nightshiftmodeller

Faded denim blue

My friends, here's some basic airbrushing. I decided to go with the paint scheme from the box art because I found some pretty nice reference images for faded, rusty, blue Land Cruisers. That was actually bothering me a lot! Was the body made from alloy or steel? Photos show it was clearly steel as there's a ton of rust on abandoned, dismantled pickups. 

A lot of the details will have to be painted with brushes, but I need to switch from the airbrushing and base-coating mindset to d...

Locked and loaded

My friends, the technical is ready for painting! I think the stowage really transformed this model from a bland pick-up truck to a more elaborate and interesting piece. It even allowed me to hide the ill-fitting tailgate! (although, from what I've seen, other modellers didn't have this problem, so it could've been my error)

Those 3D printed ammo canisters came in real handy. The remaining stowage is a mixture of plastic cans and wooden crates from Plusmodel, some crates come directly fr...

Ready for stowage!

My friends, I have the basic construction completed. The kit has some fit issues resulting in pretty large gaps between crucial parts, such as the hood and the rest of the body :( Also, there are ejector pin marks in visible places, but luckily, they're easy to scrape off with a curved hobby blade. The gaps were filled with diluted Tamiya putty - diluted with Lacquer Thinner! Now this is a game-changing trick. I've been told about it many times but never cared too much, but it really helps a ...

Chassis and (very nice) wheels!

My friends, here's some initial progress on the Toyota FJ43 technical from AK Interactive. So far it seems like a very nice, well thought-out kit! They give you two wheel options, of course, I went for the more aggressive pattern. You also have the option to steer the front axle in both directions or keep it straight. 

So far the only details I added were air valves for the tires, these are simply made from 0.5mm wires, and I drilled out the exhaust pipe. Everything else is out of ...

DShK Ammo Canister

This was a fun evening 3D project, I took the dimensions from AK's Toyota Technical kit, while the rest was drawn according to pictures of the real thing. You might want to scale it up or down in the slicer software to match the ones on your model - I've seen their size vary from kit to kit! 

It ain't a perfect replica of the real deal, but it might be more detailed than most of the aftermarket stuff! 

2022-11-14 08:07:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Early video

If I do sound a bit sleepy, it's because I narrated the video almost at midnight :D 

Finished!

My friends, here's another diorama headed for the display case. I barely managed to finish it in time! 

The snow gave me a lot of trouble and I'm not entirely happy with the result, but it's one of those moments when you just take what you learned and apply it on another model, leaving this one the way it is. The biggest mistake was applying it in a textured manner as you'd do with melting snow in a muddy diorama. This resulted in lots of small clumps all over the surface, and alth...

HD photos

Heroes of Leningrad, at your service! 

All painted up and ready for snow

My friends, I gotta choose my "quick, simple projects" more wisely from now on! Now I'm just wondering how much of this is gonna get covered in snow :D 

I started with the chimney, and this was done the usual way - filling the mortar lines with Bergswerk acrylic putty and adding the weathering effects with acrylics. The rubble on the chimney as well as the ground was also painted with diluted Vallejo paints. The groundwork received the same earth washes as the lower hull on the tan...

Ready for painting!

My friends, the base is ready to be painted as a one, single unit - this means everything is glued in place. Well, except the chimney, the debris is built up around it. 

My original plan was to use cable spools from Plusmodel (you can see one sadly skulking in the background) but they were too large for the scene. So I went looking through my stash to find something else that could be useful, and luckily, the 1/48 Jerry Can Set from Tamiya saved the day! 

I also finally ...

How about that!

My friends, I spent a few hours on a Friday evening with the KV-2 and a few slabs of styrofoam in my kitchen, sitting and meditating, figuring out what the diorama should look like. This was one of those models where I had no idea about the setting, story, or composition! 

Well, the setting should be Leningrad during winter, that was for sure. And Leningrad means some kind of city building to make it clear it's not somewhere in the forest or in a snowy field... I considered several...

Early video

German troops beware, the Defender of Leningrad is coming! 

HD photos

Christmas come early, comrades! 

Finish line!

My friends, luck was at my side yesterday as I managed to finish the KV-2. All it needs now is a scenic base and those small resin figures! 

I've done snow on a tank 4 times so far. My first two attempts were with a mixture of white pigment and baking soda, applied dry, and fixed with Tamiya X-20A thinner. The second method I tried was Wilder's Snow! acrylic paste. Basically Wilder's Textured Earth, just white. And this time it was Snow from AK Diorama range, the same one I applied...

Ready for mud and snow

My friends, the model is finally reaching its final form. With those few details painted and pre-dusting applied, it's ready for enamel weathering and some snow sprinkling! 

