Not a tough one here, but a nice effect ... giraffe men!
The first thing is to get some cheap toystore giraffes. Try garage sale-ing. Or the "dollar store" or somesuch. Then you decaptiate them. If this turns out to be too much fun, seek psychiatric help.
Now you need some figures. These are made from Games Workshop and Wargeames Factory bits. The legs are GW Tau. The torsos are GW (chaos? I think) space marines. The arms and guns are Tim Barry's shocktroops. I get these barts BIN from Ebay's Hoard O' Bits, totalling less than USD 1.00 per figure.
I'm cheap.
The rest is assembly and painting. A key issue with painting is most cheap plastic toys are of a kind of plastic that doesn't paint well. The technique I use to get around that is to start with a coat of Rustoleum spray primer, be careful not to scratch during painting, and finish off with a sealing coat (I have several different options for that).
I went with brown, green, and gold as a colorscheme to give that suggestion of the African jungle. Plain, solid are a big thing for me. I love really well done probases, but when I am playing a game, have a hard time dealing with the cognitive dissonance of beautiful dirt bases on grassy plains and vice versa.
Once you seal it, the paint job will stand up to being scratched by razor sharp adamantium claws. Mostly because adamantium is not a real thing. More realistically, it does end up with decent resillience. I believe this works on the same principle that makes a fly not care that the amber it is trapped in isn't actually chemically bonding with its body.
eiπ
