Post by cobrasam on Apr 9, 2011 21:50:51 GMT -5
Okay Dave & Donna. You wanted me to post this guy when I was done (or close to), so here's what I got so far.
I used one of the tan Stony bodies and a Sheriff Garret head (well, Blue Knight head) as the base to make an British Army officer, circa WW2, though really any time up to the 1960s. He's dressed for the North African or possibly Burmese campaigns. I gave him black hair with a spray of gray, and trimmed the sideburns a bit so the style was more 1940s than Old West.
I wanted it to look like something Marx may have made. That is, I want someone who looks at it to say, "I didn't know they even made those."
So that meant a couple of simple rules: the accessories would be all plastic and I would have to work with a limited color palette. In this case the khaki of the body, a sandy tan for the pieces that would be fabric (in real life) and black for the pieces that would be metal or leather.
The uniform is an odd hybrid. By that I mean it's the color of the British Khaki Drill (KD) uniform (think "Bridge on the River Kwai") but the tailoring is battledress with the short blouse and baggy pants. Battledress would be a shade darker than this usually, greener still if it was Canadian, blue if it was RAF. There was a wide variety of color and fabrics, but I don't know if it ever got as light as KD. Well hey, maybe he's been in the desert sun too long and it faded. The upshot is that it's more of an "idealized" British officer than a typical one. But then most action figures are idealized
That hat is an old knock-off GI Joe US Air Force hat that I sanded and bent and glued and clamped and cussed at until I got it to look British.
The pistol is one of those GI Joe Adventure Team pistols I did a little reshaping on to make it look like an Enfield or Webley.
The web belt is a broken Geronimo belt reversed, painted, and using a latch cannibalized from another one I had. The ammo pouch was cut from another belt and I sanded it down to look like those British ones with the backing on them. That's glued to the belt. The canteen, which you can't really see here, came from my box o' parts. I added a strap and painted that. Same goes for the binoculars, except I didn't paint those. I still have to shape that strap better.
The holster I built from scratch using plastic from an old Johnny saddle bag. Unlike the ammo pouch which is permanently attached, the holster is hanging from the belt by a strap in case I wanted to slide it over to his left hip like how the English Sgt. in Rat Patrol wears his.
The boots worked out well (meaning I didn't have to do a lot of work). Stony is scuplted wearing American paratrooper boots. These are one-piece, tall boots that lace up to the top and then have a flap that straps around and buckles on the side. Commonwealth troops on the other hand wore ankle boots and then had a canvas anklet/gaiter that wrapped around between the top of the boots and the bottom of the pants and, you guessed it, buckled on the side. So same sculpt either way.
I know Marx didn't paint boots, but the boot-gaiter combo is such a recognizable feature of British uniforms that I wanted to make it clearer what one was seeing. I know they painted boots on the Mexican Stonys, and my understanding is that these tan Stony bodies were made for a Mexican market. So my self-imposed rule went from "Marx could have made it" to "Plastimarx could have made it," but good enough.
As far as the body goes, I didn't change a lot. I removed the Sgt stripes and US lapel insignias with an exacto knife and sanded them down with superfine paper. The lapels themselves I trimmed a little so the top ones are horizontal (that's just my OCD I guess). It didn't make a lot of sense for him to be wearing *three* layers in the tropics, so I cut the t-shirt part of the neck hole out. I like it with the open neck, though officially he should be wearing a tie. But you know what? He's got a gun, he's had a bad day, so I'm cutting the dude some slack
Sorry for the long post. It probably took me more time to write this than to make the figure.
I used one of the tan Stony bodies and a Sheriff Garret head (well, Blue Knight head) as the base to make an British Army officer, circa WW2, though really any time up to the 1960s. He's dressed for the North African or possibly Burmese campaigns. I gave him black hair with a spray of gray, and trimmed the sideburns a bit so the style was more 1940s than Old West.
I wanted it to look like something Marx may have made. That is, I want someone who looks at it to say, "I didn't know they even made those."
So that meant a couple of simple rules: the accessories would be all plastic and I would have to work with a limited color palette. In this case the khaki of the body, a sandy tan for the pieces that would be fabric (in real life) and black for the pieces that would be metal or leather.
The uniform is an odd hybrid. By that I mean it's the color of the British Khaki Drill (KD) uniform (think "Bridge on the River Kwai") but the tailoring is battledress with the short blouse and baggy pants. Battledress would be a shade darker than this usually, greener still if it was Canadian, blue if it was RAF. There was a wide variety of color and fabrics, but I don't know if it ever got as light as KD. Well hey, maybe he's been in the desert sun too long and it faded. The upshot is that it's more of an "idealized" British officer than a typical one. But then most action figures are idealized
That hat is an old knock-off GI Joe US Air Force hat that I sanded and bent and glued and clamped and cussed at until I got it to look British.
The pistol is one of those GI Joe Adventure Team pistols I did a little reshaping on to make it look like an Enfield or Webley.
The web belt is a broken Geronimo belt reversed, painted, and using a latch cannibalized from another one I had. The ammo pouch was cut from another belt and I sanded it down to look like those British ones with the backing on them. That's glued to the belt. The canteen, which you can't really see here, came from my box o' parts. I added a strap and painted that. Same goes for the binoculars, except I didn't paint those. I still have to shape that strap better.
The holster I built from scratch using plastic from an old Johnny saddle bag. Unlike the ammo pouch which is permanently attached, the holster is hanging from the belt by a strap in case I wanted to slide it over to his left hip like how the English Sgt. in Rat Patrol wears his.
The boots worked out well (meaning I didn't have to do a lot of work). Stony is scuplted wearing American paratrooper boots. These are one-piece, tall boots that lace up to the top and then have a flap that straps around and buckles on the side. Commonwealth troops on the other hand wore ankle boots and then had a canvas anklet/gaiter that wrapped around between the top of the boots and the bottom of the pants and, you guessed it, buckled on the side. So same sculpt either way.
I know Marx didn't paint boots, but the boot-gaiter combo is such a recognizable feature of British uniforms that I wanted to make it clearer what one was seeing. I know they painted boots on the Mexican Stonys, and my understanding is that these tan Stony bodies were made for a Mexican market. So my self-imposed rule went from "Marx could have made it" to "Plastimarx could have made it," but good enough.
As far as the body goes, I didn't change a lot. I removed the Sgt stripes and US lapel insignias with an exacto knife and sanded them down with superfine paper. The lapels themselves I trimmed a little so the top ones are horizontal (that's just my OCD I guess). It didn't make a lot of sense for him to be wearing *three* layers in the tropics, so I cut the t-shirt part of the neck hole out. I like it with the open neck, though officially he should be wearing a tie. But you know what? He's got a gun, he's had a bad day, so I'm cutting the dude some slack
Sorry for the long post. It probably took me more time to write this than to make the figure.
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