nightshiftmodeller

Early video!

https://youtu.be/6ffPkOLX2Z0

And we're ready for painting!

Good evening, or early morning my friends (3 AM here 😆) the base is ready for some paints! I'll paint everything with an airbrush first and then hit it all again with enamels and stuff like that, matching the road with mud tones on the Sherman. Basically the same way like on the Syrian base. 

You'll find another photo of my bench at the end of this gallery. Is it messy enough now? 😄

When I was applying the grass, I really wished I had that static grass applicator! Becau...

Who would've thought...

that a stupid fence is gonna take so long! 

I should've known better, because texturing every single plank is not a 5 minute ordeal...

Yeah, well, I found good use for The Chopper once again 😁 And the woodgrain texture was done with a razor saw. I made the fence 2 cm tall (roughly 1m in real life, which is standard height for cattle fences), and... I don't know... it feels weird when it begins and ends pretty much nowhere, but I suppose that's how it's meant to be done in ...

Finally, a base!

Hey friends, FINALLY back at the workbench and I managed to create the basic layout of the terrain.

But before we get to that, today I also filmed the 100K special video, which will go up tomorrow, because it was twice as big as the usual videos so it finished uploading just now. 

So back to the base, again a block of styrofoam, this time covered with a thin coat of air-drying clay. I'm praying it doesn't crack once it's completely dry, because it's a lot of fun to work with,...

Sorry for the weekend blackout

Hey friends,

I apologize for being quiet over the weekend. I didn't get the chance to even get to my computer on Saturday and took the Sunday off for riding, because the weather was just beautiful. It was nice and refreshing and I finished the final Sherman video today. 

Tomorrow I'll go shopping for that air-drying clay so I can start modelling the scenic base. 

We also hit 100 000 subscribers on Youtube, and I'd very much like to make a short thank you video and ...

Finally a load of HD pictures

Hey friends,

I'm sorry this took a few days longer than I wanted, but I pretty much didn't get a chance to do any work over the weekend (it was nice having a free weekend for a change 😁), so I completed the whole video today. 

If everything goes well, there will be new progress tomorrow, this time on the scenic base! 

Oh and a quick heads-up

I spoke with Adam about Aqualine and Textured Earth. He's not taking any orders because of the Covid situation and he mentioned some issues with the postal office. That's unfortunate but I can understand that. 

However, and this is the good news, he's expecting a fresh shipment of products arriving in the upcoming weeks - he said 2 weeks with fingers crossed, so let's say no more than a month. That's when he should also start taking orders and sending out packages again. Counterfor...

And I think we're done here...

Well friends, I feel like the Sherman is finally done, and normally I would feel excited to crack open a new box, but now I'm actually more stoked for another vignette 😊

My workbench is a total mess as you'll see in the last photo, but this has to be expected when finishing a model. 

I'm glad the polished metal edges are actually visible on this one, not like on the Tiger 1, and the antenna is made from a piece of stretched sprue from this kit. The smallest guitar string I...

Early video

Olive Drab distressing!

https://youtu.be/ll1gjWDOM0A

Almost done!

Hey friends, well the Sherman is almost done. Almost because I feel surprisingly sleepy and it's only midnight! Basically the last stuff left to add are polished metal effects on the hull (the turret is done) and the antenna. And that will be pretty much it... I'll just do it tomorrow and then edit the video. 

And yeah, I think we all agreed on another scenic base 😄So I guess there will be one! 

Mud tones done!

Hey friends, sorry for the lack of update last day, I didn't do much. I just didn't feel it in me somehow, and I didn't want to force myself because dust and mud isn't a no-brainer technique like, let's say, a pinwash. And it was nice to have a break... 

But today I finished the earth tones on the upper hull.  Sherman is a pretty tall tank, so I didn't go too heavy on it, and I think it turned out pretty ok. Photos revealed a few spots that will deserve fixing, luckily the dus...

Lower hull = done

Alright friends, the tank is finally able to stand on its own legs! 

I did polish the tracks with graphite after all, the weathered silver paint was just so unnatural looking...

The running gear and lower hull sides were weathered the same way as the tracks. One interesting thing is how the roadwheel hubs didn't get muddy (inspiration taken from Fury 😆), I'm sure because of how recessed they are and the protruding wide tracks. 

Tomorrow I'll add some of those ef...

That moment when

you spend several hours weathering tracks only to make them look the same as they did before you even started 🤣

But more seriously, this is the result of todays afternoon. I kinda wanted to start with tracks for no reason (maybe the initial pre-dusting + textured mud combo was too ugly to look at), so the first step was to paint all the polished parts with Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver (this can take longer than one would think), then they received a heavy wash of Aqualine Light Mud (the...

uh oh

When your regular 1/48 tank meets a 1/35 super heavy monster 🙃

More Sherman progress later! 

HD pictures

Lock & load my friends! 

Tomorrow we're back at the workbench! 😋

And we're ready to get filthy!

Alright, I think there's nothing more to add and the model is now totally ready for dust and mud. 😊

So the remaining stuff I did today was painting the last wooden crate (here I actually swapped the paint order, so I started with Iraqui sand, then Old wood and finished it with dark brown oil paint), and damn, even though the real US boxes look like they were treated with linseed oil, it wasn't my intention on the first two, but this one somehow ended up looking exactly like that 😄...

