More shiny toy soldiers

 Here are some more 54mm plastic toy soldiers from Armies in Plastic.

Ive painted and varnished them in exactly to same way as the infantry figures I did a little while ago.

Compared with the 20mm plastic toy soldiers I've done before, these cavalry figures feel gigantic.

 I cut the pennants off the soft plastic lance shafts and put them on to lengths of brazing rod. The plastic lances were just too bendy and noodly, and refused to stay straight.

Shiny Toy Soldiers

These are some 54mm (1:32 scale) plastic toy soldiers from Armies in Plastic WW1 range. They do quite an extensive range of figures in this style; they're clearly toy soldiers, not diorama-quality collectors' items, and I rather like them for that. Though stylized in form, they're generally pretty accurate as far as uniform and equipment goes.

I've block-painted them quite quickly, and then given them a shiny coat of Army Painters' QickShade varnish which instantly provides the shading effects. Well, when I say "instantly" I mean "when it eventually dries in my freezing cold workroom". I've used their Heavy Shade on these, which is maybe a little dark, but I don't really fancy paying another $45 to get a tin of a lighter shade.

Toy Soldiers (again)

This is another of the 54mm plastic toy soldiers I bought recently, this time painted all red and colourful and shiny, instead of khaki and drab and shiny.

The battle of Ginniss, in the Sudan (30th December 1885) was the last occasion on which the British army fought in red. At this battle, as well as a couple of others eg. Kirbekan, the troops were ordered to fight in their red parade uniforms ‘to look more formidable to the Dervishes’.

This chap isn't quite right for that period, because he should have a breech-loading Martini-Henry rifle; this figure appears to have a rough approximation of the bolt-action magazine-fed Lee-Metford or the like. However, he'll do perfectly well for my purposes.

Toy Soldiers

I recently bought myself some 54mm plastic toys soldiers by Armies in Plastic via the Toy Soldier Company and Regal Toy Soldiers and I'm not quite sure how I'll go about painting them. The only firm decision I've made is that they'll be gloss varnished, because toy soldiers have to be all glossy. That's just a hard physical rule of the universe.

These ones are modelled on British infantry in Egypt and the Sudan in the 1880s.

Option one (the top photo) is the more toy-like method. I've done a bit of outlining, which goes against the Pure Toy Soldier aesthetic I suppose, but I felt it needed just a bit more definition than a simple flat paint job could provide.

Option two (the lower image) is in a more modern wargames tabletop-quality style, though simplified a bit. Three tones — shadow, mid-tone and highlight — to give the figure a bit more depth and modelling. It does look a bit less toy soldierish, and it also takes a bit more time than the simpler paint job, but I think I'll probably go that way.

The gloss varnish does tend to blow out the highlights in the photographs; I'm not quite sure how to remedy that. Hey-ho, on the scale of things that's a pretty small problem.