My Hauptsurmfuhrer was an experiment to see what type of figure could be made with a Dragon smock set, a figure on the cheap so to speak. Alot of folks seemed displeased with the lack of parts in these sets, but in my opinion the smock alone is worth the price. Try making one of these yourself and you'll see what I mean! Anyway, not much to this dude, Dragon Gunther with some embellished deco ala oil paints, some fiddling with the crusher and a few other "thrifty" parts make a pretty decent figure.
A quick note about the smock. These are made of some type of synthetic which has it's givens and druthers. On the plus side the weave is very fine and scale like, on the negative (in my opinion) is the unrealistic "hang" these uniforms have. Luckily I saturate all my uni's with hairspray, to make them hang the way they should and to make them a bit stiff for painting purposes. I also used clothespins and alligator clips on the various folds etc. to help hold the shape I wanted until the hairspray had dried.
I enhanced the sculpt with a sort of repaint. Usually I airbrush a new base coat but in Gunthers case his deco was so plain it wasn't needed (or maybe I was feeling lazy?). Nothing to right home the sculpt is rather featureless and bland However, he does have that "air" of supreme arrogance SS officers are notorious for. The crusher as supplied....well I don't like the velvet that much. I tore it apart, covered the velvet parts with cloth and glued the darn thing back together. The piping (infantry white) was made with white cloth floral wrap wire. It holds it shape, is easy to apply and is plenty cheap. While I was at it I replaced he chin strap which was some type of wire cable with a high quality embroidery floss. This hobby is placing me into all sorts of suspicous situations!
Yep, he's wearing an enlisted mans buckle, not that uncommon for officers though. I made a new buckle from brass channel, embossing the original buckles detail on a piece of brass shim stock which was soldered onto the brass channel buckle. While I was at it I etched the obligatory stitching on his belt with a small bit of brass stocked chucked into my soldering iron. Now the belt is received by the buckle as it should be, rather than floating on the back as the Dragon supplied unit does. I also repainted the pisol (can't see the darn thing now!) and holster.
The map was supplied to me by good friend James van Spronsen. James scanned some maps from one of those WW2 map books and printed them on his color laser at work. The detail is amazing and yes, the fine print is legible, albeit with a magnifying glass!
The gloves were lightly drybrushed, this guy would Not be getting his hands dirty, I assure you.
I added a cheapo knock off cast resin copy of a map case I made and that about rounded out the figure. I lightly weathered the uni parts with acrylic and gave the boots and pants a light dusting with my airbrush. My objective was to make something of one of these cammo smock sets without adding tons of expensive superfluos gear. I like him, light on gear but heavy on attitude!
