Maybe you can just scrape of what's on the other side and put it on the outside?

I hope you get my point

I love what you're doing! I would like to make the suggestion that you cut him off at the wrist and rotate his hand a bit to better capture the bottle-chugging pose. That was the aspect of the original photo that first caught my eye. Following.

I had gotten the idea for this project a short time ago, when I saw a photo of an upcoming figure posted on the boards.

The photo below is of my Grandfather, (somewhere in Belgium I've been told).
He served in Europe as a Canadian Infantry Sgt with the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor).
The first time anyone in my extended family saw this photo, we were all watching a video "slideshow".....when the photo came up, everybody kind of looked at Grandpa with a sideways glance.
He gave a smirk, and only said, "War is Hell".
This statement summed up the funny, amazing Grandfather I knew, and I thought re-creating this scene as a 1:35 Diorama might be a fun tribute.


In wishing to recreate this scene, all I needed was a drinking, reclining soldier, and a Half-Track.
Unfortunately, I’m not willing to pay $100-$200 for the kit, plus an extra $50 ish for the figure, so I have to improvise.


I found the old Revell/Monogram M16 Halftrack online, and even though it’s an old kit and rife with inaccuracy to recreate a Canadian halftrack, I’m just going to get it as close as I can to the photo. (Plus it was only $40 including shipping from the States) 

Of course, the twin .50 cal will be omitted, and I’ll mount a .50 on the cab/compartment partition, and a couple M1919s on the sides of the troop compartment.

As for the figure, I decided to “Frankenstein” from various bits, and see what I could come up with.

First up, I took the tank commander from the Tamiya M4, and used careful heating, bending, & clamping to cross one foot over the other, and cut the fella in half.


For the torso, I used the driver figure I had left over from the Tamiya Universal Carrier, but cut off his head as I had a better one in spares.


I cobbled together arms & hands from spares as well.
The beer bottle needs a little more shaping, and will be painted brown.


The kit itself is dead simple, which is fine with me as what I care about are the general details that will match best with the feeling of the original photo.


My biggest issue so far is that the doors are molded with the top half in the “closed” position, but that was easy enough to fix by cutting at the hinge point and re assembling in the “down” position.


I’ve started fabricating the “door port” with some spare PE, but hate how it looks so far, and am still in the initial stages of this portion.


So this is where things have ended up so far……I’d really like to be able to adjust the right arm position to better match the Original photo, but besides that I’m not too upset with how things are turning out.


This weekend, I'm hoping to begin roughing out the diorama base to pull this all together.

Cheers,C[ ]
Hammer Sandwich

Keep up the good work Paul.


Cheers,
Tom

If it's a Canadian halftrack, it will likely be a Lend-Lease M5 or M9 halftrack, as built by American Harvester, Biggest thing is to have fun with your tribute!