Hot Fuzz

Sergeant Butterman, the little hand says it's time to rock and roll! Today is the turn of another in my series of "fun stuff" projects: Hasslefree's Officer Nick and PC Sam Ford.

Given their obvious suitability, I took them as another chance to try out authentic schemes. Hence I chose to get them as close as possible to Simon Peg and Nick Frost's characters from one of my favourite films: Hot Fuzz.

Both of these models presented me with an opportunity to practice painting adjacent areas of black. This is tricky and something I'll natter about while we check out Sgt Nicholas Angel:

 

The trick to painting adjacent blacks is in the highlight colour. If you highlight all of the black on a model like this with the same colour you will have one solid area of black. Now take a look at the images above (expand them as the camera really struggles to capture subtle differences. In this model you can see areas highlighted with Codex Grey (clothing and ballistic vest); Charadon Granite (bandolier); Fenris/Space Wolves Grey (Pouches and holster webbing); Scorched Brown (shotgun and baton) and Snakebite Leather (shoes and belt). I also used gloss varnish to act as contrast as well, see the shoes, radio, radio cable and the hatband on Danny's helmet:

By using all these different contrasts you can see every individual area of the model clearly despite them all looking black. It is a very subtle effect and needs practice but by keeping this in mind you can paint models with very monochrome schemes (whether black and white, shades of green or whatever) and still identify all the individual elements. Aside from all the black, I was happy with the end result of the white, it was achieved by boring patient work building up many, many thin glazes of white over an Astronomicon Grey base. This prevents chalkiness. The only thing I haven't figured is how I want to do the bases, do I make them fit in with the Doctor "Hugh" figs I already have? Or do I do a more "Sandford" scheme. Any thoughts?

Nattering briefly about the models themselves: The poses on both are great and the likeness close enough for my purposes. If I had one minor niggle it was that I had to do an enormous amount of freehand work on the hands and arms to give definition to the anatomy. These are very small models so they are tough to sculpt, but be aware that in order to get best results you will have to draw in all the muscle tone and bone detail you see on the models above. Even the face detail is painted in. Other than that these are wonderful models with lots of authentic and nicely scaled details (I almost removed the radio cable as flash it is that fine!). Can't wait to get my teeth into the next lot of insanity I see from Hasslefree. Perhaps some of the martial artists. That kimono on Hanako looks great. Anyhow, that's enough from me, back to the Death Korps!

TTFN