Some more progress today. The trooper's pants have been mostly painted and the coat glued in place. I'll need to do a bit more shading and highlighting once the coat is done to get the right contrast. I fixed the left hand grip by making cuts into the palm and thumb and bending in, some putty will be needed. I also started some shading on the medic's pants. I'm trying out shading using glaze medium, I find it gives you more working time for blending and feathering. I'm also finding out how my newish camera works in auto mode, very saturated colours so some tweaking is needed in photoshop. Still miles ahead of my old camera. A white background should help for final shots.













I should be able to get a short session in tomorrow and a good proper painting session in on Wednesday.

Kimmo

Great looking stuff everyone, am particularly impressed with the extent some have gone to sharpen details by undercutting plastic - I've never seen that done before.

----------------------------

Here are the two crew figures I'm doing for a near completed Jagdpanzer:



Prep work on the figures is done. Green stuff putty was used to fill in seams, and while it was still workable, a wet fingertip was used to smooth into the areas. This helps to cut down time spent during the sanding stage - in fact, took maybe a dozen swipes of sand paper and the figs were ready for paint.



I did swap out one of the heads for a Hornet product so one will be wearing an M-43 cap. Also added PE shoulder boards from Model Alliance, and a PE wrist watch band can be seen on the bare headed figure.

Primer/base coat is Tamiya's German Grey. For the uniform colour proper, I mixed directly in the airbrush cup (all Vallejo) German Fieldgrey, Light Green Blue, and Transparent Green. For thinning, some water and acrylic retarder. This was sprayed from up top, like a light source.



Next up is further highlights and shading with a fine paint brush.

regards,
Jack

Welcome aboard Jack! Great progress so far!

Time for e to join the campaign. I am joining with a squad of Dust Tactics 1/48 Grenadiers.

More to follow

Another major leap forward. The trooper is now in one piece and the first coat of primer is on. I needed to add a small wedge to eliminate a gap at the front, otherwise, fit was good. I need to add the canteen, shovel and bayonet. The hands were cleaned up and primed, they're looking pretty good. Still undecided about the head, I have a set of Hornets coming in, I might wait until they get here.







I managed to get a reasonable facsimile of the webbing into the helmet with lead foil. I needed to chop the thumb off and reposition the thumb joint slightly to sit better on the helmet. Needs some cleanup still and a chin strap.





And that's it for now.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo, Pretty sure you'll like the heads!

Are the hands gloved? ... I think you may have mentioned that earlier on ... I'm not sure. Down the road, you might want to try the 'Hornet Hands' as well; they are really nice ... very "handy" to have around!

—mike

The trooper's hands are gloved. I have been looking at hand sets but haven't felt the urge to get any. Repositioning and sculpting the kit hands aren't that difficult, I like little challenges like this.

Kimmo

G'day Kimmo

Very nice macro photography - what did you use?

Thanks

Regards

Rob

G'day, eh? I'm using the Canon IXUS 145, I'm really happy with the results so far. For a pocket camera, I don't think you can get much better in this price range (less than 100 local bucks). A lot of settings to work with and holds the colour balance well. The colours seem to be over saturated, but that might be my lighting. If you're looking to get something relatively cheap, I'd consider it.

Kimmo

Hi

some impressive build are shown here already!

Last week I have finished my last diorama (which I started way before this campaign started) so I could not use these figures.

Next week I will begin with new figures for the next project, I will show them here for the campaign.

My topic mostly is post apocalyptic, everything about zombies is welcome.
So is this diorama named: Zombieland 1 - learning by doing
The first of a series of dioramas inspired by series like "walking dead" - you get the picture...

The girls are "Clio & Erato" von Patrick Masson, their teacher is a survivor from NYD-Miniatures, the Zombies are from a small company named Paracel Miniatures and the dog is from a set of MasterBox.









That's it for now...

Thomas

More progress, the medic is starting to get there and the trooper has a nice base coat.









I finished off the helmet and added a sling to the rifle with strips of lead foil and buckles from wire. I think I need to get smaller tweezers if I'm going to make a habit of this.







I have plenty of time to get these guys done over the weekend so updates as I go.

Kimmo

The trooper is almost done, except for a few obvious pieces of course. I have to take a look at in daylight before deciding on what needs to be done.





Kimmo

My figures are finished and added to the diorama. I also painted the commander figure that came with the Panther... No face visible, so nice and easy! Sorry about the poor lighting.

Jasper - looks good, congrats on the completion.

------------------

Highlights on the uniform ...



Followed up with insignia applied in decal form. I did paint the lieutenant's shoulder boards, as the brass pieces had decent detail on them already.



regards,
Jack

And some more work, the medic is now done apart from head and hands of course, but they aren't far behind. I had to paint the crosses and the circles on the helmet. The decals refused to work with me.







The heads are close to being done and I'm calling the hands and rifle for the trooper done. It's amazing the difference between live and what you see on screen.




Working on the helmet for the trooper, the helmet from the set for the medic fits reasonably well with this head, go figure. Next update might not be for a couple of days.

Kimmo

This is my offering to this campaign. A Royal Marine 1/16 circa 1805.




I made a start
Undercoat

The base

Some white and red base coat on the jacket

Undercoat and white band on hat.
Undercoat on rifle and bayonet.


Thats it for now. I might get some done tonight as its too good to miss this sun.

Pete

Kimmo and Jack, very nice work, are you guys using oils, enamels or acrylics for the painting?

Great painting skills, Kimmo and Jack. Very nice details and very good inspiration for my own work.

Looking forward to see more.

Thanks Colin and Jesper, strictly Vallejos for me. I'm experimenting with using glaze medium rather than just water. The medium gives you a bit more time to blend, or more accurately, to feather. You can also lay down nice translucent filters without getting tide marks. For example, the greatcoat only has two colours on it. I built up the highlights with several layers and similarly feathered into the folds and creases. If you over do the lighter colour, simply wipe down with a damp brush while the paint is still wet. The effect is a little stronger in real life, I might get some better shots with the finals under different lighting and exposure settings but to truly get what you actually see I think I'd need a better camera with a larger sensor.

Kimmo

Colin and Jesper - thanks!

Same here, using Vallejo (but do have some old bottles of Andrea, which are quite compatible). I use acrylic retarder instead of water, but I rely more on building up lighter colours instead of blending edges.

The retarder is mainly to keep the paint from drying too quickly on the brush and on the palette.

regards,
Jack

I think I've got the heads done, maybe a slight touch up here and there once they're in place. Sorry about the blurriness of the medic, I thought these would be fine because the camera was actually recognizing both faces. Got the trooper's helmet done as well, it just needs paint. I also need to decide if I want to make some quick bases or not.



More tomorrow.

Kimmo

Added shading and highlights in black and red and then over painted with the red base colour



This is the 1st time I have done a figure using mainly acrylics. Usually I will use oils, but because of the colour of the jacket I needed to try a different method as the highlights would come out pink when mixed.
I am happy with the outcome


Pete

Almost done. A few final touch ups when they get plopped on their bases which I'm making out of 80 thou sheet.











Kimmo

Lightening a colour doesn't necessarily always translate to adding white. How about yellow, as well as a combination of yellow and white for extreme highlight? Same idea for shadows, try some dark blues and even purple.

regards,
Jack

Hi Jack
Yeah I had thought of alternate colours, but I have alot of acrylics and thought I would try them for a change. It is alot different, as I used the base coat to bring the highlights and shadow together. With oils you can feather the colours to blend, so new technic for me and I am enjoying it.

Pete