M55 Quad 50 Vietnam crew - Completed 06/15/2010

Thanks a lot for your comment, Pat!

A bottle of scotch sure is an option, as soon as the shift is over, provided Charlie doesn't come up with something... I already have all the components for the dio. With no new comments incoming, I believe I'll have it put it together in a day or two. So please stay tuned and have a nice day

Pawel

Sarge looks like Gunny (R. Lee Ermy) from Lock & Load on a REALLY bad day.  Maybe he'd smile if he had a bottle of scotch to go with the 1911.  Nice work and can't wait to see them all on the dio!

                                                                                       Pat

Thanks for your comment Andy!

The Verlinden head really worked here - the sunglasses, the facial expression...

Yeah, it's always good to have a "fresh eye" look on what you do, much more can be seen that way. Speaking of which, please check out the dio thread, I need your help right now! Thanks in advance, have a nice day

Pawel

Great work so far!  I really like this dude's pair of sunglasses.  I had one of those back in 80's because I wanted to look like Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun.  Embarassing...

Good catch by Indy... now the grip looks much better and normal.   You are almost there...

Hello everybody!

Now I completed the remainder of the Quad 50 crew. Oh happy day!

First Scarecrow again - I modified his grip on the can and dry-brushed the boots some to better blend them with the diorama base:

Brownie got a knife and a small individual dressing pack containing some small items:

Sarge got the M1911 in a holster and the ammo pouch:

He sure looks dissatisfied, dont you think?

Now the work finally moves to the dio thread to wrap everything up correctly. If you think I could improve something, speak now or remain silent forever. Hope you like it, have a ncie day

Pawel

Thanks for your comment Adam!

That hand on the water can - that was my doubt too. I'll think about that. I hope I can show you all of them boys completed. Sarge and Brownie only have minor details to be finished.

Please stay tuned, and have a nice day

Pawel

Nice progress Buddy

I like the grin on that guy. Not crazy about his grip the water can.

Rest of him looks super--keep it up!

Wow! Great work, really do like that jacket, looks like it fits right in with the rest of the uniform

The weathering on the Water can looks great and I like the little bits of dirt and dust in the boots.

Chris,

thanks for checking, it's a good feeling to know you can depend on additional eyes

Now let's see if you like this dude - Scarecrow:

That's the first fig I modified this heavily. Until Scarecrow I sometimes performed some form of surgery, sometimes really heavy. But here I made the entire jacket by myself, so how do you like it?

The jungle boots were painted olive drab Humbrol 155 (perfect match, I checked with a 1:1 example) and dark grey Humbrol 32 instead of black. That gave them that faded, worn look from the start. Than an acrylic wash was applied, of the color of my dio's soil. There's stil some dry brushing in the cue, but I wanted to have something to share with you for the weekend, so the fotos were made before everything was dry enough for drybrushing.

Thanks again for looking, everybody, hope to hear from you soon, and have a nice weekend!

Pawel

Yeah I just meant that was the only critical thing I could find. And you already new about it! so things look on track to me. And I see it now, that makes sense I guess it just looked like the brown was painted over instead of the green not covering it all.

I forgot you were using more of a tan/yellow dirt color to match the reference photo so it makes perfect sense that the dirt color would match.

I'm working of a few things, but yeah I'm still taking classes and working part time which occupies most of my time.

I like these guys a lot!! Keep up the great work

Howdy Chris!

Thanks a lot for your comment! Like I said, I noticed the right arm of Brownie just after making the fotos. It's unpainted area, or should I say unpainted it this step, because I painted the fleshtones before. I'll fix that soon.

The boots and the belts are next, And of course a little dirt is necessary. As for the colour of the dirt, I'll have to match it to the rest of my dio.

How are your projects going Chris? I remember you saying your studies take most of your time, is that right?

Thanks again, glad you like it and have a nice day

Pawel

Thank looks great! I think you got a little overlap on the black guys right arm near the sleave but other than that- they all look great- looking forward to the jungle boots I'm assuming everything will get a nice orange clay dusting?

Hello!

Yesterday I managed to paint the uniforms. I tried to get a nice shading, so I first painted all the recesses black and before it dried throughly I brushed olive green (Humbrol 116) all over. Then I tried to blend the green and the black together on the folds. Once that was done, I dry-brushed some Humbrol-84 olive on the figures. I wanted the scarecrow to be the "dirtiest", and Sarge to be the "cleanest" of 'em.

