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

Vehicle crew - finished?

Hello guys,

There is still nothing painted, but I was converting my Empress figures in the past week. I have mostly finished my SAW gunners, I only have to fill in some of the helmet holes (sculpted this way!) and fix something around the weapon. Other than that, unless I get an inspiration to do SOMETHING to them, they are done and will be showcased in the next post. I am a bit reluctant to keep showing them as you'll see them over and over again. I should get my guns later this week, which means I will be showing a lot of similar stuff!

So, it is no secret that I wanted my Empress British downed pilots to look like a crew members of some sort. This were options I considered:
a) Helicopter/Plane pilots. This would work, but I wasn't sure about having pilots with the vest and armed. Now that I am not satisfied with my work, I might want to add some putty to the helmet and make them pilots after all.
b) Tank crew. They wear overalls like the two miniatures, but, again, I'm not sure about the rifles. I'd imagine they'd have some sort of weapons as Scorpion automatic pistols were used back in the days. I just never saw any photos of them with rifles.
c) APC crew. APC are the most modern vehicles we got in our fleet and the most used. So they would make sense. Plus, they got a crew of 2 so the numbers add!

It's a minor thing, but I like to overthink stuff like this, makes me feel really involved. Yoo-hoo.

Below is a bad photo of tank crews in one of ours M-84s (it's a Yugoslav T-72 and they have been in and out of operational use. New tanks are sort of expensive venture, but no tanks means the knowledge dies, and this is bad. Very bad.) They got one colour overall, which is what I want to paint my miniatures as (for the sake of diversity), and they got those cool looking soft helmets. I  always liked the goofy look of those.

 You can also see them on Svarun 8x8 APC (or Patria AMV if you wish), our newest vehicle. Some 120 were ordered in all sorts of armaments. Something went wrong, we got some, none armed with anything heavier than 40mm GL or .50 cal (so no mortars and 30mm chain cannons for us!). The "funny" thing is, we just might return them all now, as politicians involved in the purchase got convicted. As I'm in the mood for telling you jokes, one of them ran on the parliamentary elections and now goes to parliament debates from jail. Really.

 Those funky hats look even cooler with a hard shell on top of them, which is what I went for in the end:

Below on Valuk 6x6 APC (Slovene version of Austrian Pandur):

 And here a closer look of the helmet. As you can see, they are armed, which works for me, but as those crews are actually part of infantry platoon (or at least they were, last year infantry battalions were reorganised into regiments (but still regiments that consist of companies, it's complicated), and vehicles were pooled. So a platoon doesn't have it's vehicles anymore, but they "borrow" them along with a crew. This makes crew and infantry less coherent, but it saves infantry platoon a time they would spent taking care for vehicles and they can do more push-ups instead!). Anyways, it looks cool so I decided to give it a go.

It didn't really work out as I wanted, but I have attached a bad photo below. If I crack and decide to call them "pilots" after all, all I'd need to do is add a visor and bulky up the headset area.  Decisions, decisions.

Well, just a "short" post for today. I will hopefully muster enough courage to start them painting as soon as I'm done with what I'm painting at the moment.


Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo