It's finally starting to look better

Evening guys,

so I think the project won't be a total failure after all. At least the turret finally feels like a T-90 turret to me. Of course it's still a really poor representation of the real thing, but it's luckily better than I anticipated... and all it needed was to sculpt the dust shroud from epoxy putty, reshape the front plates with a file, add some details and remnants of the blown off ERA, and a few wires. It's all obviously simplified as I'm not going to give this model more attention than it deserves. I'd just like to make it into something that I'll enjoy painting. Now of course it's not 100% done, tomorrow I'd like to add and replace a few bolts and other circular details, and of course it needs sandbags. Guess I'll add some extra stowage at the rear to give it more texture and also hide some ugly parts 😁And then of course I'll add some of those tiny details to the hull - I just kinda shifted my focus to the turret without completing the hull. 

The two small photos illustrate what kept pissing me off with every single detail on this model... parts that don't fit at all while they're meant to represent a single section, and RIDICULOUS sink marks at the most inconvenient places. Because of this, the turret-mounted machine gun was completely unusable, which is a pity because it's an impressive gun station. Keep in mind this is a German-made 2013 kit, not 1989 made in Moldova... 

Now there are bad kits and bad kits... back when I decided to rebuild and restore that KV-220-2, which was another case of a very bad kit, and it was already assembled in not very expertly manner, I knew from the beginning that I can make it into something interesting and that it will be worth every hour of work. And I enjoyed every minute of it. I guess it was partly because WW2 tanks are much simpler and thus there are far less crappy details to deal with. 

But with this one... I think you noticed my growing frustration over the past few days 😅It's just when you spend most of the day just... literally carving out the tiniest details from excessive flash and oversized sprue gates, you don't feel very creative... or like you're doing actual progress... it doesn't feel fulfilling because you know the result won't reflect the amount of effort you've put into it. So if nothing else, this model is a great lesson: life really is too short for us to build shitty kits. 

Lol, but with all that being said, I'm starting to like the model, and I'm actually looking forward to painting it 😅 Got some new interesting things planned for it, such as burned and charred paint from the RPG hit. 

Good night!