of years and I attended my first Figureworld and saw in the flesh some of the amazing work that gets posted on here. I decided to try again and although my efforts were not that good, I was ‘persuaded’ by a certain person who should remain nameless (Kev) to bring some figures along to the 2015 Figureworld so I did. It was quite embarrassing to see my poor efforts in amongs all that great stuff but it was also a bit of a thrill.

After that, with outside pressures and life in general not being good, it all went downhill so I did what I do best and gave up again vowing never to return to figure painting. In 2016 I retired and, slowly, life started to get better. 2018 I dug out what has survived from my figure stash and decided to give it another go.

Although I have so much still to learn I now find being able to apply techniques I just could not grasp years before. I came back to the comfort of this forum and just started painting again. I have no pretence of my skill level but, having a totally different mindset to what I used to have, I found I could get some passable results that pleased me and I started to really enjoy the painting.

I do care about my painting and I do want to progress but so long as I enjoy it, I don’t worry if it is not as good as others. It’s only paint and if I do move up a level, I can strip them all off and re do them.

 

[polyphemus]

Probably around 1959 when plastic toy soldiers replaced the old lead ones. Paint never would stick to those bendy plastic soldiers so I was always repainting them. Then along came Airfix 20mm's and I've never really stopped since. My only real regret from back then was not being aware of better quality figures and the existence of organisations like the BMSS.

Geoff

 

[Mirofsoft]

I met and became friend with Pierre in 1971/72 ( we are still friends )
At that time he told me about his passion ; plastic kits and the soldiers in the kit and blablabla and blabla ... I was NEVER interested by little soldier when I was young, but to shorten the story, I answered .. oh yes, I liked ... and blablabla . 2 months later he crossed the channel, came back and told me " I could not resist, I bought us some lead soldiers ( Sanderson, Lasset, Hinchliffe full artillery train napoleonic 6 horses ) your part is 20£
?????!!!!!!!!!!! what............
The only thinks I could do was buying Humbrol colours . I didn't want but today I'm still buying figures

Among the Sanderson I still have in a drawer some pieces I painted the same month

The subject is perhaps the reason why I found painting soldiers very fun ...
Then I met at The Heaumerie du Casque d'Or the owner who explained to me .. eyes ..... shadows .. highlights... use of oils, I spoke there with guys in visit :F. Verlinden, M Longhurst who were very open to explain tricks of the trade . I must said also that for the majority of the "competition" painters visiting there, I received blank star to my questions and the usual answer " ... It's trade secret ... "
No books, no mags, no internet
My first real lesson then was : I will never be like that and was completely open to explain what I learned, experimented, discovered and still I am
And with some explanation I received from Verlinden for painting tanks, I applied it ( the only one in my live ) and it was in the same years ( 74 - 75)

 

[theBaron]

I built models as a kid, from the time I was six, till I was eighteen. As I got older, and learned a little more, I painted the kit crew figures, and eventually, I made things like this diorama of the German invasion of Poland. All Tamiya kits and figures:




That was in 1982.

I also delved into Airfix figures in HO and 1/72, ending up with a 4"x8" Waterloo diorama. I first tried my hand at casting at that time, too, with plaster molds and lead from tire weights.

I left that all behind when I went off to college, but while I was living in Munich, I bought a set of homecast half-round Schneider toy soldiers at a flea market. After I graduated from college in '86, I found a couple of bronze Schneider molds at a flea market, and bought Richard O'Brien's "Collecting Toy Soldiers" to learn more about them. I learned about Prins August, and began casting my own with their molds. And around that time, I visited the MFCA show, then joined the club in 1992, and have been collecting, casting, and painting ever since. And that eventually led me to take up scale modeling again, around 1999.