Regarding details, I tried a new method for painting the headlight. A very basic, some might say beginner-level, coat of silver, followed by a wash of Ammo Shader Dirt. Once the shader had dried, I sprayed the same product on the top half of the lens, creating a fake shadow effect. Ammo Shaders often dry to a g...

Cheeping and rust effects

My friends, the most time consuming task is done, and now it's all the details, tracks and wheels that have to be painted!

When we think about it, this tank survived in active service until 1943, a true veteran! Did it get repainted at some point, maybe when it received the additional armor package? Probably... But that doesn't mean I can't use it as an excuse to keep the chipping the way I like it :D 

I tried to keep the rust effects restrained around the white wash. It's ea...

Early video

Gotta be ready for winter, right? 

Ready for weathering effects!

My friends, yesterday I finished the basic winter coat with a round of pin washes and mapping. Today I edited the video and I'm ready to continue tomorrow with chipping and rust effects! 

The washes used were Winter Streaking Grime and Wash For Interiors, both from AK. I planned a similar approach as on the Pz 38 - lighter wash on the white parts, darker one on the green ones. However, the model's surface kinda required to mix them together depending on the type of detail I was out...

HD photos

Base colors are ready, and now we can proceed with weathering effects! This tank's shape will now forever remind me of its Toon Tank version and I hate Meng for ruining one of the coolest Soviet war machines for me!!! 

Winterize!

My friends, the whitewash is on. Turns out a lot of the post-shaded 4BO remains visible, as the tank was apparently camouflaged, well, just partially, as seen in the reference photo. 

I tried some kind of post-shading in the white as well. I sprayed it in a random mottled pattern, then chipped it down. This, as expected, led to pretty horrible results in most places, but I hid any errors and added more volume with the second layer. This also softened some of the harsh chipping, giv...

Do we really need a winter camo?

My friends, here's a quick progress from Friday evening. And yes, it's a really quick progress because this whole post-shading work went super smooth and fast! 

The parcel I ordered last Monday arrived today, which is really unfortunate because I'm used to wait 3 days tops... and it was even more unfortunate, as I didn't have flat white to spray the winter camo over the weekend! 

But that's what I'm gonna do today. The turret was a testbed because most of it will be pain...

Early video

This week we're dialling things down a notch with this laid-back build, my friends :) 

HD photos

Off to the painting booth! As I was setting up the white background, I noticed a rather thick film of fine dust all over it. The contractor left a lot of mess when he was cutting the bathroom tiles in the hallway! 

Spray booth, let's go!

My friends, the model is ready for painting. The real tank is captured on video just from the left side showing only two mudguard sections still intact. The other side is a complete mystery, so I went with the no-mudguard option because a KV tank without fenders just looks so... different. It suddenly changes from a very bulky tank to something rather sleek yet still heavy-looking. 

I'm still awaiting a package with figures, I found some resin tankers in this scale from a brand I c...

Textures

My friends, a KV-2 is a tank that's mostly about steel textures - be it the stippled putty or weld beads. However, most of them are quite subtle! 

Something I want to praise is the mixture of Tamiya Epoxy Putty Quick Type and Green Stuff. I like both for different reasons, and each one is lacking the best properties of the other. So I tried mixing them together and the result felt like the best of both worlds! 

Welding was also a long process, it took me the entire day, ...

New project!

My friends, after finishing the large diorama I knew two things, and as it seems, some of you were reading my mind! The next project should be something laid back, small - preferably Tamiya in 1/48th scale, and something from WW2 again. 

The best candidate was this KV-2 I bought two years ago. Initially I wanted to build it as a range target found in Germany at the end of the war, but because I just did a similar subject, I wanted something different. 

Alright, a winter ...

Early video

Just in time, and it's one of the longer videos!

Finish line!

My friends, this unexpected and unexpectedly large project has finally reached its conclusion. If there's anything to be learned from this diorama, it's being smart when choosing your projects. If your life is busy, a complicated project might take you forever to finish - or you might slowly lose your mind if you want to finish it in a reasonable amount of time! 

It's also one of the most quickly escalated projects I've done so far, if not the most. What started as a shelf queen th...

HD photos

Welcome to the Chop Shop, where tanks go to die, or to be reborn again thanks to volunteers :D 

Chaps finished

My friends, the results ain't perfect, but it's honest work! :D 

Due to time constraints, I had to finish the other mechanic "out of the box", and that means some visible printing texture on his back and the WW2-style dog tag around his neck along with some other imperfections on the surface. If nothing else, this can be considered an exercise in painting historical figures in the most historically inaccurate color palette ever :D 

But accuracy really wasn't the main obj...