I have been working on converting/creating a couple of figures for a vignette I'm working on. The vignette is to be set during the Napoleonic Wars depicting an officer of the Chasseurs a Cheval of the Guard and a staff officer on reconaissance. It took me awhile to come up the look I wanted. I finally found inspiration in a print I found on the NYPL website and a pair of Alpine figures.
The figures themselves are based on Historex parts. Unfortunately I didn't have any standing legs for cavalry men but I did have some light infantry legs. Light infantry wore boot-gaiters that were made to look like Hungarian boots (that's the scalloped cut around the top plus the tassle). However to make them look like riding boots took a lot more work than I thought at first. The buttons has to be removed and the gaiter around the ankle cut down. The toe had to be reshaped and most of all the taper around the leg had to be fixed. The gaiters are more leg hugging than boots. To fix this I tried two techniques - one using Tamiya putty and the other using plastic. Both involved building up the boot and carving/sanding it into shape. I think looking at the pictures I would have been further ahead to redo the boots with green stuff because they still don't look right to me. I am going to have to break out the green stuff to build up folds and other details to I may end up revisting to boots yet.
GB
