Dressing and styling my insurgents, UPDATED with pics

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:26 pm

So I'm working on this project involving mostly modern stuff. My original goal was to go for a 1980's movie sort of "It Could Be Any Country" sort of look, not directly mentioning Iraq... But it's likely that for all the same reasons that idea was stupid in the 80's, it won't work out well for me now. So we can go ahead and call it Iraq.

As most everyone knows, we're not really up against an organized army, but rather civilians. This means that there are no standardized uniforms, nor really much equipment to speak of. I have a few vehicles, and in fact, even one oddball tank, for my insurgent forces to make use of, as well as a (I feel) decent enough story as to how they came into possession of such things. What I don't have are any actual insurgents.

I'm sure it will come as no suprise to you WWII guys that none of our favorite manufacturers of soldiers currently offer any "Insurgent" figures, so I'm left to my own devices. I need to turn other figures into armed and fighting civilians. And did I mention this is all 1:32, so no easy to disassemble figures, and not really much in the way of civilians either?

What I'm working with so far are a few packs of FOV WWII 82nd guys, the ones with the prisoners and the ones with the medic, so that means I have a few Germans in there also. I bought them on clearence, so I felt they were cheap enough for me to play with. Turning them into civilians is a bit of a challenge. I can repaint their clothes, but I can't really make them into flannel shirts, of soccer jerseys, or some such. The good news is that, so far, all my research has shown that insurgents tend to be dressing in just about anything, so I can't get it too bad. I've even decided that I can let them own a little black nylon web gear (since I can't really get it off of them...), I figure just about anyone can get a hold of that sort of thing.

My questions at the moment are about facial hair and hair color. Does everyone get black hair? I'll admit, black hair and a beard went a long way in getting them to look the part, but should I give them all black hair? I know that I'll be leaving at least one beardless, the wounded one that lies on his back, half sitting up, since I was able to get a little blood out of the mouth thing, I don't want to lose that. I'm also having a hard time with the helmets, it's hard to make them look like anything else, and I just don't see many insurgents with them... Although, come to think of it, it could work into my story of how they came to have the other military equipment they do have. I suppose if one can steal a Jeep, there's no reason why they couldn't have stolen some other supplies at the same time... I'll have to consider that angle...

So I guess I'm pretty open to ideas as for how I can make these FOV soldiers look like insurgents, anybody have any pointers or thoughts? Other than just taking the piles of removed heads, arms, legs, and torsos and piling them all up next to an Abrams!

MV

flpickupman · Post by **flpickupman** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:42 pm

21st Century actually released two "insurgent" figures.

Courtesy of our SSHQ Database:

http://www.sshqdb.com/18/index.php?cat=76

Fritzkrieg · Post by **Fritzkrieg** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:51 pm

I thought, I could help you out here, until you stated you were working in 1:32. Maybe, there is something available in a 1:35 model kit you could modify.

PanzerArm · Post by **PanzerArm** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:26 pm

Did anyone else read those names backwards?

Iqar Inaci Reman Amai
I am an American Iraqi

Setat Sdeti Nueh Tevoli
I love the United States

LOL

kenhil2 · Post by **kenhil2** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:23 pm

beards, beardless, and different length beards is about all i can say, as for the web gear not sure what your figs have on looks like, but some insurgents had chest pouch rigs that have 3-4 pouches in the front with the straps x-ing across their back, some just wore pistol belts with holsters or knives(more rare), but that was the extent of load bearing gear that i ever saw, most stuck with civilian nontactical looking clothes because of our limitations in rules of engagement on engaging civilian dressed nontactical appearing people

ps maybe a saddam-stache here and there, but not usually with terrorists, mostly rich civilians/sheiks

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:28 pm

kenhil2 wrote:beards, beardless, and different length beards is about all i can say, as for the web gear not sure what your figs have on looks like, but some insurgents had chest pouch rigs that have 3-4 pouches in the front with the straps x-ing across their back, some just wore pistol belts with holsters or knives(more rare), but that was the extent of load bearing gear that i ever saw, most stuck with civilian nontactical looking clothes because of our limitations in rules of engagement on engaging civilian dressed nontactical appearing people

ps maybe a saddam-stache here and there, but not usually with terrorists, mostly rich civilians/sheiks

First off, thanks for your service, and glad you made it back. Secondly, thanks for the info.

I will say that adding beards and painting their hair black has gone a long way towards getting them to look the part. I don't really have much choice about length of beard, since it painted on, but by painting more on the neck, I can somewhat give the impression of a fuller beard.

So far I've given two brown pants, and one guy a khaki color, and another grey. Shoes, boots mainly (since that's what they are cast as) are mostly black, or in the case of some that were brown, painted black (brown pants with brown boots would look horrible, anyone with any fashion sense would know that!). I've given one guy a khaki/brown shirt, and one a grey shirt. The one surrendering guy with a long coat-like thing is now blue.

