Kuster and Friedrich Decals and Chipping

It's been a while but the build has come along nicely in the meantime.

In the painting department I still had to add the white banding. And well.. I didn't.
After trying to decide how to do the banding for about 2 weeks I opted for no banding at all. I still like the white accent, that's quite characteristic for the Ma.K universe, so they still needed something... Plus I wanted them to be similar on both kits. So went for the single hip joint cover. Which also made a nice spot for the number.

Then all the decals went on. Nothing really special there, apart from that I opted to not put on any personalized graphics that come with most decal sheets. Decals went on using MicroSet and MicroSol.

After the decals were on and safely protected by a couple of layers of clear coat I added some chipping effects.

I tried to do them, like I've done them before, by just taking a knife and steal wool to the paint, but the clear coat I'm (still) using is just not hard enough (it's Vallejo... don't use it. It's crap) and I ended up going right to the plastic every time I tried to scratch the paint. However carefully I tried to do it.

Anyway I painted them on. Not as natural looking as some techniques but good enough. As I've mention a couple time before, I plan of getting these guys dirty as hell in washes and weathering.

The way I did was the bog standard way I guess. Paint a scratch with pain a shade light that the top coat, then for deeper scratches put a dark (color of the base coat) mark inside that... for the really deep scratches I added bit of gun metal. Simple but effective (enough).

Have a look!

Küster & Friedrich base paints

Well the base paint's done.... just about.

The camo pattern changed a little, made it bit more robust (read: easier to paint)
the yellow is a mixture of Tamiya Lemon Yellow and Desert Yellow
The greenish khaki is Tamiya Khaki with a little Nato Black.
The darker accents is the reverse of the latter: Nato Black with a little Khaki

As I didn't want to premix the colours in advance, knowing I wouldn't make enough (or too much; I'm Dutch... I'm cheap) and I wanted to have these two to have the same colours I decided to go all artist painter on them and just mix the colours on the pallet and constantly paint different parts of both models.
This way I would kind of even out the inconsistencies in tone... or make it evenly inconsistent, if that makes sense.

Besides I'm planning on giving these some heavy duty goop washes so no-one will ever know in the end.

I'm still trying to decide where the banding is going to go.

Cheers,
Martijn

Küster & Friedrich pre-shaded

So I put some more paint on these things. Pre-shading.
A Tamiya german-grey and black mix.

Still un decided about the exact colour scheme but it will have a greenish dark yellow as I've already committed to that on the driver's helmet... ha
I did a little test and some photoshopping... still not sure.
Anyway have a look

thanks
Martijn