Accurate Miniature Equivalents for Custom Painting your 1940 E&P

@the_good_captain

All my boards are on 5mm foamex boards.
Waterproof, fade proof, and really hard wearing

Part 4: Starting the ships, adding decals to the tanks, skin tones on the soldiers

Today spent some time adding paint to the sprayed ships, including painting the water jettisons on the subs black (this was very tricky and ended up looking a little sloppy). Advice for painting the jettisons: toothpicks are not small enough! If you do use toothpicks, you’ll have to dab a dot of black for each tiny jettison.

The battleships were a bit easier, and painting the decks, bridge, and smoke stacks were all done in silver. I plan on adding the final grey coat last after the deck and stacks/bridge dry. I experimented with how to add the national emblem, and will probably opt for a white background with a red dot on the bow of the ship. In the future I may do that with the rear end of the ship.

I painted the tranny smoke stacks silver and added a white background for the emblem on the destroyers. All in all, the Japanese navy is coming along nicely.

The armor is pretty much done. I added a white flag to the front side of the armor and will be adding the red dots later. For the aircraft, I’ll be adding a red band around the rear part of the plane. I was debating between sky blue and red and may alternate just for some variety.

The soldiers got some skin! And I just want to say that adding the paint alone brings out the contours of their facial features in an excellent manner on their own. I may add a touch of black to certain areas of the face but that will be a last step. The next step will be panting their uniforms, rifles, and helmets.

After all this is done, I will be spray painting the japanese bombers white, the aircraft carrier black, and then will add the details to those. The Japanese are about 55% done all in all and I’m pleased with the results so far even if they do look a bit amateurish. Stay tuned.

IMG_6405.JPG IMG_6404.JPG IMG_6403.JPG IMG_6402.JPG

PLEAASE TELL ME THERE IS A PDF FOR THIS FILE???

Really nice models that stand out well with a rather simple paint scheme. Well done!

Excellent job. I also love the subs.

You mean like this?

http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Custom-Map-Operation-Barbarossa_p_683.html

I’ve updated the approximates sizes/scales for some basic and alternate units.  Keep in mind that many classes of ship and aircraft, though in the same class, varied in size so my sizes will be off on some units.  If your like me I want to be able to visually distinguish between units quickly so keeping classes similar in size I find works the best. Below is my guide/attempt to standardize my pieces where they are relatively the same size for their respective class.  I’ve added some alternative classes that I use in my games and ties in some of the alternate pieces that HBG is putting out.  If you need something scaled and not sure how to do it let me know and I’ll do my best to help.

Carrier 6.5 cm 1/3700
Light/Escort Carrier 5cm 1/3100
Battleship 6 cm 1/4000
Cruiser 5.5 cm 1/3700
Light Cruiser 5 cm 1/3400
Destroyer 4.8 cm 1/2400

(cm is for the wingspan)
Heavy Bomber 4.7 cm 1/700
Medium Bomber 3.5 cm 1/600
Light Bomber 1.7 cm 1/600
Heavy Fighter (Twin engine) 2.8 cm 1/600
Fighter 2.2 cm 1/500
Light Fighter 1.7 cm 1/600
Dive/Torpedo Bomber 3 cm 1/500

These are amazing, keep up the great work.