Order in the Ranks!

With the Fusilier master now complete, its time to move on to other figures which will be required. Clearly our man will not be led to the path of glory without adequate direction, so its time for the first officer.

As initially assembled from a selection of the previously made components, he looks like this, at this stage he's had a few bits of greenstuff added as per the previous figure. I've also remodelled the hands to accept the pistol and into a pointing pose.

At the next stage I've added the coat sleeves and collar as well as the waistbelt for the sword, and associated attachments on the sword itself. You could put the waistbelt on flat, but I've added an area of greenstuff to the waistcoat and then drawn up the belt etc. This leaves a little bit of greenstuff on the original waistcoat, which I've given a little texture to. This will hopefully make it look like the belt is "pulling in" the waistcoat a little, rather than just sitting on top of it. Its fairly subtle, so we'll see how it comes out in the end.

There was a query about how I do buttons and other "detail" areas like cartridge box plates. For buttons I use a little tool that I have made from a plastic golf tee/peg. All I have done is take a plastic golf tee, cut the pointed end flat and drilled a very small hole in the end. Making buttons with this is simple, similar to cookie cutting in dough. I apply a small quantity of greenstuff to the area in question and flatten to roughly the required height. Next apply the tool and press lightly. This effectively "cuts out" the button shape. Then simply remove the excess greenstuff from around the button and there you have it. You can subsequently tidy up the edges/shape if its slightly incorrect, its also worth very lightly pressing the button down to make sure its stuck down well to the figure. I'm sure there are other ways of doing this, but this technique works for me.

For other areas of detail I just try to create a raised surface that's a bit similar to the design in question and then roughen it a little to create a surface for painting. I don't try to recreate the exact detail, lets face it, its unlikely you will paint it anyway and even if you could it would be lost at anything more that very close inspection. Figures with too much detail in a restricted area can look a bit busy when viewed at any kind of distance and the overall impact is lessened, well in my view at least.