O12 Team Space Police - alternate colour scheme

After buying my first Infinity minis back in 2019 I finally played my first game a couple of weeks ago using my PanO force and an O12 force. As we were both playing our first game of codeone a couple of problems arose, firstly that we were unfamiliar with which figure was which and secondly why everybody was dressed in blue!

In the following pictures you can see the problem with my O12 guys in their blue and gold and my PanO in their blue and whatever. This was a complication we did not need so to avoid friendly fire incidents in future games I decided O12 had to be repainted on the scienticic analysis that there are less of them. Additionally the scheme had to to be quick - these were for my personal 'USE' and not commercial work so i wanted to be able to get them done quick and easy.

O12 guy in blue/gold

PanO in in blue and whatever

That decision taken the next potential elephant trap was what colour if not blue, all the good schemes were gone and as I already had a Combined Army force in black that would see action soon that ruled out black/navy blue. After research taking literally days...hours? Actually about 20 minutes I decide on the light grey/orange combo you can see on the Zeta at the head of this blog,which immediately screams 'police' across the human sphere - or not.

I painted up a couple of Kappas to check it worked and decided it was fine and launched into the other 20 minis including this Zeta. I decided to document the process as a record should i buy more O12 in future and as a result this blog was created by accident.

Step one - with all my infinity work I always wash the minis in soapy water to aid when glueing. Recently I have taken to using a cotton bud with pure alcohol to rub on the bits which will be in contact and weirdly this helps in glueing for reasons to do with science I think. Once assembled they receive a grey enamel prime outside then a black acrylic prime usually. (dark brown for ariadne and Haqqislam). All paints are Vallejo model colour unless otherwise stated.

The grey I was using was not really grey at all but a colour called Field blue ( French Horizon Bleu essentially) which was the colour of french uniforms in WW1 after the initial red trousers and white crossbelts proved less than optimal. Turns out bright clothes and optimism does not stop bullets...

This was airbrushed on with the first passes having been darkened with a bit of black.

After getting the basic panels lit up with Military blue I hit the highlights with white ink. As an interesting aside Horizon blue cloth used in the uniforms of French WW1 Poilus was created using red white and blue threads, the colour of the tricolor as a sop to the usual loony tunes nationalists who were disgusted by the decision to abandon the patriotic uniform which was getting so many Frenchmen patriotically killed. Genuinely "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" as Dr Johnson said in 1775. As true today as it has always been.

At this point all was looking good until I actually looked closely and saw that I had not removed a couple of casting marks. If you look carefully you can see in the top right corner of the chest plate and the right knee two little uneven bumpy bits. I had not looked carefully enough and though they were visible from step one I had overlooked them. Nothing for it but to get out the emery boards and smooth them out as carefully as possible and repaint. As you can see I had started putting on the brown base for the orange so this was a bit annoying.

However it was worth it and i also decide to go back with some thinned down black ink and reinstate some of the shadowy areas which had gone a bit too light. Hard to see in these mobile phone pictures but it did make a difference. For the orange base i used flat brown and orange brown mixed and painted in all the areas which were gold on the box art - more or less.

This was then lightened up in stages with more orange brown and finally AK 3rd gen orange. edge highlights on the orange were done by adding a bit of yellow.

At this stage I painted in all the black bits. On the rest of the O12 minis there is a sort of undersuit which I painted with AK 3rd gen Navy blue and lightened up with panzer colour periscopes - one of my fave colours. Howver giant space robots dont wear undersuits so that was not relevant here. For completeness below is a Gangbuster with said undersuit visible.

Back to the Zeta.

I also popped some pinwash into the cracks and crevices to up the contrast and highlighted the black with German grey and started edge highlighting in the lightest of light french horizon blue. This was then redone in the most prominent edges in white both on the horizon blue and the black parts.

Lastly the bases were done all in one go to get some consistency. All were painted the Ak dark Navy Blue then sprayed in lighter versions after adding progressively more ivory. The yellow was added using stencils cut from tamiya tape or even a bit of card with circle punched out from the token set in Beyond Blackwind!

The bases were then chipped on the yellow with dark brown on a sponge and fially washed in AK interactive streaking grime enamel thinned down so it pooled a bit here and there

Bases were edged black and everything given a couple of sprays of Vallejo matt varnish.

I am really quite pleased with both the visual effect and the fact it was genuinely a quick paint job that is easily replicable should I buy more O12 as we ascend to N4. I hope this was of some use, to be honest it doesnt scream police at me but I can see this colour combo being used on other factions just as easily.