Men In Boxes

 From Hat Industries' 1/72 Punic Wars range. Painted in acrylics.

 These are the light infantry figures from the set 8020 Carthaginian African infantry.  I'n not happy with the way these turned out so I'll be repainting them soon. This is actually the very first Hat Industrie set I bought.

A pity the set only had 2 poses of the Celtic-Iberians. Nonetheless, I enjoyed painting these.

After base painting the 1/72 Zvezda greek warriors, I whipped out my reference materials and the ingredients for my magic wash -- my illustration acrylic inks from Magic Color and Pledge Wipe & Shine Floor Polish aka Future Floor Polish! My favorite shades from Magic Color are Golden Sand and Earth Brown. I'm an illustrator and I've always liked experimenting with my art materials on scale models and figures. I've discovered that these acrylic inks, combined with the Pledge Wipe & Shine make excellent scale model washes due to their viscosity, ease of application, mixability, vibrance and flexibility. Flexibility is very imortant, especially for these soft plastic figures. Modellers have complained about having paint chipping off from finished figures. This is because of the plastic's pliability, making the inflexible paint detach from surfaces that "move." By having the innate flexilbity of acrylics and combined with the covering properties o...

These are 1/72 Zvezda Greek infantry primed grey. The Zvezda figures look good, especially at a distance. Close-up though, a few poses have awkward moldlines, soft details and a lot of filled-in undercuts. I don't mind though because I'm going to use these fellas for gaming, especially in bunched up formations on multiple figure bases. These have already been mounted on DBx bases, since I'll be using these for my Hordes of the Things Mythic Greek army. Some would paint these on paint sticks, or individual painting mounts with a mind to painting the whole figure. My philosophy though is for the lazy man -- if you can't see it, don't paint it :) Base colors are slapped on, some quite messily since I'll be retouching them anyway after the application of the magic wash. I've got my own fomula for the magic wash and I'll show it soon. That's my new magnifying lens, picked up at a Japanese thrift store for a dollar. Neat find if I do say so myse...

pic from https://www.facebook.com/Zvezda.ModelKits Feb 27 2013 news from Plastic Soldier Review. Zvezda's last full box? Slightly ahead of schedule, Zvezda have announced the release of their set 8078 German Infantry Platoon (for the years 1942 to 1944). With the release of this set there are no more full figure sets promised from this manufacturer, although a large number of game pieces are due over the coming months. Whether they will return to making full sets in the future is impossible to say, but we will certainly be sad to see an end to what has been for the most part an outstanding range of figures. pic from https://www.facebook.com/Zvezda.ModelKits I'm not a fan of their 4 figure minibox sets meant for Art of Tactic and am bummed out. Really bummed out.