I’ve been progressing with the scenery while waiting for some LEDs to arrive for Vincents head. First up is the portable marquis sign. After completing the scratch-building process I primed the sign in Mr. Color Base White.

Then when dry I masked off the white portion and sprayed the whole sign in uber-cheap “Color Place” flat black spraypaint from Walmart. It’s under a dollar a can and actually sprays beautifully. Over that I sprayed a thin random coat of rust-tone-mixed Tamiya Acrylic, a thin coat of FFA, and after that cured a generous coating of hairspray with a dash of salt.

As soon as the hairspray dried I sprayed the whole sign in XF-18 semi-gloss black. After a couple minutes I rubbed off the salt and started the chipping away of the black coat with water and various brushes and toothpicks.

After the marquis sign was done I went to work on the Motel sign. I used the same techniques described above, but with different top-coat colors. For the blue, red, and yellow I sprayed a coat of white down first over the hairspray so that they would come out brighter. This had an added benefit of multi-toned chip-edges. These will all be faded and weathered more in later progress reports. More pics below in the gallery.

I also worked on the base. The asphalt is plaster of paris mixed with brown ballast and beach sand. This makes for a nice textured surface once you give it a rough sanding. Cracks were made with razor blades while the plaster was semi-wet. For the color I applied very thin washes of dark brown-gray acrylic. WHat worked out really well is that the acrylic did not want to stick to the sand particles resulting in a very worn looking surface with just the right about of sparkle. Seriously looks just like my street which is great. Stains, dirt, tar, weeds, etc will be added later. I’ll probably add a pin wash to the cracks too to make them pop a little more. The retaining wall box around the sign was also made from this same plaster mix in a temporary wooden form and carved/chipped when cured.

Here’s one I’ve been working off an on with for the past month: The Frame Arms GouRai kit by Kotobukiya. The kit is 1/100 scale but a little larger than a typical 1/144 Gundam kit. Regardless of the size, the detailing is great and the frame was a breeze to work with and makes it really posable. (even though there’s only one pose in the pics)

I decided to forgo my usual 1/100 scale mecha clean look for a more weathered AFV feel. I modeled this just like I would a tank with washes and oil discoloration. The only change was in the chipping where I used a blade to scratch the light paint off showing the dark gray primer, and I didn’t use pigments as this would be handled more than a tank. Instead I weathered and muddied it up with acrylics and oils.

I applied the pigments the other day and made a new base so this build is done! The other base was not wide enough so a new one was required… the 38t(x) has a leg-span of about 6″ and the old base was done on a 4″ box. Doh! The figure is from the Dragon DAK set and is nicely molded. I painted it with oils.

Like I said earlier this latest of my walking tanks was painted up for the box-art and should be available some time this month from Mig Productions. Tow flavors will be available…. one with a turret and one without in case you want to use a different one. The casting was amazing and not much clean-up was needed at all. Not sure of the final price yet, but probably comparable to my KV-2X and Hovertank designs.

Enough yakking… pics!

I skipped over a few steps with the photography, but I can describe them here. When I left off it was time for additional modulation, but this time with oils. Using 502 Abteilung oil paint I highlighted and darkened areas to give them more depth. The colors I used for this were Buff, Light Mud, Dark Mud and Starship Filth. I basically just hand-painted and blended the colors into the surface to lighten and darken it. I added some very faint rust-colored areas in a discoloration technique as well then set it in a hotbox for a few days to dry.

The “hotbox” is just an old paint of speaker-boxes made from wood with one side open enough to put a lightbulb in and raise the temp to speed up oil paint’s dry time. I have a 1/35 DAK fig in it now drying to go with this vignette.

After the modulation/discoloration had dried I wen back and added darker and more defined rust areas with the 502 oil’s Dark Rust and Shadow Brown colors. Then I used thinned Shadow Brown to do light pin washes on the rivets and panel lines. Then once more into the hotbox for some drying. After that it was all hit with a flat coat of FFA. Next up is pre-dusting with the airbrush and then pigment dusting.

I also started on a small display base for this build just for my own uses as I doubt it’ll make it to the box art. I started with a leftover wood box lid from a jewelery box who’s “box” had been used elsewhere for another dio… maybe the “Taco”. Anyway, I then built up some 3/16″ basswood walls and stained it. After the stain dried I sawed off some edges to create a few levels then filled the box with green floral foam for bulk. Plaster rocks were added then it was all filled in with a gravel, ballast, tallus, sand, white glue, and Celluclay mixture. This was worked in with a wet stiff brush and then more tallus/ballast was added to simulate rockfall fixed with white glue.

I wanted to simulate a Moroccan desert scene so with the help of some reference started choosing colors to paint the groundwork. After the Celluclay dried, I hand-brushed on several coats of cheap tan/chocolate mixed acrylics with a very slight hint of red based on my refs. I added several coats until all the rocks and groundwork was a uniform color. Next I darkened the base color with a darker tan/chocolate/red mix. Once that dried I applied a wash of Mig Productions “Dark Wash and let it dry as well. When dry I drybrushed the whole base with light tan to make the rocks pop more. Once done the whole thing was dusted with African Earth, Gulf War Sand, and Dry Mud pigments and doused with Pigment Fixer.

Plants are bundles of dark shaded jute fiber, drybrushed with white glue and dipped in earth colored fine turf.

Continuing with where I left off, I applied some liquid mask over the decals then I applied a coat of hairspray to all of the gray parts and let that dry. Over that I sprayed Tamiya Buff, then used a lightened Buff to do some light modulation/gradation.

After a few hours I started to wet the parts and using some plastic sheet scrap scraped the edges and added scratches in the buff-coat showing the more durable gray paint beneath. An odd thing happened though which actually saved me a later step. Certain areas where I scraped and paint did not come up dried lighter showing lighter colored scratches and panel areas. I planned to hand paint and sponge these, but now I don’t have to.

After the parts dried again I took some fine synthetic sponged and added finer paint chips. First I used Deck Tan, then on top of those I used Vallejo Dark Gray, Dark Rust then Red Leather for rust. The rusty areas were applied very sparingly and only where the heaviest scraping would occur. D-Rings, and lower legs. I used all the colors below to sponge rust onto the exhaust, but didn’t photograph that yet.

Next up is filters and discoloration.