Part 2 - The Only Good Soldier is a Well-Equipped Soldier

    With the pants done, it was time to start making the harness and backpack. I wanted to hold off on painting for the time being since I was still painted-out from doing Gordon's orange HEV parts. I grabbed a few screenshots as reference and then went back to my many bins of parts to find a suitable base. I took a 1:6 scale web belt and cut it down to fit around the figure's waist.

    The in-game model showed Adrian equipped with about six pouches around the front of his belt, and a large rucksack on the back, clipped to the harness. I felt this to be a bit too ambitious, so I figured on doing four pouches on the front (two per side) and then sewing the rucksack to the back of the belt and the Y-straps of the harness. I thought about using 1:6 scale pouches for this part, but as always, they looked ludicrously oversized, meaning I'd have to make my own.

    I got some olive drab duck cloth and started with the Y-straps. A 1:6 scale harness looks like this:

    I tried to copy it as closely as possible. Taking the duck cloth, I cut four oval shapes and then tacked them together with hot glue.

    I then cut two 1cm-wide strips to use as trim, which I also attached with hot glue.

    Afterwards, I sewed on some 3mm-wide black elastic and then slipped the whole thing onto the belt.

    Next came the rucksack. I made a paper pattern and then cut out a piece of duck cloth to size.

   A few hours of meticulous hand-sewing later, I came up with this:

    I was most pleased that the thickness of the duck cloth allowed the sack to keep its shape, even without a frame. It may or may not contain anything at the end of it all.

   I tacked the rucksack to the harness with a few loops of thread.

   Then, I sewed some hook-and-loop tape to the flap to keep it closed.

   For the pouches, I decided to stray a bit from the game's design and make them partially open to the air. Tactically, this means that items kept in the pouch are easier to access, if more prone to exposure to dirt and moisture. But then again, most military pouches aren't watertight anyway, and this was way easier to make, so it was an acceptable compromise.

   To make sure the edges didn't fray too much, I coated them with a bit of model glue.

   Then, I cut the fabric to size and made a small loop out of 13mm-wide elastic and sewed the fabric to it.

   

   I ended up with some simple pouches like this:

   I filled the pouches with grenades, since the grunts seemed to like throwing them, and never seemed to run out. I also attached some small squares of hook-and-loop tape to the flaps to close them, then sewed the entire assembly onto the web belt.

   

    Next, I did a little bit of painting, using some Citadel Colour 61-51 'Chaos Black' to cover the boots.

    I also gave the boots some highlights with Citadel Colour 61-57 'Boltgun Metal', then sealed it in with Citadel Colour 61-86 'Matt Varnish'.

    With the boots painted, the bottom half of the figure was officially done! For the top half, I would have to paint over all the stains and mistakes from the figure's previous life as Gordon. So, I took some newsprint and masking tape to mask off the parts I didn't want painted, and took it down to the garage for spraying.

    Spraypaint, you say? But wasn't that what screwed up your figure last time? Well, yes, but I didn't want to use up all my good brush-on paint, after all, and on the hard plastic of the body, the spraypaint was okay, so I decided to give it a try. I used Rustoleum Painter's Touch flat black, and let me warn you now, that stuff is an absolute nightmare to work with. The design of the can makes it such that as you spray, excess paint pools in the rim and drips off onto your work when you shake or tilt the can. Still, I perservered and managed to salvage the piece, and I think it turned out alright. I also gave it a coat of Krylon varnish to protect the paint.

   

   This simple coat of black, along with the sculpting of the Sigma suit, would stand in nicely for Adrian's Powered Combat Vest (pictured on the right). I think Adventure Team Storm Shadow's GPS unit would complete the look, but I don't have one, and I don't really want to buy the whole figure just for that one piece, so this will have to suffice.

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