Just after taking the fotos I noticed the unpainted spot on Brownie's sleeve - I'll fix that soon. Please, take a look at the fotos:

Now is a good time to post your critical remarks! Thanks for reading, have a nice day

Pawel

Hello Andy!

Thanks for the comment! I'm glad you like the camo, but I'm on the edge now - the darkest one, the second from the right, well I'm a step away from stripping it and doing it a lot lighter. You know, to match it closer to the helmet of the Quad gunner. Oh well, we'll see. Thanks again, please stay tuned for the uniforms, and have a nice day

Pawel

Looking great especially the camo... I recall it goes lighter as its color fades over time.  I am not a veteran but looking at hundreds of pictures so your work looks good to me. 

Hello!

Not a big thing today - I painted the helmets. They turned out a little dark, so maybe I'll totally repaint one of them. I also painted Scarecrow's boonie hat. Here's what it looks like:

Hope you like it, have a nice day

Pawel

Hello Adam, good to hear from you. Yeah, I worked on my dio some, if you'd be so kind as to check in the armor forum you could find my Quad 50 completed at last!

Now I'm trying to paint the uniforms with nice shading and then I'll be able to move to the final assembly of the dio. I sure move on slowly, but - whaddya gonna do?

Bad thing is the forum is even slower - last time I counted three new posts to the figures forum A DAY. Clearly the customers aren't satisfied - bad on ya FineScale! Suppressing the freedom of speech and not responding to complaints on time comes back, not only hurting Finescale, but also the community. Pity.

But let's not be too pesimistic - I'm waiting for your next build Adam and wish you, as always, a nice day

Pawel

Eh,Pawel, whata ya say 'ole Buddy? I'm happy to see you've been working on this some--that guy is black-no doubt about it--a challenge to get right, Im sure--good job--I haven't tried much racially speaking with modelling...pretty interesting--there's no accounting for the light guest count--nothing really moves on this forum--a true static model forum

I hope to see more from you on this soon~! I promise to keep my eyes peeled this time

Thanks a lot for your comment Otto! If you like my work, you can also check the related threads here and here. Thanks again and have a nice day

Pawel

This is looking real interesting. I look forward to seeing this take shape.

OK, I painted Brownie's and Scarecrow's faces recently. Scarecrow was easy because of the sunglasses. Brownie gave me some more challenge, because of the dark skin tone. So I used brown instead of sand for base and black instead of brown for the first wash. And it seems to be working - judge yourselves:

Still waiting for your comments, have a nice day

Pawel

Andy & Adam -thanks for the comments!

Andy - as I checked personally, the border between courage and stupidity is thin and pretty soft Plus, what other options do I have to get the figs I want? Plus, the Tamiya figs gor really cheap, so the risk isn't big, and the potential gain is attractive, don't you think? Go get a cheap figure set and try to tweak it, it's a lot of fun!

Adam - well I tried to be more like you so people can learn from my posts too. Now updates are going to be a problem for next two weeks, as I have to go for a business trip the next days, but I hope as a modeller you are patient, aren't you?

And here are my attempts at sculpting. I filled the gaps in Scarecrow's figure wiith black Milliput, and after I had some excess Milliput left, I decided to go on and did the six pockets on his uniform. I decided to depict a pose often seen in the fotos, but not done in scale - a figure with no load bearing equipment and with the jacket worn "outside". Here's what it looks like before cleanup:

Hope you like it, waiting for your opinnions. See you later

Pawel

Hey PaweL ~~!

What's up Buddy? Sorry  I missed that last post (musta been on the wrong day or somthing?) I thought I was looking out for updates on this----

~~What I think is....these figures are really cool conversions and this build is going to be great when it comes together!!

~~What I think is-- this photo alone reveals much about how-to convert  figures!

He will be great---one thing---work on this more and post more often!

WOW!  Looking great... you are brave enough to chop those figures up.  I haven't reached this point yet.  I have been following your process and I am looking forward to see it completed. 

And after almost a month later and no commnets I got myself together to start building the second loader - the last figure I need for the dio. I still have two figs left from the Tamiya Command Set so I decided to modify one of them. But I also chose one of many heads I have in stash for the figure:

Were talking about the one that's foremost in the foto above. Though it can't be seen, the hat is damaged and I didn't like the hat itself anyhow (too civilian looking for me), so I cut it away. I'll substitute a boonie hat from the Dragon's Green Berets set instead.

