martes, 1 de mayo de 2018

Airfix British Commandos 1/32

Back in 2015 I bought a box of Airfix British Commandos 1/32, the new edition, made in India, with the new plastic that has had so much bad press but in fact it has many qualities despite a few shortcomings.

My first attempt painting the Commandos was not very good, my fault, I did not have the skills, the proper tools and the sensibility to appreciate all the fine details of their sculpts.

After 1+ years painting "Big 1/32" figures from TSSD, Conte, Austin and CTS, I managed to mature my technique and skills, and after spending some time collecting these bigger than 1/32 figures, I decided to come back to Airfix, repainting my Commandos in April 2018, this time with better results, with a more systematized technique and a more defined style, "Battle Weary".


My style was inspired in the works of other people, like eBay seller 497_gotthatone (G. Gunther) and also the new paint job to be used by Forces of Valor for its new releases starting in 2018, a sample of this FOV paint job is shown below:


The work of G. Gunther can found in his Blog:
http://gunterpaintedfigures.weebly.com/132-german-army-and-axis-forces.html

So these are some of my results of repainting my Commandos with my new "Battle Weary" style, they must look tired, brutal, like zombies (empty eyes), with a bit of influence from dark Animes. Lots of washes, black all over the body, and umber for the skin. Vallejo acrylic paints and Army Painter paint brushes were the tools used. This time I did let the plastic "talk its secrets" to me, and with very thin layers of paint, beautiful details were revealed... Long live Airfix!















These figures also include a few from the Airfix kit "British Infantry Support Group" along with their equipment, which adds a nice extra firepower to the Commandos kit.

The figures are part of my toy soldier art project "Plastic Commandos", links to the FB page and videos are on the upper right side of this blog, I already started doing some toy photography and battle video sequences, some of the by-products are shown below:






In defense of the new Airfix plastic...

Many people complain about the new rigid plastic, because sometimes the thin barrels of the weapons break easily inside the box, my experience with the Commando box, this happened to 2 different figures with thin barrels (sten and thompson mg), and luckily enough these figures were repeated in the box, so there was no loss of a single pose. Their color is dark green, it makes a bit difficult to distinguish details while painting, but these will be revealed when the paint is applied, although I would like them to have a lighter version of the color.

This new plastic does not require primer if you are using high quality acrylics, like Vallejo, and your technique is a good one (no thick layers of paint). It is easier to clean with a knife and sand because of its rigid nature, with a very sharp xacto knife you can clean mold lines and other details without ripping apart the plastic, nevertheless, it does require practice, cleaning faces in particular, so it is better to start with a repeated figure. If you want to glue pieces from model kits, like Airfix multipose kits or 1/35 kits (accessories, weapon barrels, etc), you can use Tamiya cement for plastic models, it will work nicely, and this is a nice advantage of the new plastic, you won't have to use superglue anymore!








4 comentarios:

  1. Hola Martin! Very nice job done here!They really look tired and exausted.You work very nice with washes and drybrushing!
    I would sudjest a ligher color for the belt and ammunition pockets but is also nice this way!
    Within this month I will have ready my set as promised!
    They are cleand up and ready for primer.

    Regards, George.

    P.S.:You can add a button to let readers follow your blog.
    I would like to have you in my blog reading list.

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    Respuestas
    1. Hi George! thank you very much for the feedback!

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    2. Hola Martin and Happy New Year!
      I finally manage to finish my commandos!
      Unfortunatelly very late then I promised...
      You can check them out here
      https://biblicrafts.blogspot.com/2019/

      Regards, George.

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    3. Beautiful! very clean style, thank you for your reply

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