We spotted our friend Andy Singleton of Volleyfire painting having an experiment in preparation for the upcoming Konflikt ’47 and he’s kindly popped a few words together to show us all his latest unit:
Andy: Having been very excited for Konflict 47, I finally snapped, and at around midnight one night decided to knock up a few conversions using the newish plastic German Grenadier set to make some KF’47 Afrika Korps. Not being fully up to speed on the upcoming story, I decided to just go with what would look cool and hope it fits. As such, this called for gas masks and long hooded capes to protect the ‘Neu Deutsches Afrika Korp’, from the elements and radiation as they go about their various operations in the desert.
As the conversions appeared to be quite popular when I shared them over on the KF’47 facebook page, I thought I’d do a short guide on how I converted them, and hopefully inspire some of you to have a go at attacking models with green stuff (Not literally!).
Step-By-Step
Step 1) Assemble your figure, leaving off the head but adding what field gear you want to use on them, leaving off the head.
Step 2) Whilst the figure is drying, mix up some greenstuff, I tend to cut about a centimeter or so off the ribbon, and that tends to be enough for 2 to 3 figures.
Step 3) To make the gasmask, roll a very small sausage of greenstuff and lay that over the eyes, pressing it down gently to hold it in place. For the mouse grill, make a small blob and press that down covering the nose and mouth of the figure, and again gently press it down.
Step 4) Whilst the greenstuff was still soft, I pressed a cocktail stick to form the eye pieces of the gasmask, and to do the mouth grill I used an older knife blade to scribe 3 grooves into the mouth blob, and that was it.
Step 5) To make the cape I rolled a piece of greenstuff into a (very rough), triangle, and then folded one point back to create a hood and neck opening, keeping the cape about 2mm or so thick.
Step 6) The cape was fitted onto the figure, again whilst the greenstuff is still soft and workable (A little water can help, just moisten your fingers or tools now and again whilst working the putty), and then shaped to look as if it was billowing in the midst of a dust storm. At this stage you can attach the head and go on to leave the green stuff to dry before priming and painting, alternatively you can go let the greenstuff dry and come back to sculpt in some more creases and folds into the cape.
With Konflict ’47 set in a weird extension to WWII you really do have free reign as to what colours to use, I decided to go for a desert variation of pea dot camouflage, and just played around with tones until they looked right.
With this, my first unit is ready for the new era!
Dan Hewitson
Tom Mecredy