Early video

Chonky boyo

https://youtu.be/SIvFbO3fD-U

I'm gonna learn how to do this properly

Alright friends, shit just got real. I decided to paint those tarps with acrylics, not with oils like I did on previous occasions. This was mainly because adding lights and shadows with oils feels less controlled, although it is easier and faster, but I wasn't  able to imagine painting something more complex like a backpack or, god forbid, a figure with it. 

Well, painting with acrylics is more difficult, that's for sure, but it's easier to control and, obviously, precision wo...

Oil can is finally blue 🥶

Hey friends, yesterday was another busy day when I only had time to be at the workbench in the evening, so I only painted the machine guns, periscopes and the oil can, BUT it seems like the week-long busy day spree is finally over and today I'll be again able to work the whole day uninterrupted. 

That means I'll start painting the stowage right now... let's see how much will be done at the end of the day!

Tools + more chips

Hey friends, back at the workbench again! 

Today I added some chips on the concrete armor, and besides adding them on the edges and where crew would walk around, I also picked most of the protrusions on the surface to bring out the texture a bit. 

Painting the tools was a ton of fun as always, and I again used the tried and tested techniques and paints as usual, so old wood + iraqui sand + dark brown oil paint for the wooden handles, and dark grey + light grey + both dar...

When cheeps get out of hand

So this is the T-34/122 I mentioned in the previous post 😁 It's a 5 year old model! God, time flies like crazy... and this was actually my first attempt at brush-painted chips after a VERY LONG hiatus when I was hyped up on hairspray chips... I painted the entire model following Adam Wilder's KV-1 video series on Youtube, but yeah, those chips and rust tones were always an interesting thing. 

BTW, the turret is a resin conversion, again from Wilder... unfortunately it was pretty...

HD photos

Hey friends, so I managed to wrap this video up rather quickly 😊 Tomorrow we'll be continuing with chipping on the concrete. 

But before we get there I'd like to talk about one thing, because it's important to be self-critical. Looking at those photos, I must say that I'm not very happy with the chipping on the gun barrel, the rear and the left-rear side of the turret. I'd be okay with it if it was something like that Syrian T-90, but on a model like this, the chips are too big,...

Sheeps done

Well, even if it takes significantly longer than on a 1/72 tank, it still can be done in a relatively short amount of time! Of course I need to add more chips on the concrete armor, but I'll keep that for the next video. 

Some parts might look like they're too rusty, but these are often around corners and details and we all know how that always ends, covered in dust and dirty water 😁

Anyway, I'm gonna start editing the video now and then we'll continue with the concrete, d...

More cheeps

Hey friends, sorry for another late post from yesterday!

Well, I tried chipping the hull, but I failed! There are still a few spots left untouched, but I decided to not push it because I was already starting to lose focus, so it'll be better to finish them today. I'll also try adding the rust tones to get this stage done, but damn, even though it's not a huge jump from 1/72 scale, it takes considerably longer! 

Early video

Enjoy some cast armor texture! 

https://youtu.be/M2R_6b4g4cI

Cheeping

Hey friends, sorry for the late (or early?) update, yesterday I didn't have enough in me to even finish the rust tones on the gun barrel 😅 

But anyway, I did some chipping! At least on the turret for now, the hull shouldn't be much worse because most of it is covered with concrete... 

So the way I proceeded was to speckle some light olive drab oil paint over the entire model, and then I went over everything with a medium grey and that fine chipping brush of mine. And ...

Oils!

Hey friends! I wasn't sure if I wanted to use oil paints on this model, since the T-90 didn't really need them at all, but I decided to do it just for the sake of changing things a little. Of course, it was important to not cover up the distressing texture, so I avoided blending any oil dots over the entire surface and instead used only black brown and dark brown to render some details and add some initial dirt and grime passes. 

I also used the dark brown to distinguish the concre...

The ugly part

Raw unpainted Textured Earth is never pretty 😁 This time I decided to use the dark tone just to make the model look more interesting at this stage, and also to give a rough idea about how it's gonna look when the mud is finished. 

I also did some pre-dusting, mainly on the lower hull of course, but also on the upper surfaces, but just like on the T-90, it was in a very limited amount. 

This again took several hours to do, for example the tracks had to have each link t...

Oh, I almost forgot...

I've been looking at online stores every now and then, checking if a photoetched Voyager set for the 2A3 Kondensator is available somewhere... because it's been out of stock EVERYWHERE.

I pretty much accepted the fact that one day I'll have to build it pretty much "out of the box" (with some 3D printed details of course 😊) but lo and behold, today I checked eBay, and 2 sets were available from China! Needless to say, one of them should be already on its way  to a new home! 😁&...

Wash done

Hey friends, finally back at the workbench!
This time, I decided to start with a wash to outline every detail and get the model ready for weathering. I want to see what difference will it make switching the pre-dusting and washes. Tomorrow I'll apply some textured earth and the already mentioned predusting, hopefully some oil paints as well! 

I again used the wash for german yellow from Ammo, it's really versatile and it pretty much works with almost every color imaginable 😊...