Franznap - mystery unveiled!

Hey folks!

I'm back from the small scale convention in Heiden (http://smallscaleconvention.jimdo.com/) - what a great day it was! You can see a lot of pictures of that show on http://www.bennosfiguresforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12472, including a short report from me. Have a look at it - those pictures are worth a look.

Not only that I found enough time for painting and chatting with great miniature artists, I was also able to buy the figures for my next big painting projects - thanks to Thomas, who found the required hussars for me and to Mr.Schilling who now produces the French army on retreat from Moscow (see them on http://www.zinnfiguren-schilling.de/).

The SSC at Heiden is an event that hopefully will take place every year from now on - a well-balanced mixture of sellers and miniature artists where you can see much inspiring modelling and painting work in small scales. Really worth a visit. On the other hand, this means that the contributions for the painting&modelling contest were mostly masterclass. Well - it was impressive to see such great work and then notice my own humble paintworks standing among them. And this is the point where I have to give you some explanations and start doing some promotion.

Back at FIGZ in Arnheim, the magnificient sculpting artist Francesco Messori gave away some test sprues of his work to members of Bennos' figure forum - including me. By luck, I received a sprue of Naples staff officers and two sprues of French line lancers. In fact, Francesco has created some great figures (see more of his arts on www.franznap.com), but that special cast went wrong somehow - the temperature, the pressure... whatever the reason, the result was really not the best - the sprue, made out of a sort of resin, that became really brittly during the process, was a complete web of plastic. So freeing the figures required a sharp surgical scalpel, the loss of some blood and lots of patience.
Whatever. I did all the best that I could in order to set these beautifully sculpted figures free and then give them a good paintjob. Because of the lack of free time, it took me several weeks.

In addition, I could not post any photos of this work - because I wanted to put them into the competition in Heiden as I promised it to Francesco. But now the time has come. Ladies and gentlemen - I hereby present the incredibly beautiful figures of Franznap!

These are French line lancers. Many figures are casted with separate arms, which gives you the possibility to create a great variety of poses. I swapped one troopers' head with the bicorne-wearing version and positioned the soldier in front as if he is holding the lance for the sergeant who is currently mounting up the horse.

The complete set contains a lot more figures, all in different poses. So just take these pictures as an example how a diorama with the complete range of figures could look like.
Well - I did the best I could. For what was a 'terrible test shot' the result is very pleasing (although the competitors in this cathegory were much too strong for me. ;-) ).

The other set of which I received some figures, were the Naples staff officers. I would have loved to have more of them, you can bet. After a similar amount of carving, I decided to paint up a group of three and make a small vignette. Here's the result:

Among all military of the Napoleonic age, the uniforms of the Kingdom of Naples belonged to the most colourful and flamboyant ones. These figures are extraordinarily well sculpted - note the different body sizes. Most times, all figures within a set have all the same size, isn't it?
The complete set contains - as far as I know - ten different figures. You can see them on www.franznap.com in the section 'sculp&cast' under the subcathegory 'Neapolitan General staff'.
I can only say that research for correct uniforms and painting these figures was pure fun. And guess what?

I was lucky. Bronze medal in the cathegory historical single figure/vignette standard.
Francesco - consider your figures being award-winners.