"Battle of Kolin Diorama" Topic

Here are some nice pics of a diorama of the Battle of Kolin: link You will have to go to the gallery section and scroll down to Koln. Great example of the use of flats. the battalions are (almost) as big as Der AF's!

Amazing painting shown in the Gallery. Hard to believe that they are flats.

Gorgeous.

Yes, that's what we're talking about! Absolutely stunning diorama with big battalions. We approve.

Very nice, truly an inspiriation!

Here are some nice flat Prussians. They are ridiculously good. link

dbf1676: Those are spectacular!! :shock:

They are indeed amazing.

A few years back TMP'er Obereiffenberg and I were visiting the battlefield at Bergen (fought in 1759) . The old city hall- now a museum- featured an impressive diorama of that battle also using flats. I could have stood looking at it for hours!

Such a diorame is a very good promotion for flats!!!

They have much better proportions than solid figures and there are 100.000s of different molds available! They cover almost all obscure formations you could think of :-))
In dioramas they beat IMHO non-flats hand-down. As figures for table top its a draw.

In the inter-war period there were many extremly talented engravers and dedicated editors providing amazing figures for many collectors. The interest for military models died in Germany after WW2 and now only a few thousand people still collect flats.

The only disadvatages I see are:

1) You have to develope a quite good painting style to convert a flat into a "3D" figure.

2) Only a tiny fraction of the German falt editors have good home pages and it is a PITA for UK/US customers to find most of the catalogues and to order.

For me it's a pity that most of this really good stuff will be gone in twenty years because of the small number of German collectors and the unability of the editors and of the German flat society (KLIO) to promote their stuff on a international stage.

Ulenspiegel

BTW:

The battle of Leipzig diorama is also great:

link

Then go to "Galerien"

and under "Dioramenbau"

you will find amazing stuff!

Ulenspiegel

dbf1676 wrote: "Here are some nice flat Prussians. They are ridiculously good. link"

Konrad Schulte has an onwn homepage:

link

In the workbench sub-section of the forum ("Werkbank" in Forum) and in the various galleries you will find much more amazing flats.

Ulenspiegel

I'd like to ask a question about the flats. I know nothing about flats so this may seem silly but do you paint both sides? How many different poses are there? It looks like you can get the flat figures really close together (the depth issue is the same as with 'regular' figures), is this true? I'm thinking of how compact you can make a unit and there by get the dense look that a unit should have. Any other tips or info that someone can pass on please let me know. Where can you buy flats? Who are the best makers of them? Thanks.

18th Century Guy; To answer all of you questions properly would take a book, but here are some short answers. You can paint both sides, they are both engraved. However, if you are doing a diorama that can only be see from one side, IMHO there is no need to paint the unseen side

There are thousands and thousands of different figures, covering everything from dinosaurs to the walk onthe moon. In the 7YW period alone, there are hundreds, if not thousands of figures in every pose imaginable. While most figures are 30mm scale many larger figures exist as well.

You can get figures in profile close together because they are flat.

Here are some sources for flats. The sellers are often called "editors." Berliner Zinnfiguren has a huge number of 7YW figures. These are only the tip of the iceberg.
link

link Look for editors.

link

Engravers like Frank have produced 2-3 molds per day for some decades! So an good estmate is that Frank produced 14000 molds in live-time!! There are around 400.000 different molds for 30 mm flats (alone) in Germany.

If you are interested in SYW flats I would strongly recommend Grünwald Zinnfiguren:

link

Here you get complete series form the same engraver and the figures are compatible. You have to order his catalogues, as only a few SYW series are on-line. In addition, he sells not only complete series but also idividual flats, so no problem if you need addtional NCO's, dummers etc.

Many flats for are produced as combination figures (Kombinationsfiguren) with additions limbs or weapons, so you get from one mold more than one pose simply by removing surplus parts.

The trick is to find the addresses of all the small editors who do not have an internet store. Here the British Flat Society (link given by dbf1676) is a good start, as some of the German editors like Konrad Schulte (Fridericus Rex, link given by dbfl1676) are members. K. Schulte also runs the HZ forum:

link

It is in German, but most of the members speak English and are very helpful. A clear bonus is, K. Schulte is also a collector of 30 mm SYW flats and knows very much about good sources :-).

Ulenspiegel