Mud, mud, glorious mud...

 I’m not normally one for blood splatter or mud (Angel’s demon had a dry brush around the base of his cloak and that’s about it), but the bulk and weight of the daVinci tank did call for it...

I wasn’t going to buy anything just for this, so just stippled on Vallejo earth texture and gave it a dark wash. Probably better ways to do it, but worked and serves to hide the sins of wonky handmade wheels...

Tank Commander

 As he won’t be as visible as I thought once the lid is on...

As there appears to be a decent amount of space in the cupola, I’ve  started a second crewman to peer out on one side, just waiting for greenstuff to cure. I’ll see if it looks too crowded before committing though...

More WIP on the daVinci tank

 

Life as ever takes it’s toll and my six month in job is still leaving me pretty dead at the end of a day, so progress is sooooo slow... but hey...

I have, however, discovered the joys of those makeup ring lights and that has helped my painting no end... next, I need to work on converting the tank commander...

Paint WIP

After a few botched attempts to get my head around the contrast paints flesh range, I returned to the tank. Aiming for a linen/leather covered wooden shell effect. I had tried to carve in some tears and dings, exposed wood beneath, but getting that right was a little beyond me for some reason so I moved on and made good . The repair work is again not perfect, and in fact I’ve kept a couple of marks and tried to go with that.

 

Almost there...

Some awful quick photos, but I’m plodding along... 

So, rear doors done, although I started undercoating before realising I'd not shown it. The roof could have been detachable allowing a figure to be placed, but the roof has a solid cross beam in it that is just to painful to remove and I'd have to sink the platform i made as well. It will get a crew man permantly attached and the roof glued in place.

 

Heavy duty wheels

 So the wheels on the tank are wagon wheel thin and I wanted something a little more heavy duty to roll over the zombie corpses... now the fact this was a clockwork model also means the original wheels have lovely medieval cog teeth on them (which would have been very handy when I did the Watermill interior) and the model has a lovely wide slot for the wheels to allow for the teeth. So, inspired by trench gun wheels I went thick...

Because the interior (at least that bit) won’t be visible, I don’t need full replacement wheels which meant less work. I cut two circles about the size of the original wheels from 5mm foam pvc, then added another 3mm just to fill it out more. Carved some wood/plank texture and smoothed off the outer curve with some thin card. I then cut a series of plates to give the heavy duty feel. In my head the wheel itself doesn’t need to be solid and the plates (if damaged) can be replaced from inside the vehicle.

And a dry fit, the extra width and the plates fill the gap nicely. A lot of effort for something not really visible, but it works for me...