28mm Sci-Fi “on the cheap” (part 5)

Well bank holiday Monday really helped when it came to painting up the second set of gangers, without that extra day I think I would have struggled, doing bits around the house and in my dads garden ate into the time (and if I’m honest so did the classic Dr Who marathon on the “Horror Channel”!). Still they are done now and I used another of Myles’s Ork buildings for backgrounds, sorry Simon (Blaxkleric) but I didn’t do any camouflage this time, looking at them now perhaps I should have…

As stated before the first chap didn’t need a lot of conversion as I quite liked him the way he was, so when it came to painting, jeans, brown leather boots and belts, chainmail/scale armoured chest plate and red T-shirt were the order of the day. For his backpack I went for a pale green and used coffee and cream dry brushing on the bundle of ropes coiled on top of the pack, red hair with a purple headband finished him off.

“Patrick Swayze” was really pretty obvious as far as painting went apart from the colour of his pants (pale blue) all the other colours pretty much chose themselves. So along with his black shirt and metal shoulder pads all his leather wear was done in brown. One thing I did do halfway through painting (not the best time I hasten to add) was realise that he had a small box hanging from the front of his belt that looked like a microphone, and this would look good attached to the radio on his back, so I carefully drilled a couple of holes, one under the microphone and one in the bottom of the radio and bending a piece of wire to shape glued it into the holes (TIP it’s really a good idea to do this before you start painting your figure as it tends to chip paint off bits you’ve painted*), I went for blond hair as I thought it might make him look a bit like Luke Skywalker, but looking at him now he reminds me more of Robin Askwith from the “Confessions” movies from the seventies.

My shadow run chap was always going to have his long coat painted black (The Matrix has a lot to answer for!) originally his pants and hair were also going to be that colour, but I thought this would be to much so settled on maroon trousers and stark white hair, a sort of “not goth” look.

On to the ladies and I thought the afro style hair would work well with a lady of a darker skin tone too. Pink was my chosen colour for her jumper and mated to pale grey skin tight paints and bag, with silver boots and belt buckle, this is one sassy lady and makes a good companion figure to the lilac haired girl from last week, maybe a “Cagney and Lacey” of the future?

Lastly I had my lady in pants and short jacket, she struck me as having a western feel to her, but rather than go for another denim costume I thought I’d dress her in buckskin (the quickshade really worked well on this I thought) mated to this were brown leather boots and belt/holster and I finnished her off with more red hair, I do seem to do a lot of redheads, I think this has more to do with the paint than a preference on my part (my wife is a blond after all!).

All in all I‘m rather pleased with how the gangers have turned out, I just need to think of a use for them now, I’ve been hanging around the “Combat Zone Chronicles” page of late and I must admit I’m twitching on picking up a copy. But onto the troopers first, I don’t like to plan to far ahead (if at all!).

Cheers Roger.

*Brought to you by Roger Webb, specialist subject the blinking obvious!!