I rearly like the look of the Red Block walkers and miniatures from the AT 43 line (Rackham). I purchased some walkers and a box with the Krasnye Soldaty. I decided to do a few of the infantry models first and experiment with some colors and painting technics for the painting scheme. In the next picture you can see the original miniature (painted an photo taken by the talented people of Rackham).
The problem with the infanty soldiers from AT 43 is their size. They are a few mm to tall (32-34mm) and didn't work well with the Furture Warriors from Marc Copplestone (28-30mm) I intend to use them with.
I realised that the miniatures are multi part models and are produced in a kind of plastic - ideal for converting. A few minutes later the first soldier lay in parts in front of me.
I shortened the miniature a few mm at the belly and glued the parts together again. With a bit of modelling clay to hide the joint the main work was done. As a base I used an old coin (10 Pfennig). The following comparison shot shows that the shortened Red Block soldiers are still a bit taller than the Future Warriors - but in my oppinion this will make no problems, neither on the tabletop nor in the cabinet or on photos.
At this stage I recieved an order with heads from Pig Iron (HD2, HD10, HD11 and HD12). I had intended to use
this as alternative heads for a future project of Weird WW II Germans, but I discovered
that they look very good as some kind of modern russian heads/helmets too. All heads have
gas masks, with helmets, caps or even pelt bonnets.
I also disliked the accessories that came with the miniatures like the knife and the
bag with granades. They looked oversized and had no variety. By accident I own a plastic
sprue of GW Cadian Command with lots of different nice accessories. So I built a simple
singlesided mold of the useful parts and recast them with resin. So I swaped the
original heads with the new ones from Pig Iron and the ugly accessories with the recasts
from GW. This simple alterations had great effect to the look of the miniatures.
In a next step it was time to choose the colors for the painting scheme. I visited a good friend for a (seldom) painting session and he introduced me in the use of the new inks from GW. The effect that could be achieved by simply applying a single wash over very light colors is very good. It is an very different technic than the one I use normaly (starting with black undercoat, beginning with the darkest groundcolor and blending in successiv lighter color shades for the highlights). I had to experiment with the combination of groundcolors and washes . The first trys didn't turned out right and became much to dark and dull.
The next photos show a miniature painted in the bright primary color and an already finished model . Only a few parts had been highlighted with lighter color shades before the washes.
And here are some pictures of the finished models. I added one wash with Deflan Mud over the whole miniature and then two more washes over the dark green armor parts. The achieved effect of shade and depth is very strong. Subsequent followed the addition of some details and weathering but nearly no highlights were applied. My aim was to find a (new) painting style to finish the models with less steps and in shorter time than my usual technic but still get a result that looks good.
A step-by-step painting-guide with more photos of the different steps will follow when I have painted the next models.
To be continued ...