In Progress » Martian Hovertank

05.24.2007 » Concepts/Initial Progress

While looking around my spare parts bin for some solder I came across
my old hovertank shell which I had started, but never finished,
a few years ago. Looking at the shell it still has potential,
especially now that my skills have improved, but I wasn’t
ready to go back to it just yet. Instead I found the wings
from my PG Wing Zero Custom that I was using the frame of
to create another mecha. I suddenly thought “hmmmm….
I wonder how these wings would look put together as a hovertank
shell?”. Well, that was two weeks ago and in that time
I’ve used a LOT of Bondo and spare parts to create a very
odd looking hovertank.

I didn’t post my initial progress
for this since there was a vote going on on my
forum for what the next Group Build should be.
Mars or Racing. I didn’t want to influence votes
one way or another so I kept this hush. I have
many more Mars projects in my head though in case
GB#5 is Mars themed.

To start out I glued the large wing
parts of the PG WZC together to make the main
body. I took other misc. parts and added them
to flesh out the rough shape the tank would eventually
take.

After I bulked it up with spare
parts I used some plastic like a spatula and spread
on some Bondo. I did this is several layers sanding
it semi-smooth inbetween. This build-up approach
worked much better than my prior hovertank attempt.
The 3 circles underneath are for the main thruster
fans.

After the Bondo was added I went
ahead and added various detail bits and armor
plating. The armor places are .04″ styrene
sheet that was rounded by immersing it in a bowl
which was immersed in boiling water. The rivets
were made from 1mm spheres a friend of mine sent
me.

Once a rough-cast texture was applied
I primed all the parts and started the painting.
I went with a red-orange-brown color for the body.
The stowage rolls are af various Mars-tones since
greens and khaki wouldn’t work well on Mars. You
can see the parts for the fans in the 3rd pic
below. The large fan housing is made from a discadred
dust-filter cartridge!

05.30.2007 » Weathering
Part 1

Next up on the hovertank progress
is the paint chips and filters. After a satin
coat of FFA, the chips were done with a round
pointy brush using Tamiya German Gray and a Rusty
color mix. You can see I left a couple of the
armor plates “unpainted” as if they
were recently replaced. I had painted them in
the same base rusty color first, but then streaked
on german gray to give it a slightly weathered
look. Later the piece was drybrushed with some
silver rub-n-buff then another satin coat of FFA
was applied the effect gives it a similar look
as rubbing with graphite or Mig Gunmetal pigment
would have. After the chips were done I applied
my 2 filters. The first was a yellow oarnge mixture
of oils and turpenoid. The second done 6 hours
later was the same filter, but with some red added
to make it more orange. Next up is the fading/discoloration
then some washes.

05.30.2007 » Weathering
Part 2

After the filters I applied the
discoloration. I did this in two stages. First
I did the standard discolorarion with the dabs
of oil and using clean thinner to blend it in.
I used yellow, orange, burnt sienna, and white.
That looked nice, but it needed more vertical
streaking so I added streaks of burnt sienna and
burnt umber and blended them with a dry 1/4″
hoof shaped brush I used for stippling oils. I
used some black and streaked that wround the exhausts
and exposed engine parts. Below is the glossy
results. Next up is a flat-coat then the wash
or washes.

06.04.2007 » Final
Update

The hovertank is all done, but I
wanted to post up some final in-prog images to
show part of the underside not readily visible
in the final shots as well as the base construction.

The base started out by gluing some
green floral foam onto a piece of wood for the
base. Once the glue was dry I covered the foam
with plaster and sprinkled talus, cat litter,
and bits of petrified wood (larger rocks) onto
the plaster. When dry I gave it a coat of primer
and a few coats of leftover spraypaint. The spraypaint
was to help seal down the rocks. Next I used 5
minute epoxy and glued balsa wood pieces to the
outside edge of the base to make it look neat.
I stained and finished the balsa. Once the polycrylic
clearcoat was dry I filled in the tops of the
balsa and any gaps with more plaster and rocks.
I masked off the wood and gave the base another
few coats of dark primer. When dry I gave it a
few coats of martian-soil colored acrylic paint
via airbrush. When that was dry I drybrushed the
rocks with a brown/black mix of cheap acrylics.
The final step was thinning a martian dust mixture
of pigment powders (rust + beach sand + europe
dust) with Tamiya thinner and spraying that over
the base and rocks to get that nice dry dusty
look. Below you cans ee that and the underside
of the hovertank being constructed.