Vehicle crew

Hello guys,

After weeks of torture I finally managed to paint...errr...three SM zombies as civilians (it doesn't work that well, the stance is clearly of an undead, even with no blood painted on!) and and insurgent sniper. I wanted to show some of the two today, but in the mean time, I also managed to finally convert the crew members to a point where I was satisfied with them. Something clicked in me and I started painting them. Took me two days to get them finished and I have to say I am really satisfied with them. 

Here they are, ready to be primed:
I know I kept showing them, but changes to the originals include: crew helmets, weapon swap on one. That was it. I was sculpting helmets two times, though and I am still not quite satisfied with the one on the pistol armed guy. I think it has to do with the shape of his head.

Before I start, let me just say they look better in real life. Honestly!
While I am, admittingly, a bit of a river counter on some occasions, I decided to go for an artistic freedom with those and gave them a single colour uniforms. I forego the changes to the vests (this is just too much work for the little gain, really) and simply painted them in an old "amoeba" pattern.

 The bag, ammo pouch and what is probably a camelback of the pistol guy were painted in ochre to help with the contrast. I also painted tiny flags on their tiny sleeves with tiny SAF markings.

 They would carry either a mission or a unit patch on their right arm. Until recent reorganisation (seventh or eight in 20 years I think) they would be part of motorised infantry battalion whose APC they would be driving. Since the reorganisation, all the transport vehicles were grouped into a "5th Transport company" and I couldn't find their insignia anywhere, so I left it out. I tried to paint the insignia of our last remaining tank units - now named 45th Centre of tracked vehicles, but as it's green and grey, it sort of sunken into the grey background.

I am pretty sure I should sculpt tiny microphones for them, but over all I have to say I am really satisfied with how they turned out. They have very specialised role, driving vehicles I don't even have in my collection (yet?), but I will be using them as a crew of any other vehicle you can think of, including helicopters (those always need saving!) and so forth.

Below is a photo of a MEDEVAC, so if I'd be desperate for a reason, this could also work :P.

More for the future reference than anything else, here are the paints used:

Uniform:
- Brown violet -> with some german fieldgrey -> with some green grey
This didn't quite work for me, as it came out too grey.
So I started drybrushing Luftwaffe camo green mixed with some khaki to lighten it up on top of it. I added some white to the mix to get the colour I wanted.

Amoeba camo on the vests as per my Humvee gunners (that I did more than a year ago, oh my - time flies by!):
German fieldgray base
Patches of german grey, german camo medium brown and luftwaffe camo green
Lightly drybrushed with fieldgrey + white. This makes camo itself much more subtle, makes vests look faded (which is true as you can see on some photos) and it also paints straps with one colour - obviously they are stitched on the camo cloth and are of one colour.

Coyote brown equipment was painted with khaki grey and green ochre highlight.


The rest of my guns should be with me in about a week, so I will start converting the "ordinary" fire teams shortly, but I suspect a lot more time will pass before any of those get painted!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo