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