Saturday 22 August 2015

Flecktarn Special Forces

Greetings all! Remember these guys? Well, they're back in a slightly altered form:


First of all, these photos are all irritatingly shiny. I needed to use a dispersed flash in order to actually get pictures and that made the paint gleam. Finding a reliable matt varnish is a pain in the rear too, any PVP reader suggestions for a good solid matt varnish? Anyway, on with the real stuff: These are a terrifying hybrid creature made of DKK Grenadier torsos and resin cadian-style legs. They needed the grenadiers to be razor sawed through the waist (take care to preserve the lower armour plate) and then smooth the resulting cut ready to be glued to the legs. These were intended to be a Special Forces squad of the Flecktarn-style infantry. As a result the client wanted them to be reminiscent of the originals but stand out from them. Thus the decision was taken to use a different "season" of the flecktarn camo scheme, in this case Spring:

Try to ignore the SS icon, this was on all the elite Heer forces, just a shame so many of those were SS...

So as usual you need to break down the scheme to get a progression for the paint job (I have one more of these to do and am likely to do a step by step on the camo). The scheme is clearly a bright green background, with a dark brown layer providing the principle pattern. Then a brighter brown in the middle of the larger dark brown blobs. Finally more dark brown dots with bright green dots in the centre through the brown blobs. Note that this is not how the material is printed, but it is the easiest method to "stack" the camo layers while painting. The result is:


Fairly close, the green is the horrible - but perfect for this job - Vallejo Uniform Green with a mix of German Camo Black-Brown and Black for the dark blobs. Flat earth was the light brown colour of choice and the whole uniform was shaded with a thinned Agrax Earthshade. Previous flecktarn infantry dictated the German Grey armour and US Field Drab pouches etc. so that was an easy choice. These chaps however have collars, cuffs and a skull on the Ammo Rubber & Tires gas mask. What colour should these be? Anything bright was not going to be a win as these are special forces, drab is their thing. Then looking at the original camo scheme again I spotted the uniform collar. Perfect, thought I, so Val German Fieldgrey it was. It also looked cracking on the skull.


With so many colours going on with these guys already I wanted to keep all other spot colours very muted. Once you get above three or four principle colours you are getting dangerously close to gaudy and visually noisy. All you can do to keep the miniature focused is to boost certain colours and mute others in the hopes that you keep the whole job unified. I think these guys are pretty much there.

That's all folks! I know August has been a smidge quiet here on the ol' PVP but that's largely due to the rest of my life packing everything about six months of stuff to do into the eighth month. August has been proper busy... and isn't done yet. I'll be back to mostly normal in September but hey, at least August has had some updates right?

TTFN

10 comments:

  1. Nice looking not-nazis. :)

    I have two solutions I'm happy with for matte coat..

    Both go on over a coat of airbrushed klear to provide protection, I use vallejo airbrush matte acrylic varnish if i'm doing a number of guys or a vehicle. but for single i use testors dullcote aerosol. I wont use the aerosol if its a humid day, not that ive ever had an issue, just to be on the safe side.

    in both cases i use a couple of light coats rather than risk a heavy application.

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    1. Now, I had and loved Dullcote back in the "laden with Toluene and probably shortening my life" days but hadn't been able to find any of the new formulation for ages (it now seems to be about). Is it a decent matte? Because I have seen all kinds of bitchin' and whingin' about Testors being satin now. Likewise with the klear, just at the time I heard about it (few years back) they changed the formulation and everyone went nuts again. Is the UK stuff still worth having?

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    2. I swear by Testors dullcoat. Firestorm games in Cardiff is the only stockist in the uk I can find. I always order in bulk as the shipping for aerosols is excessively high

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    3. Antics, MDP and Antenocittis all sell it too, I like it, its a lovely matte (so much so that it kills metallics :) )

      I cqawnt speak to the Klear, my bottle is quite old now so i wasnt aware of a formula change.. will look into that tho.

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    4. Then I shall give Testors another go :) thanks all!

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  2. Beautifully done, man - love how they turned out!

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    1. Thanks fella, you may see some eerily reminiscent infantry soon here... #obscure_foreshadowing :)

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  3. Oooooooooh.

    They did turn out nice.

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  4. Excellent job! Very stylized and cool looking paint job!

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