La Guardia Svizzera Nella Piazza di San Pietro

[Santi Pérez]

Hello. First of all, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.
After several years visiting this fascinating forum, I have finally decided to join in. I am Santiago Pérez, a 54 year old Spanish Biology high school teacher and miniatures fan since I was a teenager, more than forty years ago.
I remember my first 1/72 plastic figures from the Spanish brand Montaplex, bad copies of Airfix ones, and the discovery some years after of the Airfix, Atlantic and Esci sets.
Despite my dedication to other materials and scales (metal 6, 10 and 15 mm, and plastic 28 mm) and the brief spare time I can dedicate to the hobby, I have never abandoned 1/72 plastic figures, due to their cheapness and increasing variety and quality throughout the years.
Along with this introduction, I would like to share my last work with all of you. I have entitled it “La Guardia Svizzera nella Piazza di San Pietro, the making of a Swiss Vatican Guard diorama in 20mm step by step”.

[santifernandez]

Welcome to the forum from another Santi,nice paint and nice scene.


I hope you show us more work and participate in this great community.
Santi.

[Kekso]

Welcome to the forum Santiago.

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you, Santi and Kekso.

I will explain in detail the making of this diorama when I'm capable of uploading posts properly.

Santi.

[Carlos]

Hi Santi, Wellcome, now we have two Santiagos in the community,
Scene is very original and figures looks great, paint these swiss guards uniforms don't looks easy with all these bands. And the enthusiastic public looks great too. I can Imagine the pope Pancho in is withe 4L could be comming afther the guard.

From where are the figures?.

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you, Carlos.

I have always been interested on this famous and colourful army. The chance of represent it at scale appeared when MM Miniatures released its superb set 001, depicting the Swiss Vatican Guard, really a dream come true for me.

It took more than a year till I could get it from The Lucky Soldier of Italy (http://www.theluckysoldier.it). When I finally put my hands on the figures, I was fascinated. I had already seen them at the Plastic Soldier Review website (http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com), but their quality was even better than seen there (my congratulations to the talented sculptor, Martin Macalka, for his first rate work). The sculpting and level of detail were great. Only two things were not so good: the typical Caesar Miniatures bent parts and the few poses included (really just two, because the third one only comes once), which implied a lot of conversion work to get all the desired poses.

With the figures in my hands, the next step was the planning of the diorama. I had a specific idea of what I wanted. Something like the picture below: the Swiss Guard in full dress parading in Saint Peter’s square in front of civilian spectators.

[MABO]

Very interesting. It is the first time I see them painted. Welcome here and show us more painted figures please.

[Wiking]

Welcome!
Unusual subject.
Well painted figures.
It look so, that I want to see more pic of your work please.

[Das_Dirch]

Welcome to the Forum.
Nice work, very colorful. Please post more pictures

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you very much for your welcome, MABO, Wiking and Das_Dirch.

Yes, I will post more pictures, but due to my job as a teacher, I know that you must maintain the interest of the audience until the end. So, I will be posting a mixture of text and images of all the diorama making process, including original figures, conversions and painting, but I promise to post a lot of pictures, both overviews and details, of the completed work once finished.

The diorama would include around twenty figures at all, Guards and civilians together, and wouldn’t be too big, say 150x100 mm surface. I found at the Andrea Miniatures website (http://www.andreaeurope.com) this wooden base, measuring 135x105 mm, and got it.



The next step was to make an outline of the selected figures, Guards and civilians, on the base.

[Santi Pérez]

Then I needed a proper base to be placed over the wooden one between it and the figures feet, similar to the pavement of Saint Peter’s Square. I found at Bazar Matey (http://www.matey.com), a very good model shop in Madrid, specialized in railway modelling, this plastic H0 sheet of cobblestones from Kibri (http://www.kibri.com).



I cut it to the dimensions of the wooden base and already had the complete base for the diorama. Before glued to the wooden base, the cobblestones sheet was painted with several consecutive layers: white primer, black, dark grey and finally light grey, as shown in the pictures below. All these paints came from the wide palette of Vallejo acrylic colours (http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com).

[Santi Pérez]

Before starting with the figures, I needed a wooden fence to separate the public from the Guards. Copying the real fences used at the Vatican, I made it from match sticks and, once completed, I painted it in a sand colour.





The last step was the addition of some flags to provide information on the public. I used four different flags in total: the Swiss Guard one for the Sergeant Major standard bearer, the Swiss flag for a former Swiss Guard spectator, the Argentinian one in honour of Pope Francis and the Spanish one as I’m the creator of the diorama.



All of them were downloaded from the internet and printed in self-adhesive paper. Two were placed on the wooden fence, one in front of the place to be occupied by a Spanish couple and the other in front of the Argentinian family’s place. This was the result.





In the next post I will begin with the figures.

[Peter]

First of all welcome to the forum! And I'm looking forward to the next steps of this project!

[Wiking]

Thank you very much for the additional pic.
Civilians 1/72 sets are rare. I see that your first plan was to combine Cäsar terrorist, WWII partisans, nun and Imex wild west time people for the crowd.
Looking for you next post.

[Mai Strac]

Damn, how did I not see before this magnificent work !!!
Really amazing, I have no words only great admiration!!!

[Bramble15]

This is a fantastic piece. Thank you for sharing the build up as well. Figures and basing and composition are all extremely well done and well thought out.

[Das_Dirch]

Thanks for the pictures. Really nice to see how the diorama has emerged.

[Gowan]

Incredible job and a warm welcome to the forums! It is very interesting to see how it all came together. (oh and for the record when I was in Argentina I was called Santi - because Gowan is hard to say - so you could say we have three Santi's)

[Santi Pérez]

Thank you for your kind comments, Mai Strac, Bramble15, Das_Dirch and Gowan.

Finally I am explaining all the steps of the making of the diorama in the Work in Progress section of the forum. I know that Mai Strac and Das_Dirch have found it, and hope that the rest of you can do it too.

I will be back to this section to post pictures of the finished diorama.

Best regards.

Santi.

[Santi Pérez]

Now it's the time for the pictures of the completed diorama. Here there are the first overall views.

I hope you enjoy them.











More in the next post.