Kudos To The Old Modellers

I’ve spent the last few weeks researching a build which has involved a lot of reading of various books but also a huge ammount of time spent online trawling through thousands of online photos, many on Russian and Polish websites. Add to that many hours trying to find the best books to get and just reading online accounts so as to be able to put together a good overall picture of what I want to do.

Then yesterday I had the chance to flick through a few modelling books from the late 70s and early 80s and I have to say that when you consider that they had no internet with which to research builds back then you can’t help but be impressed by what could be acheived. Add to that the consideration that the kits they were working with then are now 30 years old and wouldn’t be considered as particularly good kits these days and it’s even more impressive.

In that point in time ( late 70s to ealy 80s ) I can remember browsing the various books at Whitcoulls and London bookshops that related to military history, in particular the old Squadron Signal books. There seemed to be a lot more military reference books around back then than you’ll find in most bookshops these days. At least in New Zealand. I still struggle to work my way through the thousands listed on Amazon. But even with more books it must have taken literally years to accrue the level of knowledge that these days can be found on the web in a matter of days.

Of course modellers back then were probably also blissfully ignorant of all the people on the web who will constantly tell you that a particular kit is glaringly wrong and they also were sans the pressure to use all the latest and greatest weathering techniques to make their models look more like how we like to think they looked rather than how they actually did, and that is reflected in the photos in these magazines.

But the thing is you look at these 30 year old dioramas and you don’t find yourself thinking “oh look, that barrel is half a centimeter too long”. Instead you find yourself thinking “damn that looks good” and marvelling at the level of scratchbuilding that went into something to replicate what today we get straight from a box. You can see weathering built up painstakingly with hours of drybrushing, and figures lovingly bought to life from dull old Tamiya and Italeri figures.

In a way I sort of feel like modelling has devolved, not evolved. It’s like music and literature. Forty years ago to get a record produced the music had to be good, to get a book published it had to be good. These days the web offers people the opportunity to produce their own. These days almost anything gets published or produced. And with models the models themselves have become so good, the online tutorials so good, and the techniques a step by step guide that anyone can follow so that anyone can paint like Picasso.

I see photos of hundreds of models, hundreds of dioramas, and honestly so few inspire me the way photos of ones from thirty years ago do. Maybe it’s just me but you feel like when a modeller put so much work into his build that it conveys exactly what he pictured in his mind so well that it lifts it a big notch. Of course there were crap ones back then too, but I’m talking about the truely good ones, the ones that you remember, that you find yourself looking at for ages.

I see many today that are technically proficient but entirely lifeless. I think after I finish what I have on the go I am going to try a new tack, I am going to build less so as to be able to build more.

One of Shep Paine’s, and one I think is really good for its time.

The following photos along with the first one of the drawbridge are from Japanese modeller Tatsuya Kaneko, dating from the late 70s to late 80s.