Borodino, 3rd group: French line infantry

[Bendy_Straw]

Hello again fellow painters. It may have taken me 5+ months, but I'm finally finished with the next installation of my Borodino project, the converted French line infantry. The bodies of these figures are from the Italeri set 6092, and they have the heads of Zvezda set 8042, except the 4 bearskin grenadiers. If someone had more patience than me, he could also replace the backpacks, and make these figures even prettier, but that was a bit too much work for me. I also compliment this group with a bunch of generals: two of them are from the Italeri set, which were given to me by BlueFalchion, so special thanks to him. The Davout figure is from Marc Claus figurines, and the other 3 generals are from Black Watch miniatures, one of which will represent Marshal Ney (although i kinda messed up with his hair colour). This is in my opinion my best work this far, and we are not even half way through. As always, I hope you enjoy these pics and any feedback is most welcome.

[Ben Bob]

Wow! These look great with new heads. Nice painting too

[Bill Slavin]

Those look terrific - beautifully painted. And that is a nice job with the head swaps - they are pretty seamless.
So without looking it up, the Italeri set you started with had what sort of heads? I see the jackets have the long tails so I assume you were wanting pre-1812 troops with the earlier jackets.
The Italeri set certainly is much more nicely proportioned than my go-to clunky HaT French!

[Bendy_Straw]

Thank you very much. Since I want to depict the french during the russian campaign, I wanted the pre-bardin uniforms, so I swapped the heads because the Italeri set has the bicorne hats, which weren't much used after around 1805. Also the new 1812 uniforms weren't distributed much to the army until after the russian campaign, according to my research, so that was my go to since I wanted to have a french army with these uniforms anyway.

[C M Dodson]

Very nice indeed.

You have got me thinking.

Best wishes,

Chris

[Bill Slavin]

Thanks, Bendy. I did a similar thing with the HaT set in bicornes and great coats. As Chris says, you now have me thinking. Now where to find a few dozen shako heads??

[Bendy_Straw]

I believe the best choice is the one I used, Zvezda 8042. I tried with the franznap spare heads as well, but they don't look good on these figures. There are also some choices from the hat sets, but I have no experience with those.

[Bessiere]

Who knew growing a neck could make such a difference? What a shame Italeri ruined that set by not giving them cervical vertebrae but you have redeemed the set with your lovely conversions. Those are very nice figures but never thought so looking at them on PSR. "There's a set I will never buy" was my thinking but that is changing like everyone else's here. Nice work!

Added thought: A cheap and easy way to make pom poms would be to cut off the plume and glue tiny ball bearings instead of carving.

[Bendy_Straw]

That is very flattering, thank you! I believe the issue with these figures was not the neck but the chin being covered by the collar, which was indeed fixed by replacing the heads and adjusting the size of the collar. The Italeri sets generally don't have as much detail as the Zvezda ones for example (these are the only two I've worked with), but I still find they're pretty satisfying.

[MikeRC97]

Bendy_Straw it is great to see this project coming together I know you have been planning this for some time. As the others have said the head swaps make these Italeri figures infinitely better as they are nicely detailed with good poses but ruined by the way the heads were sculpted.

[Bendy_Straw]

If we combined my work with your own awesome french and russian troops we could certainly make things happen haha

[MikeRC97]

We would indeed!

I noticed you have the figures on a hex game board- are you planning on using these figures to play Command and Colors Napoleonic?

[Bendy_Straw]

No, the scenario I'm working on will be playable based on the rules of the board game Battles of Napoleon: the eagle and the lion, and that's where the hex boards are from.

[tullo]

[Peter]

Fantastic painted figures. I like them a lot!

[Patrick71]

Very nice converting of the figures!
you have a clean painting style with a good eye for the details.

The Davout figure resembles the one from Art Miniaturen.
Where did you buy the Marc Claus figures? I can only find them on "lafigurineplastique.com" but sales seem to be suspended for a while now...
They seem to look good and I'm willing to buy some of these sets.

thank you,
Patrick

[Bendy_Straw]

Thank you very much! Yes, the Davout figure is identical to the one from Art miniaturen. I got these from la figurine plastique some months ago, before they went out of business. I also wish they get back because I need some of these Russian generals too to complete my collection.