French 28mm Sniper Reminders

More of the Blacktree Design figures, this time the French. Overall I like these figure a lot but one exception and that is on two of the figures the rifles are rather short. Now this may well be historically accurate in which case no foul, however it still looks rather strange.

 

A nice casual figure, with the rifle cuddled. Looking at the colour guides I found that basically the whole uniform from helmet down was basically all the same suggested Vallejo colour! After finding sample picks of reinactors and original uniform pics I was able to build a series of different colours that would work and give it a bit more contrast.

 

This is my favourite pose of the bunch. I checked a good number of images of the helmet to see if the badge was brass finished. By far the majority had the badge painted and most of these showed the badge painted the exact same colour as the helmet so I went with that finish even though it would have looked really cool to show the badge off in a nice shinny finish.

 

 

A good mix of equipment on all the figures make them fun to paint and interesting to look at. Like the Polish they seem to have a fair bit of clobber and I am sure in those hot summer days in the field that greatcoat was very welcome!

 

The figure I like the least as the rifle looks tiny, possibly because part of it is almost hidden from view. What I found fun was that the canteen is unpainted metal in a canvas bag so the neck that pokes out is painted shinny. All four poses have it so it adds a nice point of difference. The French in early WWII don't get a deal of love but at least two companies do 28mm figs (Warlord being the other) and between the two you can get a fair amount of posses and figure types.