Prost!
Brad

 

[DaddyO]

Can't remember what age I was when I started, but I do remember buying the old Airfix series 1 kits (in the plastic bags) from the local shop, quickly worked my way through them and the Matchbox models when they arrived before lurching into tanks from Tamiya (by then I'd found a local model shop) Had lots of fun with smoking candles putting 'weathering' on these. Figures started to appear and then the vehicles disappeared - my only contact at that stage was the annual trip to the Model Engineering exhibition where I was lucky enough to pick up a few prizes (I can't tell you how delighted I was when my 'Norman Knight' appeared in a description in Military Modelling - still got him somewhere)
Then art stuff took over (was a student at this time) and worked with a local prop maker producing props for TV and theatre before getting bitten by the balsa flying model bug. Several years of control line followed by many moons of competitive freeflight modelling before I, at last, accepted that the writing was on the wall with venues and competitors disappearing so I looked about for another challenge and stumbled across this forum which reignited the figure bug a year or two ago . . . . Many thanks to EVERYONE who posted and made Planet Figure such a source of inspiration and help

Paul

 

[MasterCaster]

Wow! Do I feel old.

I started casting in the early 1950's.
My uncle gave me about a dozen metal casting molds. My best friend and I created many armies of these lead figures.
Many years later, in the late 1980's I found a few of these old metal molds in flea markets and antique stores.
My collection grew rapidly when the internet became a popular place to sell these. Over the years I made many friends who were fellow casters.
Sometime in the mid 1990's One of my friends (Bert Dunken) convinced me to buy his company. The Dunken Company makes and imports vulcanized rubber molds.
I found that making these molds was as cool as casting the figures. Over the years I acquired several companies that manufactured toy soldiers (military miniatures).
I own the rights to Sea Soldiers, Waterloo Galleries, Bivouac, and an unnamed company of Alamo figures.
I also have many of the production molds for the Bussler Civil War figures. I consider these in public domain since Doc Bussler's heirs sold the license to these figures to several individuals.
To be honest I never was competent enough to paint the figures. The work that you folks here do is very impressive.
I can help if you have questions about old metal molds, vulcanized rubber molds, or need custom molds made from your sculpts.
Anyway, thanks for letting me take a trip down memory lane.
Happy casting and painting!

Rich

 

[yellowcat]

I was browsing at my local hobby shop back in the late seventies early eighties. There were some Sanderson figures on display. I was pretty amazed on their details. I bought couples and painted them with Humbrol enamel and I was hooked since. I saw an article in Campaigns magazine #30 on painting a 54mm dapple gray horse in oil. The horse was produced by Phoenix Model Developments and sculpted by Tim Richards. I bought the same kit and painted my first horse in oil. I also painted the female skin tone in oil the very first time. Here is the figure. The name on the wood base was free hand lettering done with a pen nib in gold paint. Later that year, I saw Ray Lamb Poste Militaire's Mounted Samurai figure in Campaigns magazine. I bought the figure and painted my second horse in oil. From there onward I only paint in oil and also dedicated myself on the subject of Samurai.

Cheers,

Felix

 

[Martin64]

Briefly - playing with little soldiers was not very popular with the female fraction of my family namely my mother but when I got my first set of Airfix soldiers I was hooked and although model ships, planes and tanks were done it was always about their crews for me. I grew up in the backwoods of Germany in the early seventies and their was just one shop offering one brand - Airfix - so for a long time I was completely unaware of other companies in the market.
From this time I still keep my first conversion ( a German officer of WWI to lead my favorite troops into battle) and my first Continentals from the Collector`s series which got me started into historical plastic figure kits - all painted with Humbrols - eyes with the tip of a needle - parts cleaned with a kitchen knife.....

Cheers, Martin

 

[Wayneb]

Big Daddy Roth and copying his work with pencil and paper, Mad Magazine, cheap Aurora kits my mother bought me. And all this in between watching Cheyenne,..The Rifleman,..and Twilight Zone...…..All the makings of pure genius.....And then during the day when the sun was out...burning ants with a magnifying glass was always a challenge, and that's only scratching the surface of what the young ones are missing out on these days....

