Hi guys

I'm playing around with a idea for a project for the new year. Part of this dio will be a wounded German soldier. He was hurt when the bike that he was on took a near miss from a small cal arty shell. I'm thinking shoulder/arm wounds from the shell. Plus some pretty bad road rash from the crash. The figure has left the bike, and moved about 20 - 25 feet to hide behind a tree.
Ok, thats what brings me to the reason for the post. In real life, there would be blood all over the place. I know this would not work in a dio. You guys have any ideas on how to make this work without being sick and tasteless ?
Thanks
Harry

Here's some (first hand) thoughts on blood.
On white cloth recent small amounts on flesh: red.
On dark cloht, black top, soil, grass: very dark maroon/brown.
Road rash bleeds relatively little. Arm would that have not hit an artery don't bleed as much as a head wound.
Scale effect: any more than a very small amount will look garish and excessive. Use a great deal of restraint as much for realism as for taste.

I agree with Al here. If you made your primary focus to be the ripped clothing and actual wound (eg. you could have him examining his wound?) and the blood to be limited to this immediate area then I think you would still successfully convey the image of what has happened.

Al touched on my point in his post, but I just wanted to make the point a little more obvious. As I understand it, once blood comes into contact with the air, it starts to change in color from bright red to a dark almost deep brownish red, as like port wine. Dried blood or dried blood on the ground would definitely be much darker.

As you indicated, a little bit is a great deal when it comes to 1:35th scale and I agree with that opinion.

I think that when it comes to blood, less is more. And if the poor biker is still in chock, there would be very little blood from the more serious wounds than from the road rash.´
Good luck with the dio. Looking forward to see it as it is an interesting story.

Cheers
Pelle

Road rash comes from sliding across pavement and as mentioned does not bleed much, it oozes and it is DIRTY. All the grime from the ground gets in it and is a MESS. So you will want to go dark red/black on that.

As far as arty hits, those are (I'm guessing) quite a bit different. More tearing and shredding.

As far as quantity - I would opt for less is more, go with torn clothing and a hint of wound, go with a bent bike, torn head gear, rough drag line, a field dressing (if he has one). When you do add blood, use a dark color.
It might take a while for the guy to drag himself 25 feet.

Now I’m a hunter so that’s where I draw most of my experience on this subject from

The other have covered the road rash pretty good.

As for the wounds from the shell it would depend on if the shrapnel tore across the arm or if it stuck there.
If tore across it there would be more blood then if its stuck there.

Around the wound the blood would soak into the clothing. If the if there light colored the blood would remain red but on dark colors it will usually just darkling the area. There cold also be a small amount of splatter on top of the sleeve in the direction the shrapnel went which would be red even on darker close but would be very small in 1/35 if it could be seen at all.

There could also be small amount of blood that ran down to his hand. It would most likely be under the sleeve and not be visible until the arm is exposed. This to would be a small amount.
His other hand could also contain blood from touching or holding the wound.


As far as blood on the ground there could be some anywhere the wound itself touched but thats probably all. The small drops that would fall to the ground from it would probably be to small to depicted.


As for the color large puddles of blood would be slightly darker and thicker but assuming this just happened it shouldn’t change to much.
If you need any help with the color let me know and I can try to dig up some of my hunting pictures you could use for reference. But I’ll have to email them to you or something as don’t think it would be appropriate to post them here.


I hope this helps you some.

Hi guys

Thanks for all the replys. Thanks to you guys I think I have a better idea on how to pull this off. Now I need to sit down and get the figure right.

Thanks again guys
Harry

One suggestion I might make would be to use the Google Image Search feature and look for pictures of wounds. There are many, many medical and emergency room resources available that can show you some good examples of various injuries. Some suggested key words to use:

road rash
shrapnel wounds

Hope this helps!

It really depends on what you want to show but one way you could "show the story" you are talking about would be to have him bandaging a wound, maybe some mysterious dark spots and tears on his uniform and drag marks from the scene of the wreck to his position.

I've been on many vehicle accidents and a few shootings and while there has been a fair bit of blood on the patient its not all that noticable on the ground, in fact many gunshot wounds are hard to find since they often have little blood.

I just finished building a Willys ambulance, I didn't want to get gross with blood but I also thought there should be some, I ended up using some thinned rust paint here and there on the stretchers and floor of the jeep. Its not that noticable but enough to do the job.

My personal advice : Don't overdo it....less is more in case of blood and stay away from colors that are too bright !