introduction

What do you do when you want to include civilians in your dioramas? You can take a look at kit 329 “Meeting on Promenade”, it’s a resin kit from PlusModel that represents two civilians. The pair of civilians is a business man in a suit and a woman in a dress.

The Kit

This section will review the kit by itself on its own merits. The next section will compare it to other brands.

The resin itself is a decent resin. It is a bit soft and should be workable with basic resin tools. The resin blocks are on locations that allow for easy removal with little clean up. There was a bit of very thin flash that needs to be touched up. My kit didn’t have any air bubbles from the pour. All the other PlusModel kits I have reviewed do not have any bubbles or gaps either. You should look forward to a good solid kit.

The man is a typical business man or well dressed man on a Sunday. He is in a suit and is holding a cane. His basic stance is acceptable for someone in a casual conversation. Just looking at the man gives you a ‘soft’, ‘close’ impression. Everything seems very smoothly molded and close to the body. The detail of the front of the coat does not seem to have much negative casting (open area behind it.) The folds and creases seem a bit soft too.

One structural problem I see with the suit is in the buttons. The space from the bottom of the lapel to the hem is very long. However, there are only two buttons. I think three would have been better. Sure you can add a dot of putty to fix it. Another structural issue is how close his right elbow is to his body. This gives the whole figure an odd ‘feel’.

The woman is a nicely dressed lady who is holding her dog. As with the man her basic stance is acceptable. The box art is poorly done as it has her weight on her back foot, not her front foot. This gives her whole body an odd look. If you position her with her weight on her front foot (right foot) I think the whole visual of her will be better.

The sculpting here is also very ‘soft’ and ‘chunky’. The creases and folds in her dress, at the elbow for example, are far too thick for even a cotton or linen dress. The dog is oddly proportioned with a very small head.

Brand Comparison

With no 1:1 version of this kit to do reference comparisons, I’ll use a proxy comparison. I’ll compare this kit with other common manufactures. The three I’ll use are: Verlinden, Squadron, and Warriors.

The first is Verlinden. The points that jump out at me are the size of the head and boots. The Verlinden figure is much larger on both pieces. Another point to make is the texture and depth of the clothing. The PlusModel sculpting is not as crisp as the Verlinden figure. The size and scale shows that the PlusModel figure is a much smaller person, which may be acceptable. The size of the trunks are decently matched. The arms are bit different. The Verlinden arm is considerably larger than PlusModels.

The Warrior figure is much closer in size and scale. The Warrior figure will end up being a few inches taller than the PlusModel figure . The overall size and scale are closer between these two figures. I would be more comfortable putting these two figures close together in a diorama.

The last figure is from Jaguar. This comparison is really no match; these two figures look like different scales. The detail of the Jaguar figure is great and really shows the level necessary to routinely compete with bigger manufacturers.
All these comparison show one major difference, crispness. The detail on long standing manufacturers is easy to see. On the PlusModel the folds and creases just aren’t there.

The scale isn’t quite matching the three big manufactures either.

Conclusion

This kit is a great subject and has the potential to fill a great niche in figure modeling. It really falls flat on execution. The molding reminds me of a sculptors early works. Everything is close, but just not ‘there’. Some additional time needs to be spent on making the detail sharper. I would also rather see more parts (arms, hand etc) with strong size and detail instead of close detail for easy molding.

This kit probably won’t be the center piece of any diorama, as it doesn’t have the strength to hold attention. It could act as a supporting kit of figures in the background of a project.