The Perry twins in New Zealand

If you haven't been doing so already, make sure you keep an eye on the Perry Miniatures FaceBook page. Alan and Michael are posting about their experience here in New Zealand as they work on assembling the diorama.

An extra special paint-job

Mercury 6 ended up churning out 30+ Turks for the project, and worked on dozens more while touching up and repairing models that were damaged in transit.

"Usually after painting a unit of wargaming models I'll reward myself with a character model," he says. "But in this case my reward was one of the beautifully crisp resin Anzacs. He's a casualty, sadly, but still a great model to paint. It was nice to be able to spend a bit of time on a model rather than hurry through a mob of troops with one eye on the clock.

"I also picked up a New Zealand officer who I'm spending some time on, but this guy is my favorite so I thought I'd share a few pictures."

Group photo of Day 2

The happy team of wargamers, painters, figure sculptors, Weta staff, and even a film director who dropped by, who took part in Day 2 of the Gallipoli diorama assembly process. 

Day 2 of assembly of giant Gallipoli diorama at Weta Workshop

The Wellington team has turned up in good numbers again to help with assembling the Gallipoli diorama.  Within the confidentiality strictures for our work at Weta, here are a few shots of what's going on today.

Michael Perry and Armchair General survey the ground.  Herman from Kapiti standing on the left. 

McBeth, Brian and Nick hard at work touching up and painting the last few figures. 

Paul (back) and Alex from Wellington were also involved in touching up.

I was really honoured when the Perrys modelled one of their figures on me! 

Nick concentrates on the fine touching up.

Brian got the task of painting the two Turkish standard bearers, and touched up many more figures.

Alan and Michael Perry confer with Sir Peter Jackson on the finer points of Turkish tactics.

Caption competition - the Perry twins and their horde

What caption can you come up with for this pic of Alan and Michael Perry and just a few of the 54mm WW1 figures they've been creating recently?

The Perry twins are now in New Zealand to oversee the installation of the 5,003 Anzac and Turk figures they sculpted for the giant Gallipoli diorama in The Great War Exhibition, opening in Welington on 18 April.  

A tale of the lost soldiers

Last week, one of the Hutt/Tawa painters, Reinhold, was transporting nine New Zealand figures he had just finished painting. Whilst putting his gear into the car, he placed the box of soldiers and a wooden stand on the roof and (gulp!) forgot about them as he drove off.

Two hours later at the Marklin Model Railway Club, where he was to show the soldiers that night, he realised the figures weren't in the boot. With horror, it dawned on him what had happened. Immediately he went back to find them, but it was already dark. All he could find was the wooden stand.

Next day he searched again, with no luck. He even went through the rubbish containers as someone might have thrown the box in the rubbish - nothing!

On Monday, he designed and printed 40 flyers, went along Ward Street and put flyers into letterboxes and onto power poles.

That evening, a young chap rang: "I found your soldiers. Good that you put that flyer in my letterbox." First thing Tuesday morning Reinhold picked up his soldiers undamaged, much to his relief. He gave the young chap who was living in a simple flat a cash reward. Tuesday evening he was able to deliver the nine Kiwis, plus another ten he had finished, to his team coordinator.

A question of size

Look carefully at these two pics. They're photos that Paul R has posted over on the Pendraken Forum, showing some 10mm figures he's been working on, posed in front of some of the 54mm Turks he has painted.  As he says, they compare well!

   

Day 1 assembling the massive Gallipoli diorama at Weta Workshop

Today was Day 1 of the assembly of the diorama. About 20 of the Wellington region painters turned up this morning at Weta Workshop to help out. And what a day it was!

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of photos. I could say it was because of the confidentiality agreement we all had to sign on entering the Weta premises. However, that would be a lie, as I was given special permission to take photos for the blog so long as the background was not in view. So I did indeed take lots of photos - but I left the cord to transfer them from my camera to my computer back in Kapiti, when I'm staying the night here in Wellington! So the photos must remain safely on my camera for a night or two ...

That same confidentiality agreement means I can't tell you exactly what we did or saw during the day. But suffice to say that as we each entered the Weta building this morning, you could hear audible gasps of amazement at what we saw had been completed already on this project.

It was great to meet and work with Alan and Michael Perry, who had only flown in from the UK the day before. It was a real thrill to be able to chat with the actual sculptors of the figures we had laboured so long and lovingly over.

I can talk about the figures themselves, I think.  We unpacked literally thousands of them (the Perrys say they produced 5003 of them in the end!), and stuck them onto huge sheets of foam to sort them into the roughly 150 different poses and types.  It was terrific to recognise some of the actual figures I've seen in pics on this blog from all over the country.

Everyone who saw the figures set up in massive groups couldn't get over how fantastic they looked en masse (and some of us quickly realised that all that heart-ache about the colour of a button or missing a buckle was neither here nor there with so many figures!).

And as for those who were worried about the different styles of painting and shades of colour, their fears are dashed.  The variations on the thousands of figures makes the mass actually look better than if they were all done the same way.

Having said that, we did have a corrections team in action - a couple of very quick and talented painters who fixed up the very few garish colours or flaking paint (sorry to whoever painted that NZ guy with the dwarfish orange hair, he's now just got a plain brown hair-do again!). And there was the twit who painted some charging soldiers as Maori, when there were no Maori cast in charging positions - so these had to be quickly Pakeha-ised.

