Hi Buckeye and Folks,
I didn’t repaint the sheriff and outlaw, just touched up their hats and the clothing a little leaving the faces as they were. I used black acrylic for the outlaw’s hat, and for the sheriff’s hat and neckerchief, I used Burnt Umber with Sable, with just a dot of Orange, but a craft store, even Wal-Mart, will probably have the same color of brown as the original hat. I have repainted plastic animals and I use a shading method, similar to the old furniture antiquing technique, of applying a tinted wash made from a drop of Rust acrylic paint, Flow Medium, and Extender, or a drop of paint in about a teaspoon matte acrylic varnish. My page: http://www.josephrampolla.com/lions.html shows repainted Fisher-Price lions. After just repainting in sold colors, the wash brings out detail and adds shading automatically. Just apply the wash and wipe off the excess. The less you fuss, the better it looks. I used the same technique of the wash to bring out facial features on figures of people. The wash stays in the sculpted recesses of the figures and you wipe off the excess with a cotton swab, or dry paint brush. Very easy and if you don’t like what happens, you just wipe it off before it dries and start over. I often build up the shading in 2-3 applications of a wash.
If the brown spots on your giraffe are worn off, and you don’t mind the yellow color of the bare plastic, I would just touch up the spots. I am very sentimental about my old stuff so I keep the original appearance.
Take care, Joe.