German SPG Crewmen

3d printed 15mm crewmen in a 3d printed Marder III M

 Open-topped vehicle models and artillery pieces really do need crew figures, and they're something that has not, historically, been straightforward to come by as a separate item from a 15mm model.

I've used spare figures from PSC kits, figures from infantry sets and some artillerymen from Peter Pig, but I couldn't find my Peter Pig men, and with international mail order being in the parlous state it's in, I instead went for some downloadable STLs from 3dBreed.

They're decent enough figures — quite chunky, but I don't mind that in a 15mm figure — though limited in range. The pre-made supports on the ones I first tried were terrible (I suspect that they were created for their 28mm figures and then everything just shrunk down together) and I had to strip them out and do my own in ChituBox.

Since I was messing about with them in Blender anyway, I took the opportunity to do some head-swapping to give them a bit of variety.

The original figure is 4th from the right in this photo. I cut off his head, made a bunch more heads, and copied them together, so here I have ten slight variations on that one original.

So anyway. The experiment has been a success, and now I will have as many 15mm German artillerymen as I'm ever likely to need.