JGSDF Iraq Humanitarian Assistance Team

As I was building the JGSDF Light Armored Vehicle, I saw Tamiya's 1/35 scale JGSDF Iraq Humanitarian Assistance Team at the hobby shop. One of the guys is made to man the machine gun on the LAV, so I had to have it.

I hadn't built any figures since I was a kid, and they looked pretty bad then, so I was curious to see what the state of the art is now. Frankly, they look the same. Tamiya includes some nice binoculars, ammo pouches and other equipment, and the faces and weapons are nicely detailed, but you still have to connect the legs, arms, and heads to the torso, and you get these huge ugly gaps between the pieces.

When I was a kid, I didn't bother tying to fill the gaps, but now I had a tube of putty from the EC-121 disaster, so I got to work. I built the figures completely, except for the guns. Then I got my popsicle sticks out and started slapping on the putty. It was kind of a mess -- mostly because I initially put too much putty on the stick -- but not too bad. Someday, I'm going to get a real putty applicator; or thinner popsicle sticks.

Using my X-Acto knife and some 600 grit sandpaper, I cleaned the guys up and was ready to paint. Unhappy with the way my brush painting went on the LAV (splotchy and streaky) I primed 'em first. This worked out really well. I gave 'em all a base coat of Tamiya acrylic Buff, then I painted the flesh color and started on the camouflage pattern using the Tamiya paints suggested on the box.

In retrospect, it might have been easier to paint around the guy's necks and collars if I'd left the heads off until later. I had to go back and forth touching up the flesh tones and the camouflage colors because I have big hands and I had trouble seeing the guys clearly, they're so small. And I'm a sloppy painter.

You can see that the camouflage splotches are too big, but I think it looks pretty good anyhow. Oh, I had to mix paints for one of the colors. That was a big deal for me since I'd never done it before. I bought an empty paint bottle from the hobby shop and used one of Wiley's old oral syringes that we used to feed him medicine with to fill it with the correct ratio of paints. The fact that I could just clean up the syringe with water totally rocked. I really like acrylic paints.

Anyhow, after the camouflage, I painted all the guns, holsters, radios, etc. with Tamiya acrylics. The LAV came with a bunch of clear goggles, so I used Tamiya's Smoke tint to darken the lenses. Once everything was dry, I added the decals (using a very small amount of Mr. Mark softer to settle them after the decals had completely dried), glued on all the guns, and then I did a wash with burnt umber oil paints. Oh, and I brush painted a little clear gloss on the areas where the decals were to go before applying them to prevent silvering.

So, after my last horrible experience doing a wash, I was much more careful this time. I just did the faces, hands and boots (to bring out the laces), and cleaned up the excess quickly. The wash really brought out the detail and the guys look good, but clean. The last thing I did was use a really sharp black artists pencil to pick out the eyes and brush paint some matt clear over the decals to get rid of the gloss shine.

Doing the figures was fun and they really give life to the Light Armored Vehicle.

My New maD sKilLz
Successfully used putty to fill gaps
Used primer
Mixed paints
Used an artists pencil to color the eyes

Tools Used
Humbrol Precision Poly Cement
Sprue clipper
X-Acto knife
Tamiya Putty
Tamiya sandpaper
Tamiya acrylic paints and primer
Gunze Sangyo's Mr. Mark Softer
Artists oil paints

References
Box art

links: technorati