VIETNAM STORY

Vietnam Story is the story of infantry combat in Southeast Asia. The story is told through the Journal of combat medic, ‘DOC’ Thompson. The feel of the story is entirely “first-person”. I wanted to create a sense of anticipation in the story by giving it a “real-time” feeling. Writing the first episode, I found that this is more difficult than I anticipated and I spent a lot of time correcting my dialog. 

I have always had a strong interest in the Vietnam conflict having grown up in the generation that watched it on the news each night. I received my Selective Service card not long after the fall of Saigon, so certainly Vietnam was on my mind a great deal during its closing days. Fan’s of Green Leader’s Ultimate Soldier Fan Site have long been familiar with my online comics such as the Haunted Tank and the First Generation. I also did a Vietnam series based on a PBR skipper and his crew. 

Upon moving from Colorado to Ohio, I left the PBR with someone I knew in Denver. After being in Ohio a while the Vietnam bug bit me again and I began to think about improving my Vietnam era troops. As I looked through my Vietnam troops and gear I realized that what I had was all over the board and none of it really looked all that good. I decided that I would put together an infantry squad and that I would try to make it look as first class as I could. I decided how many figures I wanted to put in that squad (based mostly on the number of uniforms I had available) and then I began to order gear from Echo Base Toys. My infantry soldiers would have real canvas pouches, belts and harnesses and the jungle boots would be constructed from real material and leather. I chose to buy TOY SOLDIER gear for these upgrades. I have heard a lot of complaints about their boots as compared to NEWLINE MINIATURES, but the price was right for me and I decided that I would make them work. The figures in my unit are all Dragon figures. I also ordered some olive drab strap material in a couple of different widths from GOOD STUFF TO GO. I used this to put new straps on some equipment items as well as for rifle straps. 

Helmets and helmet covers came from a variety of sources. Actually my favorite helmet cover is the one made by SOLDIERS OF THE WORLD. It stretches on most helmets nice and tight and once weathered with some pastels looks quite realistic. The straping material was used to make new chinstraps for all of my helmets as well as helmet bands. I have seen a lot of different helmet bands out there, but the one on my 1:1 Scale helmet is olive drab in a stretchy canvas-like material. That is what I tried to duplicate. I also used helmet covers from Dragon and Sideshow, all of which got some degree of pastel weathering. 

Unit patches (9th Infantry) name tapes, etc were all done in ADOBE INDESIGN and were printed on fabric paper with an inkjet printer. I also did a lot of online searching to find a lot of different kinds of Vietnam era paper items, everything from military script and manuals to Playboy magazines. If anyone is interested in that sort of stuff, I have some good quality images that I am willing to share, already sized. 

It took me a couple of weeks to get the unit put together and then I pulled out my collection of fake plants and got to work on putting together the four different scenes that make up the first episode. I tried to get the “Jungle” as thick as I could so that I could eliminate as much background removal as possible. After a shoot, I spend most of my “post-production” time in photoshop removing backgrounds and substituting basement walls with realistic scenery. I wanted to cut that time down as much as possible, so I used a really dark background behind the foliage and tried to keep the shots fairly tight. There was still a lot of clipping, but it went fairly quick. The final touch was to add diary pages into the final art. The diary pages carry through a lot of the narration in a first-person real time manner, giving the impression that Doc Thompson is telling us the story as it happens. He also tells us that he is scared and that he worries about doing well under fire. If you write those sort of things in third-person, they come from outside of the character and they are not nearly as effective in their impact. 

Doc Thompson, besides being the platoon medic, is an artist. His drawings dot the pages of the diary. The drawings were actually done in photoshop with a filter. I got the idea for the artwork from an actual medic’s diary that I found online. I just thought that it would add an additional dimension to the character. 

The first two episodes of Vietnam Story have posted on Green Leader’s site at this point in time and the troops there seem to really like it. I think the reason that it did well is that there hasn’t been a lot done with Vietnam storylines in 1:6th even though most of us have some interest in the subject matter. I have several more episodes planned for the series, but haven’t been motivated to build some scenery that I need until just recently. The number of troops in my command have grown as well and though I haven't been able to do all of them with the expensive gear, they all look fairly good. If you haven't seen any of Vietnam Story, you can catch it on my site, which is listed on the Home page of the SSCC.


That's all for now, until next time, have a good one!