It was really heart-warming to hear how much everyone had valued being part of this painting project. Everyone felt it was a real privilege to be able to play their part in commemorating our Anzac ancestors and the Turks they fought against. Yes, sometimes painting loads of figures from a period you didn't usually play and in a style and size you weren't used to, when you had your own hobby projects backing up, could be a bit of a drag.  But all the time at the back of our minds was the thought that nothing, nothing at all, could compare to what our ancestors had had to go through.    

We're now on the final stages of the project. We all worked really hard during today (I can't say what on, but it is an essential part of such a diorama), but we didn't quite finish.  So we're back in action again tomorrow (yes, on Easter Sunday!) for another day of mysterious work. Then during the week the whole shebang gets transported to the Dominion Museum building, for the figures to be installed next weekend (which, seeing the masses of figures today, is going to be no mean feat in itself).       .

There are still a couple of hundred outstanding figures.  These need to be completed and sent back ASAP, as we'll need them by the weekend.

News from the Wairarapa

The Masterton Marauders blog reports on a show-and-tell held at the club meeting last Sunday, which included some of the work members have been doing on our project.

Rex finishing off the last of his 54mm Turks for the diorama.

David, Ceilidh and Rex with some of the 80 54mm diorama figures painted in the Wairarapa.

Waikato packs up

Monday was the deadline for the Waikato painters. As coordinator for the region, Darcy Perry reports on his Hits To Kill blog that he was particularly happy to receive all the miniatures back on time.

"However, one volunteer returned his miniatures unpainted," added Darcy. "Fortunately I had purchased three cans of Dark Earth and Dark Yellow, so it was back to cleaning, assembling, spraying and painting."

Above:  But wait - there's more ...

Above: The last few completed. 

"Spending an afternoon at the table with Bobby last week had certainly honed my army painting skills. The best advice he gave me was whatever you do on one, you do on all of them. So choose your level of detail wisely! After a late night and early morning with the brush, the last box of Turks went south today."

Now Darcy says he can finally relax and countdown the days until the opening of The Great War Exhibition.

"It has been an honour to be part of this project and the WW100 programme," he says. "My thanks go out to the other volunteers around the country that have inspired me with their painting and stories."

Darcy is still tuning in to this blog as the diorama project continues. His friend Rob in Wellington will be helping with terrain during the installation.

"Thank you once again to the Waikato regiment of painters." says Darcy. "Over 300 troops and that makes up 8% of the total of 4000 miniatures. A commendable effort."

Here is Waikato's honour roll:

TAMAHERE OFFICERS CLUB 

• Darcy Perry 
• Lewis Morgan 
• Dave Hunter 

HAMILTON IMMORTALS 

• Philip Porter 
• Daniel Conlon 
• Nick Jebson
• Julia Jeanplong 
• Geoff Holt 

TRONHAMMER

• Timothy Lind

CAMBRIDGE WARGAMING CLUB 

• Bobby Grindrod

...and Darcy's daughters, Jade, Ella and Rylee who all put paint to brush to help Dad meet the deadline.

Perry twins heading our way

• Reference books - check 
• Last minute figures - check 
• Bionic arm - check 
• Clean pants - check 
• Passports - check 

 And the Perry twins are off on their flight from the UK to NZ to assemble the diorama.

Roly the Anzac Donkey

On holiday in Queenstown today, and my wife and I spotted this book.  We just had to take a photo of it for obvious reasons!  Will also have to buy myself a copy once I'm back home.

Cheers, Roly.

Job over for the Hutt and Tawa crew

With the last few figures being finished off by the Hutt/Tawa team, and many of the crew helping over Easter, it is with some relief (no more painting brown) and sadness (being involved in such an amazing and important event) they say a farewell to this project.

"I can't wait to see the finished product, this will be a highlight of the year for me," says Tom Leamy.

"I want to thank my crew, Rob C, Chris O, Chris P, Rob A, Theren, Scott, Simon, Nick, Tim, Paul and Alex. We worked out that we have managed over 800 figures, and that's with two guys away for a month in the middle of the project. The painting evenings have been a real blast - and you gentlemen are an amazing bunch of artisans who I hold in the highest esteem.

"Thanks to Roly, Rhys and the magnificent Peter for making the whole thing possible. Cheers to all the painters across this mighty land."

Painstaking job worth it

From Cambridge, here is an article about Bob Grindod's experience in this project.

A quick repair job

A few days ago, Mark posted a picture of some "New Zealand" casualties he had just finished - or so he thought.  Alan Perry (one of our UK sculpting duo) spotted that these were in fact British casualties that had been mis-labelled.  The British were supposed to be in tunics, not shirt-sleeve order - but this wasn't obvious just by looking at the bare metal models.  So as if he hadn't done enough, Mark has now repainted the shirts as khaki tunics, as seen above. Well done, that man!

Mark has also been busy with other figures, including these three Turkish officers, as well as a what appears to be Turkish infantryman running away without his weapon.

He has also painted these Turkish casualties.  In fact, this blofg is starting to look quite gruesome with all the casualty pics we are posting.  I suspect, with possibly 1000s of casualties, the finished diorama is really going to be an eye-opener on the wastage of war.

More info on Mark's Chasseur blog.