So here's what I have to work with:

We have the rather ridiculously posed "leaning against a table" figure from the command set, the resin Verlinden head with the hat cut off and a boonie hat from Dragon. Let's see what can be done! First I cut the styrene head off and drilled out the neck. After that fitting the resin head was easy. Then I cut off the lower portion of the torso. In the upper part I cut off the pockets, that were ugly anyhow, and drilled two holes: one for the "backbone" and one for the arm. I made the "backbone" from copper wire and glued it in, watching for proportions of the fig. The legs is the only part of the figure that I'm leaving uncut. Then I took the right arm and cut it in three pieces. I drilled a hole in each part and connected them with a single piece of copper wire. The left hand, which will be holding a jerry can, didn't need that much modifications - I only cut the hand off, modified the fingers and the thumb and reattached it with a short piece of wire. At last the foto of my work so far, posed to show what I have in mind:

There is all the filling and cleaning left, but I hope to be moving in the right direction. I think the guy is called "Scarecrow". Please let me know what do you think, have a nice day

Pawel

OK gennulmen (and maybe even ladies - who knows?), I'm movin' on with the figures. After priming sarge's face and hands with Humbrol 63 I left the parts to dry for several days (just because I didn't feel like touching it). Then I was doing a dark brown oil was for my dio and had a little left, so in an impulse I used it up on sarge. When that was done I had no other option as to proceed, to get that wet-on-wet effect. I used Humbrol flat white mixed with a little fleshtone for the highlights. Here's what it looked like after the shading:

Then I left it to dry for a day or two and went on and painted the lower lip, eyes and eyebrows. For eyes I used light gray for the whites and dark gray for the iris (and for the eyebrows). I also applied minimal quantities of black future wash to the eyes and the lips so they look a little wet. Now the sarge looks like this:

Motivated by results I liked, I went on to the first ammo loader figure. I used the "leaning tanker" from the same Tamiya command figure set as basis. Out of the box he looks like this:

Let's see what I can do out of this. First I chopped the head off (but carefully - those tanker helmets are hard to come by) and drilled the neck out. I found a nice head in the Dragon set number 3305 U.S. MARINE (TET OFFENSIVE, 1968) - it was intended for the guy caring his wounded buddy on his back. I was able to mate the torso and the head. I inserted a shim between torso and legs, to make the figure bend a little lower. I also modified the legs with cargo pockets for the trousers, again using my old trick with plastic sheet and filler. The Tamiya figure can really benefit from a through cleanup. Using the tip of the blade you can do wonders on the jungle boots, for example. Then I started putting the man together using nitro solvent mixed with plastic filler. This way I get a joint that is posable for about half an hour and I can shape the excess with brush soaked in solvent to smooth the joint, so that when it dries no filling is necessary - just filing. The downside to it is the joints need a few days to cure completely - but I have enough other work to switch to, so it's no big deal. That's what I got at this point:

I think the guy's name is Brownie. That still leaves one loader to do. Please write me what do you think, and have a nice day

Pawel

Thanks for the comment, Indy!

Glad you like it, I hope the sarge is going to look even a little tuffer - let's see if I can pull this off. That still leaves two loaders I have to do yet. Please stay tuned and have a nice day

Pawel

Looking very cool here Pawel!  Good to see somebody doing some real modelling!! the Gunner looks tuff Man--keep that up!

Hello!

It's been a while, but I have some progress for you - if anybody is interested, that is. What I did is I filled the hole in sarge's back and glued the pockets on his trousers. They were made of sheet styrene and then soaked in MEK (nitro thinner) and glued on with a mixture of MEK and surface putty and left to dry throughly. It looked like on the foto:

In the meantime I filled the nasty pinhole just on the tip of sarge's nose. I did this by glueing a little piece of stretched sprue in the hole, like on the foto below - just can't seem to get it in focus. Then I cut off the excess and gently sanded the remainder.

Then I sculpted the trousers' pockets with a tip of a scalpel, and then sarge lot his head - cut off with a razor saw:

Then I drilled out the old neck and cut the resin head to fit. This allowed to shape the collar nicely, by the way.

The foto below shows the test fit of the new head - sarge starts to look mean now.

I already primed the face and started to work on the hands. Please stay tuned and let me know, what do you think. I wish you all a nice day

Pawel