writes:
To those stumbling here from some other part of the internet – no, we're not ISIS sympathizers! We're wargamers, and that means we need good guys and bad guys on the wargaming tabletop! And these are doing double-duty as sci-fi troopers, which I'm calling SISI. 
I'm calling these the "trucks from hell" for a number of reasons:
- They're ISIS! Nobody wants these guys driving into their town!
- I just couldn't seem to get these guys to paint up the way I envisioned them. They were on and off my workbench for three years!
- And when I finally thought I was done with them, I had one of those spray paint accidents where the sealer coat was a disaster, and I was back to salvaging the paintjobs!
- And taking pictures of white vehicles is not easy!
If I had known how educational this project was going to be, I would have taken step-by-step pictures! Instead, I can tell you about it, but all the pictures are of the final results.
I think they actually turned out nice if you view them at arm's length .
I'm going to use these as a post-apocalyptic force in Warfare in the Age of Madness, so the models conform to the points I spent for the force. One of the trucks is fire support (heavy machinegun, no passengers), two trucks are armed transports (light machinegun, can carry passengers), and two unarmed transports.
The models are the Toyota High Suspension from Peter Pig's AK47 range. There are six components: truck, tailgate, and four wheels.
I painted the truck and tailgate separately, because I was worried about properly painting the truckbed. I did enough Google research to end up on who knows how many terrorist watch lists (!), and decided to paint the trucks glossy white using an appliance-type spray resin paint. The stuff dries hard and is bullet-tough.
I wanted to go with harsh shadowing since this was the desert, so I ink-washed some of the details. The windows were painted dark gray. Headlights, door handles and decor were picked out with silver paint or silver markers.
I painted the tailgate separately. The Toyota lettering stumped me for a long time, as I couldn't get it to look right, whether hand-painting or drybrushing. I finally thought to try a red Sharpie pen, which worked a charm! I then filed the tailgate pieces to fit, and glued them to the truck body (they still sit too high, I should have filed more off the bottoms).
The flags were found on Wikipedia, shrunk down, and printed out on my laser printer. I had a hard time getting them to look right. The quality was better if I printed on cardstock, but that made the flags rather thick. I did a lot of touch-up with pen.
Based on the photos I'd researched, I put most of the flags on the truck hoods and doors, but I did drill out a hole in one truck for some paperclip wire and a large flag. I had some trouble gluing it down, which is why it ended up lopsided.
For the wheels, I primed them black, drybrushed some dark gray on them, and painted the wheel covers a different color for each vehicle. (The ISIS fighters didn't care for the chrome wheel covers, and painted them with whatever paint they could obtain.)
The gunner figures are from Peter Pig's Vehicle MGs(30/50 cals) With Gunners, also from their AK47 range. I painted most of the gunners in black with gray highlights, representing the ISIS 'black' uniform. I painted one as a former Iraqi Revolutionary Guard, in desert camo with red beret.
My original concept of clean, glossy vehicles, representing brand-new Toyotas, didn't seem practical in the end. So I added a little dirt, a few holes and stains, and decided to finish everything in a matte finish.
Then I based the models on thick LITKO wooden bases, with LITKO FlexSteel beneath so they'll stick to my magnetic storage boxes.
Then came disaster! Atmospheric conditions or something caused the sealer coat to go horribly wrong! The trucks ended up with an 'orange peel' finish, and the gunners looked like they'd been dipped in corrosive pancake syrup that stripped off the colors!
I yelled a lot, tried respraying them to see if the bad result could be reversed (nope!), and then I salvaged things as best as I could…
So if these models look a bit rough, you should have seen them before!
The windows received a brushed-up gloss coat to look like glass.
The bottom line? OK, I cringe when I see some of these close-up pictures. I spent a lot of hours on these, for a not very satisfying conclusion. But you know, at arm's length, they're not so bad!