Wayne

 

[cinimod]

I think that like most I started off with Airfix and Tamyia models. Usually a mix of anything from motorbikes, cars and military. I did try the figures to with them, but most of the figures finished up looking like they were painted with a 4" brush.
Started painting figures in the late eighties early nineties with Sovereign and PM figures. Kids and family life, but mainly no spare cash led to a bit of a lull but as things got more settled moved on to busts. I do find them easier to paint now though as the eyesight dictates the bigger scales..........dom

 

[MasterCaster]

Not related to miniatures, but today's kids are missing a bunch.
There appears to be an absence of kids just going out to play on their own.
Too much organized sports and electronics.
We had to figure it out for ourselves. What games we would play, who we would play with, what were the rules.
I was out of the house all the time. Came back for meals and when it got dark.
A lot of kids today don't know how to interact with others.
And to Wayneb's comments, the TV shows back then taught values. Hats off to John Wayne!
Okay I'll get off my soap box now.

 

[Rich Sculpts]

1975 when I saw this in the newsagents shop (still have it).

 

[Tony Dawe]

I think it was 1971/72 and I was about 5 or 6 years old. Mum took me shopping and I pestered her into buying the new Tamiya Kubeleagen kit that had just been released. I built and painted it in about 2 hours and was completely hooked from that point on. I didn’t care that it was painted in gloss chocolate brown. 50 years later I’m still hooked.

 

[oldtrousers]

Seeing Shep Paine's figures on the box art and in the instruction sheets included with Monogram kits when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was hooked on figures from then on. A little while later, I discovered the Saratoga Soldier shop and although I still built tanks and planes, figure became my primary modeling interest.

Scott

 

[blaster]

I had done simple figure conversions were with Airfix multipose sets. then I came across a job lot of Historex kits at a figure show. I did my first full figure conversion from a Historex academy nude, based on a famous painting of Diana The Huntress by the school of Fontainbleau. I had carved the hunting dog out of melted plastic sprue. Bow and string were all made from carved plastic and stretched sprue. I placed the whole scene in a plastic food container, with the base created on the lid. The container has never been opened since it was first made over 30 years ago.

Rgds Victor

 

[Ned Ricks]

Reading the above posts, I see/hear echoes of familiar themes.
When I was a boy in the 1950s, we lived on a farm that had, conveniently by the house, a plum orchard. In the summers, the ground under the trees could be raked to a semblance of usability for a very large "board game", 80 yards by 30 yards, using Britains lead soldiers. These games would go on until the frosts of autumn and the requirement to go back to school made us declare and armistice until next year.
During cold months, fun was found in assembling, and badly painting, Revell and Monogram airplanes and tanks. When a teenager, the choice of disposable money was between gas for the family car for dates or model kits, and dates won out.
In the mid 1990s, my corporate job in Chicago was quite stressful, and my wife more-than-nudged me into "a hobby, any hobby!" The local hobby store was mostly trains, but there was a plastic kit section. I grabbed a few, a selection of paints, a fist full of brushes and glues and began.
The first kit was a M151 vehicle similar to the ones I was used to in my military service, but I found I enjoyed the figures that came with it even more. When a friend at the IPMS chapter informed me there was a major figures contest (MMSI) the next weekend, I went. The sight of a hotel ballroom peopled by artistically done figures was like Aladdin's cave to me. And, the vendors were in the next door room to provide the beginnings of a satisfying retirement hobby. The how-to articles in Military Modeling magazine gave me instruction and hope to improve.
Thanks for sharing your stories.
N

 

[theBaron]

...Sometime in the mid 1990's One of my friends (Bert Dunken) convinced me to buy his company. The Dunken Company makes and imports vulcanized rubber molds...

Is Bert still with us? I haven't heard from him in a long, long time, but when I was starting out in casting, he was my main source for molds-I got my Prins August molds from Bert-and advice, too. It's good to know that you're keeping his business going.

And, welcome to the Planet!

Prost!
Brad

 

[Babelfish]

It’s only paint and if I do move up a level, I can strip them all off and re do them.

It's worth keeping a few though Graham, it's the best way to gauge your own progress.

- Steve

 

[Babelfish]

First phase (junior school): The old Aurora "glows-in-the-dark" horror movie figures (and Pyro dionsaur kits)

Second phase (mid to late teens): Inspired by the Verlinden dioramas in the Tamiya catalogues, also enjoyed the Airfix multipose figures.

Third phase (1997 - now): Inspired afresh by my first visit to Euro in Folkestone.

I did virtually no modelling of any kind between 1981 and 1997.

- Steve