The tactical type gear is tough since it's molded into the figure. I can't really remove it, so I try to paint it to look more like what any surplus store would have, or maybe these guys were Iraqi Army and kept their old stuff.

The 1:32 thing is holding me back a bit, as the variety isn't as good as 1:18. I did see that Figarti makes both Iraqi civilians and insurgents, but at their prices, well, I'll just go ahead and say it. I'm not going to pay those prices. $100 for 4 insurgents is just too rich for my blood. I can keep hacking up $2 for 4 soldiers FOV.

I hope to have some pics I can post soon, just as soon as the GF remembers to bring the camera home from work. Thanks for the advice, and by all means, keep it coming. I'm finding myself getting more into the figure painting than I thought I was going to. I might search out some other oddballs that I have stashed away and see if I can come up with some more Iraqis.

MV

tmanthegreat · Post by **tmanthegreat** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:11 am

What is it with you Visalia boys and insurgents? Heck, your town was full of Confederate ones during the Civil War, making life rather difficult for Col. Evans and the 2nd Cavalry, California Volunteers

Sorry, my MA thesis on the happenings in your town during the Civil War is getting the better of me. One week left and so much to write about...

Look forward to seeing pictures of the insurgents

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 7:12 pm

Well, I did manage to finish up a couple of these guys, then let them set around long enough to gather dust, then dust them, then let them sit around again...

Well, the point is I finally got some pictures. After scouring the 'net looking for pictures of actual insurgents, I don't think I did half bad, once I just decided to dress them in whatever, since that seemed to be pretty much what the real ones wore. I also opted to go for a little bit of an "If it looks odd to me, it's probably right" thing, since that is, again, what I found when looking at the real deal.

What I didn't manage to perfect were my picture taking skills. When working so close lighting/flash and the shadow of the lens itself tended to be a bit of a problem, but I figure some pics were better than no pics, so here they are:

As you can see, not a lot of variety, and part swapping isn't really easy, but I guess it's something. Feel free to let me know what ideas you may have. I'm still trying to figure out how I can deal with the helmetted guys, or even some Chinese infantry...

MV

gburch · Post by **gburch** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 4:02 am

You can see how I've been approaching the "bad guy" problem in the pics in this thread about my "Long War" dio which is set in an indeterminate Middle Eastern locale:

viewtopic.php?t=17530

I started with just part swaps from existing figures, but have moved on to creating and modifying parts with a combination of paint, styrene stock, paper, putty and liberal cutting and sanding. I've found that building up beards by liberally laying on acrylic paint, letting it dry and repeating, then sculpting beard details with an exacto works pretty well, a technique I'm still mastering.

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 7:30 am

You 1:18 guys do have an edge there. So many more options in figures, and figures that come apart, making swaps much easier. I'll admit that I might be a tad jealous of that. I haven't found much else in the way of figures (ie; Indianna Jones, Star Wars, and/or G.I. Joe) that I can intemix. Most of the other 1:32 stuff is soldiers from other wars, and the few Iraqi/Afghani/insurgent figures there are are too pricey for me.

I like your dio though, and it may have actually provided some motivation for me to get off my butt and work on my own, so thanks!

MV

tmanthegreat · Post by **tmanthegreat** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:44 am

Great work on converting those FOV German POWs into insurgents

The color changes to the uniform and the addition of the beards worked well. The "I surrender" guys are my favorite and would look good standing in a street scene, surrounded by US troops with rifles pointed at them along with the dead/wounded guys nearby.

Seeing your results, I just might have to try this myself. I think there are still some POW sets at the Fresno TRU I think.

Col.Pickle · Post by **Col.Pickle** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:32 am

Hey awesome work man! Looks great, my fav. are the second figure and the second last. The facial hair looks amazing, good job!

Ruger · Post by **Ruger** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 3:43 pm

Thanks.

I really like the facial hair also, but I didn't want to over do it by giving everyone a beard. So I settled for heavy eyebrows. It's not really apparent in the pictures, but there's actually some texture to the beards. I heated a sharp pick over a flame and then sort of "pricked" and scraped at the surface. I found that this looked much better than just painting things black. I ended up doing it for some of the guy's hair as well. The only one I'm not that happy with is the lieing down guy in the blue, but he was also a head-swap, so I had to be pretty generous with his beard in order to hide the cut and glue evidence.

What I really need to figure out now is how to create some sort of headdress that I can either apply overtop of existing molded on helmets, or perhaps some way to cut off the helmet (and the top of the head with it) and add the headdress that way. I've tried wrapping ting turbans made from tiny strands of cloth, but I haven't had much luck with it.

I'm still jealous of the 1:18 guys, there are so many options for custom figures there, but at least I have someone to aim at now.

MV