A Thousand Year Reich in Flames on the Volga
October 27th 1942: "The Russians are not men, but some kind of cast-iron creature; they never get tired and are not afraid of fire."- William Hoffman
Part of isolating the one single soldier from the rest while retaining the original masked layers.
One of the cut outs. The sign post includes dead bodies, not sure if I can upload that here.
October 27th 1942: "The Russians are not men, but some kind of cast-iron creature; they never get tired and are not afraid of fire."- William Hoffman.
October 28th 1942: "Every soldier sees himself as a condemned man."- William Hoffman.
November 18th 1942: "Our attack with tanks yesterday had no success. After our attack the field was littered with dead."- William Hoffman.
November 21st 1942: "The Russians have gone over to the offensive along the whole front. Fierce fighting is going on. So, there it is - the Volga, victory and soon home to our families! We shall obviously be seeing them next in the other world."- William Hoffman.
November 29th 1942: "We are encircled. It was announced this morning that the Führer has said: " The army can trust me to do everything necessary to ensure supplies and rapidly break the encirclement ". "- William Hoffman.
December 25th 1942: "The Russian radio has announced the defeat of Manstein. Ahead of us is either death or captivity."
And, indeed death awaited. A death toll so high it's not even really possible to wrap your head around it, such a massive loss of life for both sides but an absolute stroke of genius by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, along with Aleksandr Vasilevsky (Operation Uranus) saved the city, and in my opinion won the war.
The sacrifice of the Red Army on the banks of the Volga, in the Grain Elevator, the Tennis Racket. The vicious back and forth, absolute tragic battles for the Train Station. So many sacrificed themselves in order to cling on and help win the war, a sacrifice that will always be remembered, even by those in the west like me.
Each German, which is just the standard Wehrmacht character from Sketchfab, is meant to have their own blended art style to reflect the isolation and desperation and for some the complete denial of the reality that their situation is beyond hopeless. I used Topaz Studio 2 to blend in and carefully mask many layers, it works as a standalone app or a plugin within Photoshop.
The second image shows the mask on that layer I used to isolate the blueish soldier from the rest of the cut out, hard to explain the workflow as there's other layers with masks painted on the cut out.
The additional images which I found under CC sharealike license, is what is in the middle. An apparition of sorts, The Motherland Calls forward the desperate defenders and heroes of Stalingrad at a date and month where it mattered the most just to cling on.
The faded sign cut out that's dated after the German surrender is also there, but it includes multiple dead bodies so I'm not sure if I can upload that, it's easy to find on google.
The sky was painted within Photoshop with a 3D rendered out (my own) building faded and barely visible, but gives some depth to the scene.