i did see one picture from an American magazine, which showed a group of gurkhas following a brit officer. I thought it looked staged, they were far too clean and they all had the chin straps on their hats.
i did see one picture from an American magazine, which showed a group of gurkhas following a brit officer. I thought it looked staged, they were far too clean and they all had the chin straps on their hats. On the all photos I saw, Gurkhas had chin strips on their hats. Seems that there are two position for strips, under the lower lip or under the chin, depending on the regiment.
That's interesting, I've seen one of a gurkha leading a mule, where his hat is hanging on his shoulders by the neck strap. I think if I had to wear the strap, I'd put it behind on my neck, as I think it would get bloody irritating after a few miles walk in the jungle. So before I start on the indian squaddie, would he be wearing the pinned up bush hat? A while yet as I want to do the chindit, and the Japanese next.
Well, I can't say I'm that happy with the little rope affair. i've had to make it an almost flat heap of polys, making one properly would mean I'd use up all my quota of polys. I'm just going to have to do a good job on the painting of it. Over all though I think that this will sculpt up pretty well, and once painted it should look on a par with good game engine figures. Hi Hebridean, did your day what the Burma Rifles wore? The black and white photos I've seen, they look almost like gurkhas, even to the hat but darker skinned and maybe with a slightly more boxy shaped face.
Well, there's no great hurry for a Burma Rifle bloke just yet. Another question, I was looking at images of that damn railway bridge, one of the highest in the world. Some guy in the chindits desperately wanted to blow it up, he'd wanted to blow it up even earlier. Why wasn't it blown up during the retreat? I think it would look really good in a game. I'm sure it was eyeballed for an commando attack but the chindits were ordered out. Well, if the chindits wanted to blow it up, then the Japanese must have taken a dim view of such a plan. Game wise, the mission would be a bit of a hard one to take on. Visually in the game engine, the bridge could look the bee's knees.
I've had a couple of e mail chats with a guy from Military meshes, who was asking for helpers for the game, "Hell in the Pacific," I asked him if they had any plans for Burma, and he said they have a lot of it done already. So this morning I sent him a link to this site, and who knows he might post. Mind, i don't think he was overly impressed by my Gurkha, or Sunderland
I had left this project on the stocks, after I read the comments on war games in another thread. But I decided that it was too good a game to just not bother with. So here's another model I built for the game. A P51 mustang of Air Commando.
I still come on this board quite a bit but tend to dwell in the modeling thread. As I say a couple of posts up, I did have a disappointing run in with one person from "Hell in the Pacific." They said they were doing Burma and they had all the Australian figures built! Not good at all that, I shudder to think what they are going to do with that part of the game. Looks like it's going to be Merrill's Marauders and a few Australian helpers The guy also said my Hurribomber was rubbish, and I should look for drawings (grrr). This in spite of one of the best 3d model plane makers in the world, saying it was looking good. Annoying as hell So there was that, plus the talk in the computer gaming thread, where an old Burma vet, thought computer games about Burma, would be naff. So I put it aside until a spate of Spitfire building took hold in my favourite 3d site. I built a Seafire in SEAC colours and people asked which air force it was. One person even thought it was a Messerschmitt (I'll not say anything about the colour scheme looking as American as possible, friendly fire incidents are not new. Or where that plane spotter came from. My dad was in the navy, and he said we used to fire at anything with wings. Mistaking Seafires for Messerschmitts, in Burma, must have happened all the time. An easy mistake to make.)
How far I'm on with that Gurkha, after an almost complete rebuild. I can change the heads and hats, and the kukri to a machete for the other troops. The pack isn't finished yet. Nor is the painting, he needs the sweat on his back toned down a bit, and bump maps to bring out the detail on his kit.
There's some footage of troops and their packs that have been posted by Mikky - might be worth a look...
Hi Hebridean, yeah I've watched them. The pack is already made but needs to be sculpted a bit. The packs in the movies seem to be simply up to individual preference but i want only the one option, so it's the basic one of a pack with two ammo pouches sewn on the sides.
There's some notes I put up re the pack and comments from a veteran did say that they did have to be somewhat creative with it, customising it to suit the individual - for you, that would be a tough option...
It's not so much a problem of making alternative packs as justifying them for the game. I still have to make a mule, and that can have possibly two alternate packs, one a mortar and the other a heavy machine gun. It's a case of, too much detail slows the game down. All my Gurkhas and Chindits are going to look alike, a bit of a clone army.
Bugger :mellow: I now have to find some pictures of radios. Did they use the hand turned little generators, or take a load of batteries? I would have thought you would need to have both. It must have been a bit scary at times, when taking your mules acrosss swollen rivers. Radios don't like taperline splashed around inside of them.
Batteries... not aware of hand-cranked units with the Chindits but not searched for - Merrill's lot used hand-crank generators...
