I haven't tried customising an action figure before but when I saw the 'artist proof' Traitor Guard from the Mcfarlane Warhammer: Darktide range I really wanted to give it a shot
Sadly I don't have any in-progress photos but hopefully the finished pics here will tell the story. The figure itself is 7" tall & the artist proof version comes in matt grey, ready to paint. I had a look online for colour ideas & the painted version of the guard, & the in-game version, are mostly black.. hmm.. well, the outfit & armour kind of reminded me of the shoretroopers from Star Wars: Rogue One & I liked the olive drab/sand combination, so I decided to go with that.Altho the figure out of the box is matt grey I still undercoated with grey primer, & all the painting was done with The Army Painter acrylics by brush.
So, face first - here you can see the quality of the detail in the figure, it really is excellent & makes painting a lot easier. You can see I touched in the eyes & mouth with a little gloss after a coat of airbrushed Vallejo matt varnish.
Again here, the detail of the figure is clear & the texture of the tunic is very well done. The chains on the shoulder pad & in the hand came from my scrap box.
Before any painting, I covered the knee & elbow joints with tissue paper soaked in PVA glue, pushing it into creases & wrinkles to disguise the kit articulation.
The handles of the stick grenades are soft plastic & a bit too bendy for my taste, so I replaced them with short pieces of bamboo BBQ skewer.
The gun is really nicely detailed too, & at some point I plan to add a shoulder strap.
The next few photos show the wear & tear on the armour, scratches & damage etc.
Overall I really enjoyed this as a painting exercise, & I do plan to make a small base to replace the round plastic one supplied.
Thanks for looking
Grahame
