Thursday, January 26, 2012

Snappy Nappies

Finally got around to painting a HaT French Fusilier.  I think he came out pretty well considering I was using crappy brushes and had bad lighting.  Anyone who knows me, knows my ultimate objective is to have decent or nice looking troops but the overall goal is to "get them in the field!"  This is the opening shots of my Peninsular Project.  I am going to base a bunch of units for Age of Eagles and hopefully play a few segments of Talavera or Salamanca.  Then once I do that, I'll play a whole, damn battle in Volley & Bayonet!  Huzzah!

This was my first go at a French Soldier.  Note the furniture on the musket - paint had already started to chip off.  I thought I'd get lucky but all of his battle-buddies received a bath prior to prepping.

Unfortunately, with modern HD cameras you can see all of the imperfections (or my imperfections are just that noticeable!) but all in all he looks pretty good I think.  Note the chevrons on his arms and decoration on cuffs.

Needed an osprey book or better reference for his kit.  It didn't look like the Fusiliers had any ornaments on their cartridge box on the HaT packaging.  Just the light infantry and grenadiers.  By the way, the detail on these HaT guys is extraordinary!  

Here he is marching off to find dinner.

The officer and a Fusilier next to our corporal.  It's going to be a long campaign!

7 comments:

  1. Looks good. Many years ago Frank Chadwick explained how he prepares plastic figures so they will hold paint. after washing the figures, "paint" them with a 50/50 mixture of white glue and water. When that has thoroughly dried, paint the figure. After you have finished using paints, coat it twice more with the glue mixture and then it will hold the paint forever. This is the method I use for my RCW and WW II figures and it works great.

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  2. Mike,
    Sounds effective - does it dry pretty much flat (matte) or is it a glossy? That sounds much more cost effective than the testor's dullcoat. I recently used GW's "purity seal" on some completed WWII guys and it ruined them. Looked like I had put white paint on them... I will give it a try - I have many many more figures left to be painted!

    Steve

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    1. They will dry glossy. I use a spray matt finish from Walmart or Kmart. It's almost as good as Dullcote.

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    2. Thanks Mike - I will give it a shot with some of the plastic WWII guys I'm finishing up now.

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  3. I tried these same figures a while back, it was a bad experience. The paint job I did was poor to say the least, and the sculpting was not the style I like. Yours is one of about two or three good pain jobs I've seen on these. Great work.

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  4. Thanks Ben, I actually like the HaT sculptings a lot - they don't like taking paint unfortunately but there are remedies for that. Check out the HaT website for some very good and very bad paintjobs of these guys. I like them because they are much cheaper than metals. Hopefully I can dish out the intestinal fortitude to complete an entire unit of them. Napoleonics are exhausting!! Thanks for commenting,
    Steve

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